Al Capwn

Yep! Now the exceptions to the "before painting" rule are foliage-like things; static grass, tufts, flocking, etc. All of those I would apply after painting. There are also some good pre-mixed basing materials that you don't have to paint, such as the "Battle Ready" stuff from Luke's APS which combine pieces of ballast/flocking material/saw dust, etc. in a particular theme. However, I have found anything sandy, gritty or rocky generally works better if you base it, prime it and then paint it. Materials that work great for bases are piece of Pine bark (replicates shale rock really well), cork (works for larger boulders and rocks), and super glue + baking soda gives a very fine texture for sand/snow to scale. Actual sand will seem somewhat large by comparison, almost the size of river rock at miniature scale.

Thankfully that is a pretty easy touch up job! I have experienced the same problem with spots where the wash did not apply at all and leaves a dry spot. Something to consider for basing; apply the glue and texture and then apply a primer over it. Sand, and quite frankly most other natural materials will stick out. Applying a coat of primer and then dry brushing over it helps heaps in cleverly disguising it. Great exercise and love the colors!

Thank you - and certainly! For the shadows of the skin I started mixed a deep purple-red on my pallet, close to Reaper's Burgundy Wine. I used Ultramarine Blue, Quinacridone Magenta, and maybe a touch of Titanium White. The midtone was Raw Sienna (Yellow Ochre). The highlight I mixed was Raw Sienna (Yellow Ochre), Cadmium Yellow, and Titanium White. The resulted in somewhat of a pale-tanned skin color. Afterwards once that was dry, I thinned down some Quinacridone Magenta and applied a glaze over the top to give it more pinkish warmth. I essentially blocked in the sections where I wanted shadow/midtone/highlights, and then took a small dry brush and gently stippled the borders there those colors meet to get them to make a gradient.

Yep, all done with oil paints (Winsor and Newton and Williamsburg brands to be specific). The bits of flagstone are made out of Sculpey clay (Gray, Firm) with the Greenstuff World 'Temple' texture roller applied. I then simply broke some pieces from the sheet of sculpey and applied them to the base. They gray sculpey tends to stick less into the rollers compared to green stuff or the softer white sculpey.

This miniature will be roughly my third or fourth venture into the realm of oil paints. Everything, with exception to the metallics, eyeballs, and some skin highlights were done in oils. This is also my first attempt in basing in the style of James Wappel (wappellious) using Green Stuff World texture rollers, sculpey, and Vallejo texture paste. No black paint was used in this exercise. I still can't take great photographs, but eventually I will get there! WIP Shots:

I have heard good things about Scale75 and ProAcryl metallics, but my personal go-to so far has been Vallejo Metal Color. Extremely finely ground (no sparkle effect), and very good coverage over either a black or white base. The downside is while the silver ranges are extensive, the Copper/Golds are limited. The Gold is a Green-Gold vs. your atypical fantasy Orange-Gold. A drop of Orange ink can correct that.

So it has been a while since I updated this, so let's cover where we are at today: Biters All 15 Biter aliens are now complete. Naga (Alien Boss) Searsting (Alien Boss)

Lovely stuff as usual, Aku-Chan! ...but I want to buy you a bottle of AK Interactive Ultra Matte varnish.

Following up from Remus Raducan, I wanted to branch out with another miniature with oil paints. I pulled this guy out of a drawer as he was a project piece from a previous ReaperCon class with Brice Cocanour. The class was on blending, and I thought that better way to practice further than on the long-flowing robes of this wizard. Here he is after 30 or so minutes of playing around with oils... Once again, oils are proving themselves invaluable for their ability to blend into one another seamlessly, rivaling airbrush in terms of smoothness of transitions, and in some ways superior. The beard and book pages were given an oil wash of Burnt Umber + Raw Umber. The hat was Ultramarine Blue / Quinacridone Magenta + White. I found myself essentially two-brush-blending, using a wet brush to block in the colors in the zones, letting the oils setup for a couple minutes, and then "scumbing" the mid tone together.

At this point, the old portion of the mini is just really a fancy armature. Super cool work! I can't sculpt a rock either, so this is always fascinating to see.

