The Mikado and Katisha - Reaper Spring Mini Exchange

[tzor]

The minis come from the Legend of the Five Rings Reaper series, but when I saw the first one I immediately thought of The Mikado from Gilbert and Sullivan\'s Opera The Mikado or the Town of Titipu. After painting The Mikado I went looking for a proper Katisha, \"the Daugher in Law Elect\" to join him in the package.

Votes appreciated. Comments welcome.

I give you. The Mikado and Katisha.

And these are the photos on CMON

4403 Crane Courtier - Katisha

4425 Kakita Crane Clan - Mikado

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[funnymouth]

your gettin robbed tzor - these are neat. i really like your gold glitter idea on the cloak. voted.

 

[Ogrebane]

You need to cover the mini better. Then use a darker wash. You can still see some undercoat. Also the eyes need a dark line underneath so they dont look so surprised.

Did the vote thing.

 

[Infidel Castro]

What paints are being used here?

 

[tzor]

GW and some paints from Michael\'s Craft Store

 

[Infidel Castro]

I\'d firstly say try and stick to the GW. Some of the paint on the pieces seems chalky or low in quality. Brands like GW and Vallejo are simply the best available (along with Coat d\'Arms, Miniature Paints (UK) and Reaper, Foundry, etc...) so stick to them and not stuff you can buy cheap or from any old shops. Vewry importantant

 

[Avelorn]

Cool idea with the gold glitter. One thing you could try is using a black primer, my friends miniatures often had the white primer showing through. His miniatures came out a great deal neater when he used black. Try to get opaque colours first before highlighting and adding washes.

I think the eyes might hurt your scores a bit. You might try a different approach, as I\'ve suggested earlier. Not sure if it helps you anything but here\'s a scheme:

I find them easier to correct when I do them like this.

 

[tzor]

I did expect the Mikado to get a low score. I painted him before I learned of the good eye technique. Katisha\'s \"bum\" eye seems to be visible from only one angle, and actually seems to be a lack of a little more flesh paint on the lower eyelid. (Unfortunately, she\'s now in the hands of another so I can\'t correct that.)

The chauky problems on the Mikado is actually the GW paint. (So perhaps tenticle pink is not the right highlight color for warlock purple after all.) Katisha\'s blue is the deco art metalic blue, which aside for the fact that metal paints in general don\'t thin well (so I don\'t thin then), and that I probably needed some more fine tuning of the headpiece went on exceptionally well and has gotten good comments on the reper board.

Personally I still think that scoring on minis under 5 is completely bizzare. I have a number of minis that are scored in the mid 4\'s that are, compared to Katisha, simply ka ka, but they are never the less ranked high above her.

Meanwhile I have decided to give up completely on my quest. I am resigned to be the guy whose best mini on CMON is a set of furnature. (And bar furnature at that.) I\'ll probably have the T shirt ready for Gen Con.

 

[doomsayer]

Don\'t give up, develop your skills a little more, if you are not confident about your work, buy the reaper kits on how to paint, or GW has some painting tutorials as well, and there are literally hundreds of websites that can teach you how to paint minis. Keep working at it and developing your techniques, your scores will start jumping if you do.

 

[Infidel Castro]

Who needs quests? Painting is painting! It\'s fun (most of the time) and relaxing. Treat it for what it is. And maybe, as a suggestion, stop what you\'ve doing paint-wise and go for some extreme contrast/highlights. What I mean is lose all subtlety with thinning paints and all that. Instead, lump the paint on almost neat when you highlight to see what kind of effect you are looking for in the first place. Then scale it back on the next mini or the one after, or when you feel you know where the paint is going. I don\'t doubt that the theory is in place (you\'re a clever bloke fer feck\'s sake!) but sometimes the practice can be far removed from what we know. Lump it on, have a laugh and see where you end up. and the suggestiion for a black undercoat is sound if you aren\'t thinning your paints, so give it a whirl. You\'ve got ready made blacklining in place then if you treat your basecoat(s) with respect.

 

[johnboyjjb]

Look on the CMON map and hook up with somebody in NY that is good. See what they do right and try to emulate that. We all have a lot of little tricks we don\'t even realize are tricks. We think everybody does them that way.