Sasquatch - Aiming for Showcase

[Guest The_Brain]

Hi there,

finally i finished something of my miniatures. It´s the Sasquatch from Reaper, a miniature which i bought to improve painting skin.

I used a snow base as a contrast to his red/brown colors.

I would like to have a hard criticism, so i can improve and become better. My aim is a "ShowcaseLevel", which means i would like to hand in my minis into contests and maybe win sometimes

Greetings

Brain

[Hinton]

You're certainly on your way if you're wanting to get competition quality paint jobs. Nice use of colors (IMO) and it's looks nice and smooth. I think the hair could have used a dark wash to make the shadows darker and add more contrast, but that's just my opinion.

Very nice work and look forward to seeing more of your work here on the forums.

[supervike]

I think this is beyond my ability, so you can take my critique with a grain of salt.

You've got great colors and good contrast there, but if you really want to 'pop', you'll need to exaggerate the contrasts even more. Bring the highlighting up more than what you have. That should give it that extra dimension that great painters seem to achieve.

Beyond that I'll just say I love that mini, and your treatment of it is fantastic.

[Nathan Caroland]

Hey Brain,

I think the miniature itself is a lot of fun, but my biggest critique would have to be the snow itself just doesn't look right to me as it looks like perhaps a mixture of glue and baking soda (I only say that cause that's what I've done and it didn't come out very well for me).

Rob (Demonherald) and Peter (Avicenna) would be two great folks to pick the minds of on that sort of subject matter.

[Guest The_Brain]

Hey there, First of all thank you for the nice words... @FF: You got me ^^...yep i used baking soda, but with water instead of glue...Well doing bases for showcase is pretty hard for me, I appreciate any tipps on a better recept for snow And I just made me an account on CMON and put him up there: CMON Greetings Brain

[supervike]

What's CMON?

is that new?

[matty1001]

I'v left a comment over at CMoN, just need the mods to pull there finger out and you can see it

[Hinton]

What's CMON?

is that new?

I think it's been around for awhile, but I try not to hang out over there too much. The Mods there are...well...strange.

[supervike]

Ahem...message recieved.

Hey Lukas, would you mind sharing your painting technique with us?

It's a style that I really do like and reminds me of Fat Goblin and Viking Lodge from over at CMoN.

Are you using acrylics?

There is a richness to the paint, and a depth that I'd really like to achieve but can't. But also there is a continuity to the whole piece ( I don't know how to explain this any better, so I'll just show you using those other painters as an example).

Fat Goblin:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/135880

http://www.coolminiornot.com/126915

Vikinglodge

http://www.coolminiornot.com/178722

http://www.coolminiornot.com/175756

I can't quite explain what I'm after here....maybe someone else can find the common denominator! I'm thinking it is smooth washes over the basecoats to change tones....

[Guest The_Brain]

Hi, Yes i paint with acrylics... I mainly used 2 colors for the skin: GW Scorched Brown and Vallejo Dwarf Skin... Then i started to give all skin parts a coat of Scorched Brown. In some big steps i highlighted to Dwarfflesh. Now at this point it doesnt look very good, because you can see every step, or mixture of Scorched Brown and Dwarf Skin. Now i thinned Scorched Brown very hard, i think 1:8 or even 1:10. Using distilled water or water with dish liquid. hats for breaking the surface structure of the water. Get your brush into it and put it on a handkerchief, so theres not too much paint on the brush. With this glaze you just shade down, with the side of the brush. Start at the highest Highlight and then just pull down the brush to the darkest point. then you gotta highlight again and shade again and after some time you have a smooth blending... I have no idea how far you are into painting so i just gone step by step ^^ Greetings Lukas

[Guest The_Brain]

ok i have no idea why but it keeps ignoring my line break -.-

[WolfDreamerNZ]

I think the common denominators are, as you said, the smooth blending style but also the gritty realism look - while being smooth in painting the colours suggest a less cartoony take and a more subtle range of realistic colours - almost bordering on historical painting style (less so with VL's but not by much). FG and TB have achieved the non exaggerated highlights and shadows commonly seen in the historical side of things.

As I said on Reaper - the snow is my main issue, but basing can be tough. I have about 3 types of snow flock - one is like large grain flock (far too big to be realistic), the second is GWs sparkly snow (also far too big to be in scale) and my newest is Woodland Scenics snow. Very fine and seems to be quite effective. It's hard to get snow right as too much liquid makes it look slushy, too little makes it look rocky...there is an art to basing in general but snow for sure. Take a look at this recent basing thread and see if you like the snow effects by Skullcrafts: http://wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?t=2954

[supervike]

Thanks Lukas for the breakdown.

And thanks Wolfie for that...I think you are right. The realism look is what I like.

[Skya]

I love the soft richness of the colors. My main critique of the painting would be the highlighting of the oranges on the hair. It's almost too soft, a further highlight to create sheen could add significantly. In fact it almost looks more like you're trying to paint fire then hair, toning the reds with a rich brown might help that. "Red" hair is very rarely actually red. It's more like a brown-gold with red tones overlaid. Even those described as carrot tops have very orange hair with very little actual red in it.

I do agree with the consensus on the snow, it's a bit jarring next to the rest of it. You might consider making it muddier on the edges so it doesnt go from pure white starkly to brown. Usually when the snow is spotty like that it's because it has been melting. If it's warmer out it will be muddy at the edges, if it's colder, and the melting was earlier, it will have a layer of ice spreading under it. Either way the snow is rarely pure white and can be shaded lightly with browns, blues and purples to add depth to the transition with the ground.

Overall though a great piece. I certainly look forward to seeing your stuff in the future.

[hubbabubba]

Great mini, love your skin tones. Only thing I'd say is something that Greenstuff said to me; just think about were the lights coming from more, the re are areas on the skin that I don't think should have received so many highlights or such strong contrasts, for example, I think parts of the right thigh should be in shadow were he's holding his arm over it, if that makes any sense. I really like you pallet for the skin though, great stuff

[Guest The_Brain]

Thanks for the tipps, I will search for a shop which got the woodland scenics here in germany. As for that point with the light your are right, but if i painted it as the light comes from above, there would be a very dark part on the muscels of his stomach, which would have been boring imho.

[hubbabubba]

That's a perfectly valid point, there's nothing to say you have to have the light source above, or even that you have to paint using a fixed light source/sources, but I think it helps to have some fixed position in mind when you're painting, especially for competition/display, (not that I ever have:laugh:. ) Still, the yeti's cool and I can see why you'd want to paint the stomach and chest like that if your objective was to practise flesh tones...