Painter in progress

[GreenOne]

Hi Y\'all, you ARTist of the tiny scale,

I\'m back to tell you I\'ve been practicing, besides annoying people on the forums

Before getting my hands on more GW minis, I got myself a few cheap ones so I could get some more painting hours done.
Mostly bad sculpts, but good practice anyway.
So here is a little gallery of my first steps on the path to the slayer sword

In the midst of all the great stuff happening here, please take time to comment my lowly, amateur\'s work, and throw in some wisely advices of your own, If you care to.

This is a dollar store horsie. Cheap, but at the right scale at least. My first practice on that layering stuff.

A dollar store mage, the right side of the face was so badely molded, I had to declare he received a fireball in the face during his training!

A WOTC grave hound, my first approach of wounds and gore.

Some MageNight warrior, I wanted to tryout something that kinda-wanna look-like NNM/OSL just for fun. At least his pants came out right.

A WOTC Gnoll archer I dubbed \'Samurai Gnoll\' cause of the colorful armor ( Didn\'t feel like crappy leather and worn metal.) It\'s my latest mini and pretty much we\'re I\'m at now.

Edit: I\'ve decided to bring this one up to the Voting Plank. just to see how it does...

Thanks for looking.

 

[Legacy Account]

The last one is definitely the best and a significant improvement over the others. Some of them look \'dipped\' - you been using heavy ink washes?

They\'re pretty shiny too. A good squirt of Dullcote would help no end.

Last bit of advice is to keep practicing and push the highlighting further - go lighter! You can always bring it back with a glaze or two.

 

[GreenOne]

Thanks^^

I don\'t use much inks cause I don\'t have any, exept flesh and chestnut, what does the \'dipped\' term mean ?

I use the mattest varnish I could find, I think the gloss is created upon taking the picture, the last is not varnished yet, and it does come out a lot better, maybe I put too thick coats of varnish ?

By \'go lighter\', you mean doing more excessive highlights then using a glaze of the base color to tone it down ?

As I said before, comments keep me motivated, to paint more and improve, thus getting better comments that motivate me more.

This is a \'Wheel of continuous improvement\' as is say so often @ work.

I hope I\'m not disturbing anybody with my newbiness, I would want to take courses but I\'m too far from civilisation...

 

[Legacy Account]

That\'s what this place is for!

Dipping is basically dunking/washing a mini in ink or stain. It\'s pretty effective for gaming minis and can help to tie all the parts of a mini together. The first few you did have a very definite brown ink feel to them.

As for varnish, what are you using? Whatever brand it is, make sure it\'s matt, stirred/shaken stupily well and applied in very fine layers.

By \'go lighter\' I meant add another layer or two of successively lighter tones, especially to the most pronounced parts of the figures. If you go too far, you can always go back with a glaze or two.

 

[Stuntylover]

The Gnoll is by far the best looking of your display, I suspect because it is the only one not varnished. Dump the varnish idea until you find one that is truly matt. I see you have some of the rudiments of technique for highlighting and shading but you need to go much deeper and lighter and settle on a basic technique - I recommend layering for beginners. Oh, and forget NMM, even the best find it hard and it rarely looks right.

 

[Wren]

I like the wounds and gore on the grave hound, that\'s really disgusting. The gnoll is definitely the nicest, I think the colours tie together very well.

 

[Legacy Account]

Originally posted by StuntyloverOh, and forget NMM, even the best find it hard and it rarely looks right.

Dunno what all the fuss is about with NMM. It\'s pretty simple and is EXACTLY the same as painting any other part of a mini - get the highlights in the right place and it\'ll look right.

 

[freakinacage]

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
Dunno what all the fuss is about with NMM. It\'s pretty simple and is EXACTLY the same as painting any other part of a mini - get the highlights in the right place and it\'ll look right.

yeah but it has to be smooth as to look good. and knowing where to place the highlights is the tricky part.

 

[james sequeira]

i used to think nmm was impossible for me to do but the more i do it the more it advances

 

[GreenOne]

Geez, can\'t we havea single thread that does not turn in a forum about NNM???

We\'re supposed to talk about ME here

Seriously now, NNM is cool, metallics can be good too ( Though few will admit that.)
I don\'t really have a preference, I would probably do a NNM full plate if it\'s really a focus point, depending on the model, but I may think a worn metallic-metal sword would look better on another model.
There is really no point fighting about it.
To make real metal look good is as much tricky as NNM, and I\'ll have to practice on both anyway, if I want to be a good all around painter someday.