From the Forum Rules, pinned at the top of this forum: Acceptable ContentRemember, this is a family forum and to keep it such, please think about what you post. If your mini/sketch/picture has nudity please do not post the picture, instead provide a link to the picture and plenty of warning to the viewer. We will remove your images if you fail to comply with this. Additionally, censoring your images with black out strips (or any other option, such as Spoiler Tags) isn't allowed, they must be linked. --- While I am not in the least offended by nipple-less Dryad tatas, these are the rules that were put in place. Part of being in a community, and civilized society in general, is respectfully abiding by standards set forth, even if you personally do not agree with them. You can of course petition Reaper to readdress this stance, but at the end of the day it is what it is, as it stands today. It is obviously your choice if you want to comply or simply not post, but I don't feel Reaper is asking too much. The request to link is a reasonable compromise of presenting art while attempting to appease the more prudish (or those with youngins) among our ranks. There are multiple options for image sharing/linking today, including but not limited to Instagram, Google Photos, Imgur, etc.

Today I tackled the first block of 5, of a total of 15 Shooter aliens. Similar process as the Runners, but went with a slightly more yellow/orange tone for the skin, using Kislev Flesh as the base tone plus a bit of White and Warm Yellow ink. I added a bit of Contrast Flesh Tearers Red into some Reikland Fleshshade mix for the face. Highlighted the teeth the same as the Runners, dotted the eyes with some Titanium White, and glazed over them with some Flame Red ink to push for a glowing effect.

So the studio paint job pulled off a clever trick... Look at the color of the skin, and compare it to the gems and shoulder pauldrons. The skin really isn't as blue as we might think...it falls under a very highly tinted and desaturated Cyan with a Green-leaning bias. This allows for adding in true cool blue elements, such as the lips, shadow tones, and armor bits. Here is a color picker on the highlight section of her skin. ...and here is a color picker on a shadowed skin section... Now obviously you don't have to direct-copy the studio art, but I just wanted to point out the subtle trick of "colors in context" - the skin isn't really as blue as we would think. Just something to think about as you experiment around!

Wow, you did awesome for coming back from 12 years - exceptionally well done! In regards to #1, as others have mentioned, the default bones material is very soft, so it takes careful slicing. Abrading the surface tends to just kinda gum up if anything. Can sand metal and resin, but the bones stuff is just a wee bit too soft for that. In regards to #2, Reaper has some great minis and some great paints, but I have found their brighter skin tones (Fair, and even Rosy to a limited extent) problematic in the chalky texture department. I actually hate to say it, but of all the paints I have tried or own, GW is probably my suggestion when it comes to generic Caucasian skin tones. I have been using FW Daler Rowney inks a lot lately, and that has been a key addition to getting smooth skin tones that don't chalk up. You may want to consider adding some White Ink into your tool kit. In my experience, it is the smoothest White I have used, so it is very useful to highlight colors, and it is naturally thinner consistency, so you don't really have to think about thinning it. A really great deep skin shadow color is Reaper Burgundy Wine. In regards to #3, Looks like the brush you got just is a bit of a dud - which typically does happen in a lot of starter kits. You can try leaving a bit of the Masters soap in the bristles of the brush and form the tip, and that will help it hold its shape a bit. That being said, I would suggest picking up a good quality sable brush in either a size 2 or size 1. There are a few great brands out there and I think all the big players have been mentioned already. I like DaVinci Maestro's smaller size and snap for fine detail work, like edge highlighting in narrow/cramped spaces. However, because the belly on them is a little small, they tend to dry out faster. Raphael 8404 is another popular one, and they tend to have a much bigger belly to them. They can hold more moisture, but they are a little softer (less snappy). W&N Series 7 is probably my new favorite, as it tends to have a balance between DaVinci and Raphael; larger belly than the DaVinci, but has more snap than the Raphael. I have not personally used them, but I have heard great things about Rosemary and Co as well. These brands are all great, and quite honestly, you will likely only notice the differences after painting for a while and if you switch brushes. My personal suggestion would be to start with a W&N Series 7 in size 2 and then if you don't like it, you now have an idea as to what other brush/brand might better suit you. Oh, one final note on brushes - get cheap synthetic brushes for base coat work and save your nice sable brush(s) for the details. This will give your nice sable brushes an even longer lifespan to them. You can snag a cheap pack of #8 craft brushes from Hobby Lobby (the James Wappel brush) or Wal-Mart and use those to block in colors. Welcome back to the hobby, and a great start back into it!

