Schnooble's Board Game Painting Projects

[Schnooble]

Long busy week with little time to paint. Did get some time in on Sunday though to mostly finish up the ladies.

At first i was trying to really get the flesh tones right on the arms, but after the third model I realized that i was just wasting my time as when I would put the blood on, all that work gets covered up anyways. But it was good practice anyways. Really makes me appreciate how the others can blend their paints so well. I definitely need to work on that and it will come in time.

So some things I learned while painting this set:
1) I think I perhaps should have highlighted the dresses a bit more. I wanted the dresses to appear grungy and I though adding too much spec highlighting would interfere with that.
2) Painting blood is fun!
3) I wanted to create a blank/blind white eye effect and I think it kinda worked out. Some look better than others. I did this by first painting a bone white eye. Then cover over the eye with a blue wash. Then apply a smaller dab of bone white over that. Thinking about it now it might be cool if I could put in a bright blue pupil in the middle of the eye. I may have to try that on one of them just to see how it looks.
4) I had a hard time trying to recreate the black bruising effect like in the "The Thing" reference photos. I tried applying some dark black/green/blue washes, but obviously that's not the right way to do it. I'll need to research and find a good way to do this.


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That's it for now. I'm going to try basing these ladies this week and then starting on something new for the weekend. I just got my Arcadia Quest : Inferno game in the mail yesterday and I'll probably start on them. The quality of the minis in that game is quite a step above what I've been painting with my other games. Like seriously quite a few steps up. I'm really impressed with them and they should be really fun to paint.

Schnooble.

 

[Schnooble]

Another week goes by and I've done a bunch of painting this time. I've been working on the first batch of Arcadia Quest figures in an attempt to get the base monsters painted so I can get this game to the table.

Here's the set I''m currently painting. 6 Demonesses (two poses), 6 Harpies (two poses), and two Cerberus. I'm still cleaning up their base paint scheme, but for the most part they are almost ready for shading and highlights.

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The Harpy. I realized today that the color that I choose for the bow was a problem as when I started painting the claws on the hands and feet, the color is too similar to the bow. I'll probably darken up the bow and maybe give it a reddish tinge. For the harpy standing on the pillar of rock, I plan on painting that as a black basalt rock and probaly have the base as a pool of lava. Might be a good opportunity to try some of that fancy lighting glow effects on the botom of the mini.

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The Demoness. These models still need some cleanup, but they are progressing ok.

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And lastly the Cerberus. I've only painted the one up for now as I'm not to sure if what I plan on doing will work. The cartoon image is what I want to kind of replicate. As I see it I have two options.
1) Use a dark wash and slowly build up the dark portions of the fur through many, many applications of a wash. Figure this method should yield a nice blend between the two tones.
2) Paint the dark regions with a darker paint (Currently all Mephiston Red, so thinking maybe choose Rhinox Hide for the darker portions?) The use a wash to try to blend the two color together.

Currently I'm leaning towards method 1. But I think it'll take quite a bit longer, but I think it'll look better as the washes allow some transparency and that might look cool.

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And that the update for now.

Schnoob.

 

[Schnooble]

This week I tried to paint the skin of the first 3 of the 6 harpies that I'm painting. Turned out ok, but I'm still not happy with my attempt. Not enough contrast I'm thinking. Just having a hard time actually blending the colors on the model. Practice makes perfect. This week I'll do the next set of 3 Harpies and try watering down the paint more and doing more coats to blend better.

The more interesting thing that I did this weekend was to totally 180 on the harpies wings. I was just going to go with purple wings and add some darker wash or something. Instead I challenged myself to do something better and I was pretty happy with the results.

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This upcoming week will have me finishing up the Harpies, and hopefully getting a start on the Cerebus models.

I'm also painting all of the tokens for the game. Here are my Death tokens. Just need to paint up the bases black and they are ready for play. One interesting note is that when I was painting them black initially, I noticed that as the paint was drying, I could see the glint of a highlight coming from deep in the eye sockets. So that get me wondering, if I brushed on a dot of gloss coat (GW ArdCoat) in the eye, if that would do the same thing. It did! You can see the glint of eyes in some of the sockets depending on how the light hits it.

