Looking forward to feedback!
I'd love to start out this post by adding comments (a.k.a. disclaimers) about me or this mini, but, I'm not going to. I'm going to jump in and post a few photos of today's mini. I trust you guys and I am excited to get feedback and grow as a painter!
This is a Reaper Bones Faceless Horror (Gibbering Mouther).
Welcome to the forums epcotguru and nice work on the billion eye creature! Some critique would be tidy up around the eyes where you got the white outside the eye, such as that one on the 1st photo to the far right (on the appendage sticking out). Another thing that would help the figure is for some edge hightlighting (it looks like you have a lot of ridges on this figure to practice it) as it would give a lighter color to make it really start to pop. But over all some pretty solid work on this figure and it gave you plenty of practice with eyes.
You're absolutely right ekipage! I'll start cleaning that up. I have a follow-up question for you. I was doing some edge highlight with some pink/purple but it looked messy so I just covered it up with my base colors. Can you recommend a highlight color? Also, I would like feedback on a couple of other figures - should I add them to this thread or do I create a different thread for each figure? Thank you again for your awesome feedback!
what color did you use and what paints/brands do you have? You could always use a light grey and then make a glaze out of your base color to tone it down. If you are using Reaper paints, look up the one you used and find the triad for it (the lightest one will be the highlight) Otherwise, you could probably use a brighter flesh tone, such as rosey shadow or rosey skin by reaper. You can find equivalents in other brands if you don't use Reaper.
Just keep adding figures to this thread, makes it easier on people to follow you and such.
Additional Minis - What do you think?
Hi ekipage!
I've only been painting/gaming for a month so my collection is still growing. My closest local shop just carries GW Citadel so I've started with those (but transferred them into dropper bottles). For the base I used Barak-Nar Burgundy. I thought I would try adding more colors so I used a small torn makeup sponge to add Screamer Pink and Mephiston Red with a little bit of Bugman's Glow. I then used the Nuln Oil for some shading. It looked pretty good at that point. I used the Barak-Nar Burgundy mixed with some black for the inside of the mouth. I then started tackling the eyes (I purchased it to practice eyes). I tried doing some different techniques like using different colors for the iris. At this point I think I started rushing because I wasn't loving the piece. I wanted to do teeth that had a gradient from a brownish tan to an off white but my three colors were fairly different and after basing the teeth in the brownish tan mix, I had trouble adding the additional colors as they didn't work well once I watered them down. I have ordered three more of the faceless horrors so I can practice more. Unfortunately, the eyes on the faceless horror are MUCH larger than on the other 28mm figures so I don't know if it's actually helping me with eyes as I'd wanted.
You mentioned Reaper paints a few times. Are you going to ReaperCon next week?
I'm including a few other figures I've painted in the last couple of weeks.
- For the goblin I was trying to pick out detail - I also tried shading on the blade (but it didn't work well - I can't see much)
- On the female adventurer I was practicing dry brushing. I'm struggling to delineate different kinds of brown for leather.
- On the town guard I tried shading/highlighting on the blade plus I wanted to add some rust.
- With the troglodyte, I'm working more on my wet blending.
Your feedback is very helpful! I'm hoping to submit a mini to the painting contest at ReaperCon. I don't expect to win or place but I'd love to earn a certificate of achievement. Do you have any suggestions? I know I need add model basing. I have some sand and I've been looking at the Army Painter tufts of grass. I haven't felt like my figures are strong enough for a proper base - I should just do it anyway for practice.
Thank you SO much for your kindness and feedback!
Last edited by epcotguru; 08-24-2019 at 12:19 PM.
Just mentioned Reaper because the figure was by them. You could use any of the following GW colors slaneesh grey, emperors children or fulgirm pink (and maybe pink horror, but it might be too dark) it all depends on how you want it to look. Bones figures aren't the best (especially the small ones as they lose detail) to start out on I would recommend either getting a couple of metal Reaper figures or get a pack of the Easy to Build figures from GW as they are $15 and come with 3 to 6 figures.
I am not going to REAPER Con, would be cool, as I already signed up for NOVA Open and they are the same dates.
Look good for only painting for a month.
