My first WIP thread. Help wanted!

[BarstoolProphet]

With my taxes filed, and a nice return coming my way, I went out and bought myself a camera, so that I could take pictures of my work.

I also read everything I could find about taking pictures, and did everything I could to make my pictures as good as possible.

I haven\'t made myself a light tent, yet, so the pictures still aren\'t \'there\', but with what I was able to get, I think I did pretty well. This picture was taken with two overhead lamps with 40 watt soft light bulbs, the room\'s ambient lighting (also 40 watt bulbs), and the camera\'s fill flash, with a paper background behind it. I\'m not sure I chose the right colour for the background. I have two shades of blue, and one yellow available. This was just my first try at it.

The miniature is a Hordes warlock, Madrak, from Privateer Press. In the fluff text, he\'s described as an albino trollkin, so I went very pale blue with his skintones, and the highlights got a lot of white. I was trying to make the highlights more abrupt on his skin, so that they would show up, even from a distance.

The tartan was very difficult to do, and I\'m probably going to paint over it to try again, because my hand shook a few times while trying to do the thinner lines, and sort of ruined the end result.

The highlights in the brown don\'t show up very well in the picture, but there isn\'t a lot of visible brown in it, so for the moment, I\'m leaving it alone.

This was my first attempt at doing highlights in metallic gold, and they seem to show up properly in the picture, and I think I got them right.

I forgot to put his head and his axe-wielding arm next to him so that they could also be seen.

I know I have a lot to learn, still, about painting, and welcome advice and constructive criticism.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Talion]

Not sure what paints you use but here\'s my Gold Solution. I use GW paints.

1. Undercoat Chaos Black
2. Base Coat Tin Bitz
3. Higlight with Shining Gold
4. Slightly Diluted Brown Ink
5. Re-Highlight with Shining gold
6. Finer Highlights with Burnished Gold

Depending on what type of Gold Shiny or Ancient. The next steps

7. Top Highlight Burnished Gold with Mithiral Silver.

Which ever one you choose finally.

8. A very weak wash with flesh wash, I still use the old Chestnut ink (very very diluted)

 

[Naukhel]

You mention your hand shaking on the lines. Try pressing the heels of your hands
together when you\'re painting. It won\'t necessarily stop the shaking, but it should
at least make your brush hand and the hand holding the piece shake the same
way.

 

[BarstoolProphet]

This is the re-painted tartan, and I remembered to put the axe into the picture, this time. All will remain shiny until I\'ve finished and dull-coated it. I did the best I could with adjusting the lighting levels for the picture.

I tried to do other angles as well, but they all turned out blurry, so I\'m going to have to invest in a tripod to steady everything better.

 

[BarstoolProphet]

I\'ve almost finished him, now.

Talion, thank you for the gold formula. I didn\'t use it on this one, for fear of wrecking things I had already done, but will definitely try it on my next piece with gold, to see how it goes.

Naukhel, your advice really helped a lot on the re-paint of the tartan. Thank you, as well.

As you can see, I\'ve some darklining left to do on him, still, though I did get started on it. I just wanted to try out my new tripod, so didn\'t wait to finish the work before taking pictures.

The stone in the gold thing in his hand was my very first attempt at doing a gemstone of any sort, and I think it turned out pretty well.

All of the metallics and browns got a 50/50 water-Flesh Wash coat, and the albino-blue flesh got one at about 15 parts water to 1 part Wash, just to bring out some of the details a little bit more fully.

Now, he just needs a basing, finished darklining, and some good dullcote protection, and then I can start trying to figure out how to post it all as one image instead of multiple separate ones.

 

[BarstoolProphet]

I\'ve posted him for votes, now.
I kept his base very basic, because he\'ll be used in gaming, and decorative bases in games tend to get damaged.
Simple snow and nothing else.

It took some trial and error, but I managed to get multiple angle pictures put into a single image. Apparently I messed up my exposure settings, because front and back look totally different, even though they were taken less than a minute apart.

I\'ll be reading the camera\'s instruction manual very shortly, to see what I did wrong.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/188955

There\'s the link for voting. My very first.

And here\'s the image posted, as well.

 

[Manus]

Not bad at all, I especially like your silvery metals. For the next one you should try to work a bit more depth in to the skin, especially to the face, as that will always be the natural focuspoint of a mini.
Also try to think outside metalcolors on areas looking like metal, you have some large areas with almost the same color, wich can give kind of a \"messy\" look.

Voted

 

[Naukhel]

You might have some better luck with this if you moved it over to the \'Discuss
Submissions\' section, now. If it\'s finished and posted (which it is), then you\'ll get
more people looking at it as a finished piece there.

I have to give credit for effort on the freehand. I\'ve done a few tartans, and
they\'re a bloody pain. Have to agree with Manus about the face, though. He looks
cross-eyed, too. (Madrak, not Manus. Though Manus may be cross-eyed, too
for all I know. )

 

[Manus]

Originally posted by Naukhel
Have to agree with Manus about the face, though. He looks
cross-eyed, too. (Madrak, not Manus. Though Manus may be cross-eyed, too
for all I know. )

well I\'m one of those few people with 9 eyes, so I guess some of them have to cross, but the worst part is that it\'s not always the same ones