Hey pez...I second what meg said. You have a nicely painted couple of models here. If you are just going for best painted army in a tournament or something, you have a pretty darn good chance of winning! Now if you want to take the next step and go on to more display type models, first be prepared to spend a lot more time on each model. As you get better with your blending technique, you will find that you get a lot quicker and can have a model done in 15 to 30 hours but at first it could easily be 50 to 100 hours per model. Work on those blends. Find yourself a nice model with a big ol cape or some large surface that will allow you to practice and just start laying glazes down. Watch how the pigment lays down, and at what dilution. (also, the dilution of the paint will vary for each effect you are trying to creat. A blended area will be far more diluted than say an area of freehand or if your doing the final line type highlight on something. That will have barely any extra water at all.) You will also find that if you work the paint in a little, it will lay down more evenly. What I mean is dont just do one brush stroke and let it dry. I usually put the paint on, and then lick off my brush or clean it real quick and then kind of massage the paint in to the area I\'m blending. You will also benefit from learning how to push and pull the pigment. If you put some thinned down paint (20% paint to 80% water) onto a flat surface. Practice pushing it around with the flat edge of your brush. Also practice using different amounts of pressure on your brush as you paint. You can actually facilitate a nice blend just by easing up on the brush pressure. (the more pressure you have on the brush, the less pigment it allows out..as you put the brush ease up on the pressure and it will deposit more pigment. Again, its a touch thing but once you master it, it comes in very handy. I am working on a blending step by step thingy and I will pm ya when I have it done. Hopefully it will help.
As for the nnm, it looks nice for army type painting. If you want to take it up a few levels, I would suggest looking for ideas in the gallery her on cmon. The trick to good nnm is a very fast dark to light transition. thats what makes it look so shiny. You also need good smooth blends to pull it off. Practice that blending!!! In the end, you are on the right track. Your color selection is very good (I love the skin) All you have to work on now is technique! You should also try to go to conventions if you can...I know Kubla Con is coming up. Seeing other peoples work up close is a great way to get motivated...see where you need to go and what you need to do to get there! Anyways, keep doing what your doing, your on the right track fo sho! I\'ll be watching for updates...I\'d like to see these guys with finished bases!!
a-dizzle
The shadows in the photo make it look a bit patchy and weird though, unless you have a good peer at it. Better photos would help. Only things I could recommend are upping the contrast on the NMM arm-guards and redefining some of the bandages.