Another good resource is Youtube, check out sites such as Vincent Venturella, Squidmar Painting, OrcPainterNerd, as well as others. A good one for Terrain is Lukes APS or Terrain Tutor. If you are going to ReaperCon, I would recommend trying to get in a painting course or two as well. That way you can actually ask questions (unlike on Youtube) and will likely help you immensely
Last edited by ekipage; 08-24-2019 at 09:09 PM.
I agree with Eki, for 1 month you are doing pretty well. The main thing is literally getting the colours you want on the bit of the model you want at this stage lol!
Just try and get a good smooth base coat on, watering your paint down a bit normally helps. Then look at using a wash to shade the area you've painted. After you can literally use the same base colour to highlight a bit, (as the wash will have darkened it) and things will start getting easier quickly.
You seem to be getting the basics though, so carry on carrying on. Remember that drybrushing is really only good for fur, feathers, etc (at least for beginning techniques). Things that have a lot of small rough texture.
Last thing I'll add, is have a think about black lining. It's literally where after you've painted an area, you can paint a thin black line to separate areas of the model. Between wrist and sleeve for example. Sometimes the black wash can do this, or you could leave a black line there from the start if you've undercoated with black. It'll really help to make different areas stand out.
Well done so far, you've already showed you've got talent. Keep painting.
Just to add, Sorastro on YouTube does very good painting videos too
Thanks ekipage! Have an amazing time at the NOVA Open! I'm signed up for seven classes at ReaperCon. It's kind of a hodgepodge since I found out about it so late. Classes like beginner blending and layering and feathering were already full (I think they filled up a month ago or more). Still, I feel blessed to have the opportunity to attend since I've just jumped on this rollercoaster.Thanks for the YouTube channels. Lots of good stuff - I'm excited. Again, thank you for your kindness and wonderful feedback!
Hi Sigmar3! Thank you for the feedback. You hit the nail on the head - how to get the paint where I want it.
Thank you again for your great feedback.
Hey bud, welcome to the site. Thanks for sharing your efforts. You’ve definitely got a few good looking minis to show off. As you improve, you’ll be able to look back at these and say ‘why did I _______’, but also ‘I got that right the first time!’
One thing you can start doing right away to improve the look of you minis is to carefully clean any mold lines from the figure before you prime it. Mold lines typically run right over the head from ear to ear and down the mini on both sides (and between the legs). A hobby knife pulled against the blade will take them off.
Since you’re going to ReaperCon, I’d recommend picking up some of Reaper’s nice metal figures, as Ekipage said. They’re good value. Reaper features the work of many different sculptors, so it might be fun to see if gravitate to the style of any of them. Since you’ve ordered a bunch of Faceless Horrors, I judge you’re looking to advance your skills programmatically. In that spirit, you can identify ahead of time some things you’d like to refine (e.g. leather, fur, and armor) and keep an eye out for cool figures that present those challenges in a way that will keep you interested.
Have fun at ReaperCon & keep us posted on your painting journey.
Thank you SaintToad. Cleaning mold lines has been a challenge. Some I can take off well, others are a pain to reach! Thank you for the tip of going against the blade. I'm going to do that on my next mini. Thank you for the well wishes. I've never thought of myself as learning programmatically - I'm just stubborn!
Thank you for your encouragement and for your tips and feedback!
Well those all look like Bones figures and honestly I don't like them as I find the mold lines a royal pain to remove without carving out part of the figure. Yeah, there should be a number of vendors there so you should have a much better selection of minis to choose from (avoid buying any more at your local shop until you get back). Honestly you don't need those really small brushes I think the smallest I use is a 0 but usually use a size 1 or 2 other than for priming and base coating in which case I will use a larger brush. It is more important that the brush has a fine point on it than the size (and the paint dries out really quickly on those small brushes as they can't hold much paint). Have a great time at ReaperCon, ask questions and bring a notebook to write it some of the information down and they may still talk or demonstrate some of those techniques such as wet blending but not really do it so notes will be helpful once you get back home. Try not to buy too many figures, they do seem to collect like pennies if you aren't careful!
Ekipage literally gave you the perfect advice there, which is what I was going to do haha.
