advice for a painter wanting more

[rolling thunder]

hey guys. hope your all well. So i\'ve been painting and modeling for about 14 years (im 23) so im still not well into the more high end painting techniques/tools and such. But i want to advance and edge into some competitive painting or modeling. Is there any good advice some of you guys could spare me? If you dare check my gallery you\'ll see where im at and maybe point out where my big falls are. As always, any help is greatly appreciated

 

[Glordag]

From taking a peek at your gallery, I can come up with a couple of things.

First, you have great precision, so I\'m pretty confident you can accomplish most whatever you choose to with some practice and better technique.

The two criticisms I can come up with:

1. Thin your paints a little more. Look around on here for threads about paint thinning (there are tons), and possibly look into some instructional DVDs. Once you realize the proper consistency of the paint and moisture on the brush, it\'s like magic - the world is the limit.

2. Use more layers. It looks as though you don\'t quite have enough depth in your shading or brightness in your highlights. Try gradually building up 2 layers of shades and 4 layers of highlights on a model or two and see how that works out for you. Of course, if you\'re just looking for tabletop quality for gaming, then you can easily get away with 1 layer of shading and maybe 2 layers of highlighting. Note that when I say \"layers\" I mean \"steps\". Each step might actually take several applications over the model.

One day I\'ll post some of my crap on here so I can get some advice of my own! Good luck .

 

[rolling thunder]

thanks mate im glad i can always come to CMON and get decent advice. hope to see some of your stuff soon

 

[airhead]

flipped through your gallery. Found the Stone Templar Dread.

I like it. The rivits could use some detailing. (shadow or wash underneath each one with a highlight on top.)

****

A lot of the competition painting depends on what competition:

Golden demon where the judge gets to see the actual mini?
On-Line where you submit a photo of your mini?

Mini photography is an art form unto itself. You\'re close.

as one guy here once told me.
between shadow and highlight, you paint:
|----|
for photo work, you have to paint
|-------------------------|

your assault terms have all those beutiful panel lines in their armor. Accent them. Darken the seam and higlight the panel edge.

hope that helps.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Can\'t say there\'s a fast way to becoming proficient but one thing you can do to grease the skids it to submit your work for criticism often. Also, look at work that is good. Don\'t limit yourself to looking at mini\'s. Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Robert Daughters, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Thomas Hart Benton.

 

[Joek]

If you look at the Top 10 artists in the CMON hierarchy, they\'ve got there by not just being superb painters, but by being superb individualists at what they do. They clearly experiment with colours, and they all do things which you tend not to think of doing until it\'s been done.

So, you digest this, and take it all in. You filter out the stuff which might not appeal to you (for me - NMM, and completely scratch-building something for example), and keep the bits you need. You then try to do it for yourself.

Note the \'try\' bit here. It\'s never easy, and whilst I sometimes wish I could click my fingers and produce a perfect figure, it doesn\'t work . But if I\'ve learn something from each thing I paint, then it\'s a success for me.

This is not dismissing \'copying\' someone\'s style - I regularly copy things in an effort to perfect a technique (mostly without success!), but the really special figures I like to think have at least something unique to me.

Not sure this really helped much, but it was a cathartic experience for me!

(On a purely technical standpoint - get some really good brushes, and like it was said above, thin the paints lots!)

 

[donga666]

Best advice:

Read more articles! There\'s no shortage, especially here.

Break out of your comfort zone and don\'t be afraid to make an arse of it! You learn more from your mistakes than triumphs.