So CMON came out with an updated version of Project: Elite, a game that has been lauded as a super fun real time game. Thankfully, the contents of the game are a bit smaller than Zombicide: Invader, and the gameplay is a little bit more fun if I am being totally honest. Additionally, the scale of the miniatures are slightly larger, so instead of being around 25mm, they are closer to the 28-32mm heroic scale. Now that being said, this is a real time game. Which means that the miniatures will be handled a lot, and sometimes roughly. As much as I would like to slave over some of these, I am trying (key word here, trying) to keep the time investment shorter on this one. The chances of a paint job getting dinged up are just greater than some more casually-paced game. All figures receive a generous coat of varnish to help protect them as much as reasonably possible. Here are some shots of the work so far... Gustav (The 'Ahnold' clone.) Pretty pleased with how his face turned out, probably one of the better ones I have done if I am being completely honest. This sculpt of the face was pretty clean and well-detailed, so painting it was really straight-forward. Sandra (Totally not Jennifer Anniston) This sculpt's face was a little wonky, specifically the lip area, which made getting her expression looking correct difficult. Additionally, I had accidentally ripped up a layer while using ScaleColor's skin tone paints, leaving some additional texture that I did not want. Still some areas to tidy up. Gunter Used a combination of inks, Contrast paints, and regular ol' paint here. Skintone was actually done using ScaleColor's flesh tones, which I find tend to work pretty well for African skin tones. Shading on the shoulder pauldrons was done using purple, which gives a lovely and natural looking effect. This mini's color scheme though is totally all over the map, and the reds and greens are a little "Christmas" like. Not a huge deal, just not my favorite color choices here. The Runners The runners have been my speed-paint job so far. They have lots of texture that a wash hooks into easily enough. They were given the typical zenithal priming treatment, but using a fairly bright pink color as their top highlight (this would be close to Rosy Skin Highlight in Reaper colors) and Reaper Burgundy Wine was used along their spine. They were given a coat or two of GW Reikland Fleshshade, and finally their lips/gums were highlighted with some Kimera Magenta + Burgundy Wine, and teeth with some Vallejo Flat Yellow + FW White Ink.

This one was a fun one to paint up, and I tried a couple of new things on this guy. The first was using oil paints - which was done for the fabric, hair, and initially the skin tone. The other was trying out a polished marble effect. Overall, I think it turned out pretty well for the first try. My photo booth is coming in on Wednesday, so hopefully that will help preventing overexposure a bit.

I was sorely tempted to pick up that Kaldstrom box myself, but I don't know if I would actually get around to playing it. Let me know what you think of the new game rules and if it truly is more beginner-friendly to get started in. A lot of the Infinity terminology makes my head spin a bit. I spy an Aquila Guard in your haul - look forward to seeing how yours turns out (I really love that model and pose), as well as all of these bases!

It seems that lately the craze has been oil paints. Between James Wappel, Marco Frisoni, Vince Venturella and a few others - I figured I would take the dive into the world of oil paints. For science! Or...art? Science art? Anyways, I ordered the Traditional Colors set of oil paints from Williamsburg as I read that Williamsburg produces a high quality paint at a good price. The Modern Colors set is another good option, as it does not contain the more fugitive (i.e. not lightfast) Alizerin Crimson. The set is fairly small (cup of tea shown for reference), with 8x 11ML color paints and 1 full-size 37ML Titanium White tube. However, since we work with so little paint on miniatures anyways, this set should last a good while before having to get any replacements - plus the fact that oils do not dry like acrylics, they last a lot longer on the palette, giving more millage. Kit is small, but comes with a solid staple of colors - featuring super vibrant Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow. One of the more intense/opaque yellows I have used. Using a piece of plasticard as a makeshift pallete to mix up midtones. I mostly worked in extremes, blending the dark and lights together on the mini itself. In preparation here is what I did: Cleaned the model with soap and water. Applied primer in a zenithal manner (black first, then white from above). Basecoated the areas in a general color with some acrylics to establish a general idea: Cloak got a coat of Purple Lake ink Face with GW Bugman's Glow Ruffles of his clothing with some Badger Ghost Tint Plasma Fluid Hair with Contrast Snakebite Leather. Fur with Contrast Snakebite Leather + Contrast Wyldwood. So the face, hair, fur, cloak, tiny shoulder-shield and skull-pauldron all were done in oil paints - leaving the metallics and ruffles alone for acrylics. I have since highlighted the face a little bit more with acrylics as well to bring up the contrast, as well as applying another wash into the fur and drybrushing a bit. So what are the results so far? Mixed, but mostly good! The first thing to note is if you enjoy wet-blending but struggle with acrylics drying on you, oils are for you. I have always wanted to wetblend but the dry climate along with the general way that acrylics behave, cause them to be temperamental at best or a disaster at worst. Getting smooth transitions of color in a gradient is so incredibly satisfying with oils. This was my very first attempt with oils and I was able to obtain a fairly pleasing (in my opinion) blend of colors with minimal effort. This is especially true for beginners who may struggle to get those silky-smooth blends and be frustrated. For long, flowing capes and robes - oils are great. The extended drying times means you can work in a very relaxed manner, rather than trying to hurry up. Also, lifting previous layers of paint is very difficult to do during a normal painting session. Either it is wet, or not. Another advantage is because oils are wet for so long, you can easily wipe them off and hit the reset button on anything you don't like without having to panic and dry to quickly erase mistakes. Oils will also blend into each other and "overwrite" each other as well to a certain degree, so you can basically smudge out any errant bits. This aspect actually gives them some beginner-friendly qualities to them, in a surprising manner. So what are some downsides or "gotchas". Well, the first is that right out of the tube they are very thick - similar to Heavy Body Acrylics. They have to be thinned down. It can be easy for the paint to be too think or to apply too much and start obscuring detail. This was somewhat of a challenge in the facial area as the eye area quickly began to fill up too much with paint. So making sure to not over-apply paint is a thing. Oils also have certain "rules" to them as well. The first is that thin paint will stick to thick paint, but not the other way around. So your basecoats can be thicker, and if you want a color to "lay on top" and not just smudge in immediately, or not apply at all, it must be thinner. The other issue is that they can tend to blend TOO well at times, which is where that whole thick/thin rule can bite you. Instead of the usual ability to just draw a sharp line, the previous layer will naturally tend to blend into the paint if it is too wet. There are also "two phases" of the drying process; with the first phase allowing to blend while still maintaining separation of the individual colors. The second phase is when the paint is truly dry - this usually is 1-3 days, depending on the amount or color of the paint. If you aren't patient or require something finished within a single day, oil paints are likely going to be too slow. Oil paints are both good and bad for your brushes; oils help naturally restore them, but they also require white spirits to clean, which can be a bit more abrasive. For this reason, using synthetics for your general applications and perhaps a worn-out sable brush for your dry blending brush is your best option. Finally, if you are a brush licker - you won't be with oil paints. The pigments used can be toxic, such as the cadmiums, so they are not pet or human friendly to consume.

A bit more work done on Eightball...

June 23rd Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated! I have been busy with work and other projects. Here is Norton after a bit more work:

So this is my first "chibi" like model, and something larger than the usual 28-32mm fare. I found it on Thingiverse, and thought why not. The front of her tabard failed to print, which is unfortunate, but I figured I would soldier on. I started blocking in a few tones, and working on blending the skin... ...then blocked in some of the gold trim and worked in some more yellow and brown into the hair, refined the eyes and an hour later here we are... For the skin I used a combination of Kimera Kolors Yellow Oxide & Red Oxide, and Daler Rowney White Ink & Black Ink. The addition of the ink, as well as a bit of satin medium, has helped the skin from becoming chalky. I suspect that the chalkiness has to do with the matte finish that some paints have. I suspect that the matting agent ALSO adds a bit of coarse "grit" into finish, which can develop into texture later on as more is applied and subsequent paint catches onto it. Applying a matte finish as a sealer might be the way to go, rather than working with inherently matte paints for lighter tones such as skintones/whites, but this is just a theory.

Continuing with my trend and WIPs of Kickstarter extras was Norton. I decided to capture a few more inbetween steps for painting the face this time around. I wanted to see if the first time was a fluke or not, so here goes another attempt... First was the usual zenithal priming... Next was applying purple lake to the edges of the skin, process yellow to the forehead, flame red to the middle, and a bit of blue - though this last part is seemed really unnecessary since he has a big bushy beard. I then took my Kislev Flesh Ink... ...and began to glaze it over most of the face. This left some of the yellow and red undercoat to still show up a bit... ...and after a bit of blending, some additional highlighting, and adding in some other colors, this is the result. Total time spent on the face was probably 20-30 minutes. Technically, the tip of the nose I over highlighted and it should still be somewhat ruddy. A simple glaze can correct that later.

I love how this particular model had so many creative versions. The DaVinci, the galaxy, and now circuit board. Very cool and great execution! I am amazed at all the freehand traces...incredible work.

Very nicely done - good contrasting tones and visually interesting!

Thanks! Actually surprisingly the primer is fine, just a bit more speckling of the white ink from the airbrush since I used the dirty 105 as opposed to the SOTAR for the application of the ink.