Yes, I'd say that as long as you use a brush you feel comfortable using, and have a steady hand, and probably slightly thinned black paint, you'll do a better job than just going for the smallest brush you can get. That's for blacklining and most other cases too. I wouldn't even be able to tell you what some of my brushes are to be honest, some are left over from my dad's old collection....who knows how old they are haha. A good point on the brush is everything in that scenario.
Enjoy yourself in the hobby, thats the main thing. You'll find that no model you finish is ever 'perfect', at least if you are a bit of a perfectionist (I am). Putting the brush down and saying enough is hard sometimes!
As well as the YouTube videos, definitely have a look around the wips here too, I found it a big boost to see other people learning, sometimes making mistakes and getting over them, and generally seeing great looking models.
Hi epcotguru, and welcome to the hobby!
I'll join the others by saying for 1 month only, your minis looks pretty Ok to me.
What I especially like is that you don't seems to be afraid of trying things, and that's a good thing, because it is a try and fail process for sure...
Like my predecessors, I'd say the most important is to enjoy yourself, try different paints/brushes/... brands, to find the ones you feel conftable with.
Thin your paint (it could be hard at first but it's better to have to paint several layer than one thic one that mask the mini's details).
Youtube is for sure a excellent source for learning how to paint minis, here is a small list of channels that helped me (and still do) : Painting Buddha (no new contents since a while, but still some really good movies), Tabletop Minions (especially the 'painting with the pro' playlist), Kujo Painting, Miniac, Angel GiraldeZ
Massive Voodoo blog is also an excellent source of tutorials.
Hi Epcotguru,
welcome to the forum and the hobby.
Others already mentioned a couple of sources were to get inputs about different techniques.
Drybrushing is, to my mind, the most effective technique to get onto speed.
The good thing is, that you can combine this with other techniques to get more details.
Giving an example for a red monster:
1.) Prime the mini black
2.) Take dark red and apply the paint everywhere you wanna have red except the deep parts of the mini. This will be a first effect
3.) Take a lighter red (or mix it by yourself) and drybrush for the first highlights
4.) Take a wash to have deeper shading effect (e.g. for a red monster it looks nice applying a purple ink)
5.) Take a lighter red for the highlights (or mix it again by yourself)
This kind of procedure is not taking very long, but will show you a nice transition effect from light to dark.
If you wanna train the technique it might be already sufficient to go for just step 1+2
Effects on amour:
Drybrushing with a dark silver and applying either some bronze or brown will trigger a simple, but nice weathering effect on weapons or amour.
And yeah... selecting the best matching brushes to yourself is quite an important thing.
I recommend to go for some 0 or 1 brushes for applying the base colour and washes, and a more thin one for the details (but here as well others have
differing preferences... seeing what Eki wrote... and he is painting a lot of nice stuff... so it might be more a matter of personal preference).
To my mind the best drybrushes are already out of the market (which where the GW ones of prior generation or earlier). The current GW are not my favorites.
But "Army painter" has some acceptable alternatives (a big and a small one). You might wanna give those a try.
And keep going. If you wanna get some inspiration of colourschemes... just take a look at that wonderful gallery this page is providing. I'm convinced you'll find some.
The most important thing: "Do your thing - first of all the minis are yours and you should enjoy working with those".
Looking forward to see your further WIP's :-)
Thank you so much for the brush size feedback. I'm looking forward to the trip - I'm sure you are too. Have a great time as well!
Thank you Sigmar3. I am having a hard time deciding when to decree a mini as finished. Haha. And, I really appreciate your advice to check out others who are also learning. It can be intimidating looking at the pros - I wonder why I'm not getting to those results (duh - I'm new at this!). I think you're right that it would be helpful for my learning to see what tips others are learning and to also see that we are each in different ranges of growth. Thank you again for your kind encouragement.
Don't worry about "when to call a mini finished". I don't believe anybody here (or who paints minis) will ever consider their piece truly finished.
Hey Dexter0015. Thank you for the your comment about trying new things. I am trying to incorporate as many techniques as I can. It seems like every YouTube video has another cool tip or trick that I want to try. Thank you also for the awesome list of resources. The more good information I can watch, read, etc., the better!
Thank you Graishak for the step by step. I've been priming in dark grey and zenithal priming with white. It sounds like I could use a darker first prime. I'm also excited to try the technique with dry brushing bronze and brown for weathering! Thank you so much for the encouraging words as well.
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