Miniature painting

[greenknight]

Clear base was an idea I had so the model would fit for all tables. It didn't turn out too well.

For your texturing, have you tried suspending some fine basing sand in an ink or wash?

[Dhi]

Basing sand is good for grit. I ended up using a little for nodules on the mushrooms. But, grit is a limited texture. What I wanted to use the Liquid Green Stuff for is leaving brush lines on the too-smooth metal, like fungus gills or segmented stalks. A wood grain kind of texture.

Do you glue on basing material with an ink wash? I wouldn't think that would bond.

[greenknight]

Straight up wet paint, cover it in flock, and shake when dry. Nothing fancy.

[Thorne]

So, painting. Been doing some.

First, finished miniature: Anybody remember the Paizo red?
Here's the pair next to each other. The dark one is metal, the lighter one, Bones plastic. I find I don't have a preference, as far as painting them go, the materials have their pros and cons. One thing I will say for the Bones version, I didn't have to glue it to a base like I did for the metal version.


In the background, you can see my current Work-In-Progress. Kaladrax the ... Disassembled.
Between starting him and now, we moved. This is after pulling him out of storage. Lookit all the pieces!


Then I got a sponge and a lot of black paint and went to town. I did not get very many pictures. But I did get some of the base.




Then I did a lot of painting that didn't get photographed. Because I'm aiming for a frost wyrm, everything looks blueish...

[Dhi]

Awesome dragons! I love the icy blue wing membranes. Out of the two Pathfinder dragons, the lighter one looks better to me. The metal dragon has taken some scuffs and there's a little metal showing through on spines and often touched places. With Bones you don't have to worry about that as much.

So do you prefer painting dragons? I picked up a couple with Bones, mostly WyrmGear the steampunk dragon. When it turned out he didn't really fit together and would take a lot of modding and greenstuff, I lost heart. Since metal dragons used to sell for 10x the price of other miniatures, I just decided early on they were not going to be my thing.

[Thorne]

Are you sure that's metal showing through? I did the horns on the dark one black-based, white-tipped, and sealed him. He actually spends most of his time sitting on a shelf, because we don't actually take him out much. Might change with the upcoming live campaign, but for now... I don't think he's actually been on the table even once.

[Dhi]

Oh, okay.

[Beorning]

Very nice dragons there, Thorne!  :-)

I decided that I'll try to come back to painting stuff - somehow, I ended up not doing anything for months (uh... how the time flies by). And so, I have a question:

Any advice how to create a proper blonde hair colour? I want to finally paint a blonde Sister and I don't want her to have comic-booky yellow hair...

[Oniya]

There are a few YouTube tutorials out there, but this was the first link that I came across:

http://handcannononline.com/blog/2011/04/20/tutorial-basics-%E2%80%93-glorious-locks-painting-hair/

The writer sets out to show how to paint the three major hair colors (saving red for another article, apparently), but to be quite honest, I think the example for 'brown' looks closer to a non-comic-book blonde than the actual example for blonde.

[Beorning]

Thanks! This is most useful :)

[Beorning]

So... As I've mentioned over at the WH40K thread, I recently got into a Spanish sci-fi miniature game Infinity. I've been painting the minis for about a month or two, with mixed results. But I thought I'd share anyway! :D

Here's my first mini, a Ghulam Infantry soldier from the Haqqislam faction:




It looks... kind of okay (in relation to my skill level), although the texture is still very rough and thick.

Here's a Naga sniper from the ALEPH faction. Very bad mini, especially considering that I managed to break the mini's right arm and had to replace it with a greenstuff one:




And here's my latest mini, a Deva - also from the ALEPH faction. Finally, I managed not to obsure the details and get nice, smooth surfaces. On the other hand, I completely destroyed the face by repeated attempts to paint eyes...






So, what do you think?

[Dhi]

It's been a while since this thread popped up! I'm still painting away and happy to see you are too.

Infinity is an interesting game. I attended some learn to play events here after the Warmachine/Hordes community just turned to smoke in the last year. That Ghulam is a guy I recognize from the Red Veil box. I picked up Red Veil, the USAriadna army box, and some misc pieces. Just finished painting the Yu Jing guys and I'll be joining you painting Haqqislam soon.