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[Octavian80]

The wings look pretty damn cool. The skin does need a little work. As you say, thinning your paints a LOT more will definitely help with smoother coats and smoother layers. It would seem to me to be difficult to get a lot of contrast on these chibis; there is just not a lot of contours or musculature. You need to make glazes your bed buddy for these little guys. Which means thinning your paints way more than you feel is necessary. It will take longer to paint up a figure, but if you want it to look good with smooth blends, then glazes is your answer.

 

[Schnooble]

Yeah, I figured thinning down my paints was the route I'd have to take. Never really done anything with a glaze before. I'll check some tutorials and show my results next week. Thanks!

 

[Maenas]

Hello there! another fan from Arcadia here

You are advancing pretty fast! I have mine in the boxes... In fact I am still painting the basic box! LOL

At first glance the inferno miniatures have way lots more of details... they also look a bit more serious than those of the basic game. That textured skin on the harpies looks like a difficult thing... I will have to check it out when doing mine. I agree with @Octavian on that you should thin your paints a bit more. It should give you better control.

On the other hand if you just want them finished for playing ASAP, then you are doing nice. Should you want to "up" the look of your finished miniatures for the game, you could also (a part from the glazes) add some "blacklining" so it will help you define the different areas and gave the miniatures a more comic/manga look.

Have fun!

 

[Guawol]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96mjmqWTPfM

Your work looks really good. For thinning your paints have you tried using a wet palette? I recent switched to using one (still experimenting with it) but I have found it helps greatly with thinning paints as well as keeping the paint on the palette from drying to quickly, actually the paint can last for days in a wet palette. The link above gives a good cheap way of making one if you dont use one already.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing your improvement.

 

[Octavian80]

For some good youtube videos, try Kujo Painting. He has two videos about glazing: "Far Glazing" and "Over Glazing." Vincent Venturella has some great instructional videos on all sorts of things.

 

[Schnooble]

Thanks for all the replies.

Maenas : Played my first game of Arcadia Quest last Friday and even won! It's always nice to win when it's the first game of something you own. Heh. Anyways, I thought I already thinned down my paints quite a bit, but obviously not if you guys can spot that right away. I'll start thinning it down even more.

Guawol : Actually, like you, I to am just starting to use a wet palette. Been using a homemade one for a month or so now. Yes it makes a huge difference in keeping the paint wet. It's great coming back the next day, or later in the week, and the paint is still wet. But it looks like I'm not thinning it down enough. I'm going to work on that this week.

Octavian80 : Awesome movies by the way, Dr. Strange. Even the wife liked it! I checked out some glazing videos today at work, but it wasn't Kujo Painting. I'll check them out tomorrow. I've come down with the mumps or something so I think I'll have some time tomorrow to check it out.

One question before I go to bed. When I was watching the vidoes on glazing today, one of the guys used lamian medium and the others lots of water. Personal preference or is there an actual difference? I have lamian medium and I've used it, but I'm too newbish to really tell if there's a difference or not.

 

[Schnooble]

Finished up all the Harpies and Demoness's. So my first attempt glazing didn't go so well. Here are some things that I eventually realized I was doing wrong.

1) I would put down a blob of paint and then go about trying to thin it down. It took a while, but eventually I figured out that i was using way to much paint, and hence I needed a lot of water to thin it down. My wet palette ended up looking like a puddle.

2) I'd get the glaze thin enough, but then would apply it like a wash. Way way to much.

So while I like the wings on my harpies, the bodies didn't turn out very well. But certainly good enough for table top standard and they looked quite good on the board when we played a few nights ago. I won again by the way.

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My Set of Demoness turned out better as at this point I realized that you start off with a 'small' dab of paint and add the water to that to make the glaze. This worked out much better. I think I could have maybe made more of a contrast on the skin tones, but it was starting to look a bit 'chalky'. I think I read something about this a while back, but don't remember exactly. I'll have to research this a bit more.

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Next I'll finish up all the tokens, which i won't bother posting here, but i'm also going to start on the Cerebus models as well. I should have some good progress on them next week.

 

[Guawol]

They definitely look good, and even if things didnt come exactly how you wanted, you learned and tried something new which is going to make you improve. I'm also learning how to do glazes and diluted washes myself right now, but luckily I work for a genetics lab so I have access to a lot of 15ml and 50ml tubes. I have been using them to experiment with different dilutions, seeing what works best.

 

[Maenas]

I agree with you, wings look very good!! And the crackled bases suit them perfectly, I like the idea a lot, specially for the "bad" guys of the inferno team. I might even steal your idea xP

I also still have problems with chalkiness, and I keep working on it, sometimes adding a little bit of a glazing medium to the mix or even varnish has helped me. If I don't recall badly it is produced by the paint/water ratio. Too much water for the paint to "absorb" so pigment particles become divided from the binding medium that the paint has and when dry it gives this dusty finish. But the correct thing should be finding the correct ratio of water/paint.

 

[Schnooble]

Thanks Guawol. Yeah, you can only learn by trying until you find something that works.

So I wasn't crazy when I read something about that chalkiness. And your explanation, Maenas makes perfect sense. I'll will keep that in mind. Going to take a while to find that perfect mix.

Expect some dog picture this weekend. I've started doing some washes on them tonight to gradually build up a black striped coat on them. I'm thinking it will work out ok. We'll all see in a few days.

 

[KruleBear]

These are going to look pretty cool massed up on the game board. The harpies and demons turned out great for gaming pieces. You have a good badic understanding of these that would allow you to go up a level fairly easily if you put the time into some additional techniques.

 

[Schnooble]

Thanks Krulebear. Yeah, I'll be using glazing quite a bit more, and advancing once I get a hang of that. Still thinning it out too much I think. Should only get better from this point one would think.

With the harpies and demoness behine me, I was able to work on my pair of cerebus this weekend. Here's where I'm at so far with them.

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The black striping is quite a bit more apparent in real life. Really it is! I may apply a few more layers, but they stand out quite nicely. Not to sure what else to do with these guys to make they look better. Any ideas?

I'll be starting the next set of mini's pretty soon. Pitcher Demons.

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Schnooble

 

[Guawol]

The cerebus looks good to me, the only thing I could think of, and I could be wrong , is a few extreme highlights on the reds, it definitely has the dark and mid tones of red, but seems to be missing the lighter range.

I also like the look of the pitcher demon model. Seems like and interesting model to try OSL on.

 

[Schnooble]

The cerebus looks good to me, the only thing I could think of, and I could be wrong , is a few extreme highlights on the reds, it definitely has the dark and mid tones of red, but seems to be missing the lighter range.

I also like the look of the pitcher demon model. Seems like and interesting model to try OSL on.

Yup, some highlights were called for I think. Spent the night doing just that and I think it really upped the look of the doggies.

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I think it might need just a bit more blending on some of the highlights and then seal them matte to get rid of the shine from the dark wash I used, but other than that I think they are ready for Friday's game.

Do you think anything should be done with the eyes? I was thinking maybe putting a reddish glaze on them, but then I thought it was cool that they kinda stand out. Any ideas?

Schnooble.

 

[Maenas]

Nice improvement! ^^ I like what you have done on top of their nose also.
For the eyes I would do what you said, but just on the corners of the eye, will look more natural for sure. Shame on me, mine is still on the box. hahaha

 

[Guawol]

The cerebus look much better, the stripes on their back really stand out now!

 

[Schnooble]

@Maenas: I did the yellow a bit and much better. I have them done, but havn't taken a picture since my last ones. I'll get one up as soon as I get the chance.

@ Guawol : Thanks! The cerebus was a fun project. I think I like the bigger mini's better as they are easier to paint.

I havn't done to much lately, but did get a start on base coating my Pitcher Demons. I just need to paint the trim on it's pant/thong thing, and the eyes. This week I'll start my 3rd attempt glazing. And of course the OSL with the fireball. I decided to go green as I thought it would stand out better than regular fire color on this red demon.

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