Barbarian miniature

[Stormhammer]

Not sure if this is the right place to post but it seemed to be the most relevant. Finished up painting my 2nd miniature yesterday. I bought one of the Reaper Bones starter kits and was really disappointed with the Bones quality and their general lack of detail and flimsiness. I picked up a couple of the metal Reaper figures and painted one yesterday.

This one is Goldar the Barbarian. I was hoping to get some feedback and some criticism on what sucks about it and can be improved. Any help is appreciated. Thanks guys.

View attachment 57793

View attachment 57794

 

[MAXXxxx]

I think it's a good start in mini painting.
What could be improved on the next mini:
- the surface looks a bit rough, usually there are 2 solutions to this. First is the overused "thin your paint more and apply more thin layers". The second is apply a thin, but not necessarily overthinned layer and let it dry before applying a second layer. Lot of people do the mistake of overwork the blending by starting the second layer before the first had time to set and it's damaged, so the end result looks not so smooth.
- also with metal minis (well minis in general) a good prep-work really thanks itself. I suggest getting some fine grade steel-wool and do a light buffing with it before the undercoat. The metal will be much smoother, making not only the result better, but also the painting less of a hassle.

 

[Stormhammer]

I never thought of buffing the undercoat on the metal ones, but that's a good idea. The paint thinner thing is something I have heard and I'm going to have to give it more of a shot to get better at it. I tried it a few times on this miniature but I kept running into the problem of the paint dripping onto surfaces I didn't want it. I was using one drop of paint to one drop of water, so maybe it was just too thin. Thank you for the help.

 

[Ddmkr]

One part paint one part water is definitely not too thin the problem you might have is overloading brush with paint, so it flows everywhere. I had similar problems at the beginning. I overloaded the brush so much I thought the paint was too thin. It wasn't. It was actually not thin enough but that comes with experience.

 

[Stormhammer]

Yeah maybe so. I honestly can't remember how much I had on there but the next mini I paint I'm going to try 1:1 on all my layers and see how it comes out.

 

[Ddmkr]

I do not know the consistency of Reaper paints, but for Citadel and Vallejo 1:1 is for me a basecoat mix, layering is done with even thinner paints.

 

[ekipage]

from my experience, and bear in mind I am still new to painting, is that Reaper paints are fairly thinner to begin with so they require less dilution than the Vallejo or GW one's I use. But I still usually go about one drop paint to three or five drops of water for Reaper paints for getting it thinner for layering.

And @ MAXX, thanks for the mention of steel wool. I didn't even think about that on metal minis. I was trying to figure out how to get some of them smoother and wish I would have thought/known about steel wool prior to painting some of them.

 

[MAXXxxx]

can't take credit. First I read about it in an article that's similar to the one available on cmon: http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1649-metallics