These are good early efforts. If you stick with it you're going to learn a lot of techniques for those things that're bothering you. It's clear you have good brush control, and you did a good job getting rid of mould lines and assembling the pieces. From there it pretty much comes down to technique.

Infinity models are full of tiny grooves just begging for a wash. Your nice bright colors would probably be ruined by a uniform brown or black wash, but if you don't mind getting your hands on some acrylic matte medium and Pledge Floor Care Multi-Surface Finish, I can teach you how to make any wash you want.

I see what you mean about the paint going on thick. Everyone who starts out has to hear the same advice to thin your paints. It takes more time, but it's worth it.

[Beorning]

I admit that Infinity has caused a total Pokemontisis in me... so, I ended picking up a lot of stuff for this game  :o  ;D I have the Red Veil and Icestorm boxes (although I do plan on selling the Yu Jing and Pan-O minis), as well as a few more sets for Haqqislam and Nomads. And I have some ALEPH troopers, too.

Right now, I'm trying to paint most of my ALEPHs as soon as possible, so that I have a playable team. ALEPHs are interesting in that regard, as many of their units are quite costly. So, you could create a 300-point list with just a Deva, two Nagas, two Asuras and Achilles.

Anyway, looking forward to sharing more painting stories! And if you have the Yu Jing guys ready, please post them!

[Beorning]

New mini! First of the Asuras:







*gasp* Suprise! For a change, I managed to paint a mini that looks relatively decent!  :o  ;D

[Oniya]

Nice detailing!

[Beorning]

Thanks! I'm pleased that I managed to make some of the details to be visible.

Also: finally a mini that is *smooth*!

[HairyHeretic]

I hate working on faces, I can almost never get eyes done properly. Almost every model I do, their helmet stays on :)

[Dhi]

This is an article from Dark Sword painter Marike Reimer that helped me get a handle on painting eyes.
http://www.destroyerminis.com/paintingeyes/

Beyond step 5 is really overkill, and if you can even do step 5 you're ahead of the game, but steps 1-4 are a solid foundation.

Marike doesn't mention this in the article but I've found the least risky way to paint that very important white line which defines the shape of the eye is with quite thin paint. I water my offwhite down 2 parts water to 1 part paint, wick the moisture off the brush with a paper towel, and essentially sketch in the eyeball. It takes more time, but it gives me so much more control over the shape of the line, and mistakes are almost invisible.

Unfortunately the same doesn't work for drawing the pupil. A misplaced black dot, no matter how thinned the pigment, is going to be highly visible on white.

[Thorne]

I usually set my eye colour before I set my pupils, when doing eyes; that way if I don't like where the pupil ended up, I can dab a little and - most likely - no one will notice anything weird. Unless I get them /really/ cross-eyed, but I can usually fix that with a little careful dibbling.

I say this without having looked at the tutorial; it may be I adopt a new technique here in a bit. ^^;

[Dhi]

I picked up a new lighting setup, so pictures of those Yu Jing and other projects will be coming soon. I'm a nerd and can't just fire and forget with my mobile like a normal person.

[Dhi]

I've got some pictures now of Malifaux, Warmachine, Infinity, Kingdom Death, and Reaper projects and will do some sorting and posting this weekend. It's been a year, and in that time I've finished 83 new pieces.

[greenknight]

And I'm here with a set my bro sent me for xmas and no way to store and transport them if I do paint them....

[Oniya]

And I'm here with a set my bro sent me for xmas and no way to store and transport them if I do paint them....

A number of gamers I know use that egg-crate foam to pack their minis.  (Egg crate on one side, and a flat squishy foam on the other - the figures sort of nestle in the 'dimples'.)

[greenknight]

Yep, I won't really have the option to drive over to Michael's for supplies for another <----> months or so ;D

[Dhi]

If we let something like inadequate storage solutions get in our way, nobody would ever paint anything.

Here's proof I have been painting. Yu Jing:



Trying out the Haqqislam color scheme:


And USAriadna: