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Mako's Crew(s)


Mako

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@Mydnight: I start with the midtone, then work the shadows in with watered down paint (I add artists flow agent and drying retarder to it to help me feather the edges). Then go back to the midtone and work up in lot of very thin layers towards the highlight.

Thin paint is the key, most of the time my paint is more like coloured water than paint. (It also has artist's flow improver, drying retarder and sometimes glaze medium in it, but thats just me being picky. It's thinning the paint thats important).

Thanks for the compliments everyone, I'll try to get some more up soon and hopefully the whole crew done before too long (why did I pick a crew that needs lots of spare summons...)

Also just done lost love the wrong colour, so he's going in paint stripper and I'll restart him later this week...

Edited by Mako
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@edonil: The base colour is VGC Dead flesh +a little VGC bonewhite, muted with black/white mix (ie a pure grey). Added a bit of VGC night blue and black to work into the shadows, then redid the base colour gently. Added VGC bonewhite in little steps until I reached pure bonewhite on the collarbones and very top highlights. Then lightly washed the whole thing down with a mix of GW gryphonne sepia with a little leviathan purple and asurmen blue, diluted so its not too powerful.

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...crap, I don't have the money to get those colors together, lol. What kind of a color is dead flesh? The rest of that I think I can figure out how to do with GW paints, at least as far as I want to.

VGC Dead Flesh is a muted gray/yellow with a hint of yellow/green. It is very much descriptive of what you'd think it would look like from the title, at least it is to me.

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Thin paint is the key, most of the time my paint is more like coloured water than paint. (It also has artist's flow improver, drying retarder and sometimes glaze medium in it, but thats just me being picky. It's thinning the paint thats important).

This.

This is one of the hardest things to explain to other painters, but I think you've summed it up nicely.

Beautiful models too. Free handing may have been a pain, but it really helps to break up those flat/boring parts at the botom of the model. Top notch.

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VGC bonewhite is pretty much the same as GW bleached bone, just nicer to work with. Dead flesh is a greeny colour, a little bit like gw rotting flesh. Night blue is a very dark slightly smoky blue, so you could always use more black and a bit of a normal blue, see how that works

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...crap, I don't have the money to get those colors together, lol. What kind of a color is dead flesh? The rest of that I think I can figure out how to do with GW paints, at least as far as I want to.

You'v probably heard it before but if you want to try something similar to acrylic retarder try adding a tiny amount of dishwashing liquid to your gw paint ( on your palete not in the pot) play around with what amount of paint vs liquid bit it should make the paint stay wet for longer and not really cost anything, providing you wash dishes...

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Using artists additives comes out relatively cheap in the long run, Windsor and Newton Flow improver and retarder come in 250ml bottles for about £7, and the flow improver needs diluting 20 times before use. You also should only ever add tiny amounts of these things to your paints or they never dry and become impossible to handle... Anyway, back to painted stuff. I did lost love in a bit of an experiment, going from almost flat grey on his back to more significant highlighting and OSL from his heart. If it worked, he looks like he's only really visible in the light from his heart. There's also a shot of the crew so far, which I'll probably add in to the first post and keep them updated with each crew as I work on it.

lostlove.jpg

5mancrew.jpg

Edited by Mako
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Cheers guys, lost love looked fairly dodgy for the first bit but he did come together nicely in the end luckily. Didn't want to have to strip the paint off him for a second time!

Next up will be the seishin (one to finish sculpting the new body for, then there's 4 to paint), followed by datsue ba and a couple of gaki.

I can't stand the shikome models, so will probably sculpt some myself since they are quite nice as a concept. That's gonna take a while though, but I'll post up some progress shots every so often. The tricky part is getting them into proportion and scale with the rest of the crew.

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Normally I'm a big believer in time vs output, and like a decent painted army vs a half well painted army. But yours a showcase level, and I don't know if its just the fact I like the subtle color scheme compared to the normal high contrast most people prefer on minis. I'm, tempted to take the extra time on my next crew.

Do you have a painting tutorial, or a tip site you use I can read.

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In terms of tips for improving painting, the major things are

1 Thin your paints. Seriously. When you think they're thin enough, thin them again. And don't put much on your brush, no layer should fully cover the colour below.

2 Work in lots and lots of very thin layers with small colour changes between them.

3 Use the largest brush you can for what you're doing - makes life easier on you. Bigger brush means less strokes which means smoother layers.

They're the main points, practicing basics a lot always useful. After that you get to things like wet palettes to keep your paints workable for longer, good brushes with nice tips (kolinsky sable for example), and additives such as flow improver and drying retarder (a bit of a black art, its really trial and error with those!)

Posting up on dedicated painting forums (WAMP springs to mind, I use that sometimes) also helps as you can post up works in progress and get lots of feedback at every stage.

Patience and practice are the keys, just keep trying. Taking the time over models pays off as you get quicker at painting better

Edited by Mako
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