gowestover

Nice! I like the NMM and the base. Color combo looks great too.

Hey, I just wanted to log in and reply here and add my two-cents worth. Your photography with the new lightbox looks very nice. I do agree about using a bit darker grey paper, but they do look very nice. It makes me want to get on the stick and make my own light box now. I have some Canson Mitints(sp?) pastel paper that I got at an art supply store several years ago that I've tried for a background, and it works pretty well. The warm grey I used was fairly light too (like your background)so I think I'll switch to a slightly darker background for the next minis I photograph. Here's the most important thing - Are you familiar with Linus Svensson (aka "VikingLodge") here on the boards? He's not active on the forums any longer, but he gave me the best advice for photographing minis that I've gotten so far - the lighting. I haven't posted a ton of minis on CMON, but when I first started, I was really frustrated that the color was off. Linus suggested I Google "CRI True Light" and get some bulbs. Those made all the difference in the world. The bulbs were about $10 each, but well worth it. I still need to get a better camera to improve the resolution of my pix. Anyway, you may or may not have been aware of the CRI True Light bulbs already, but if you weren't, I hope this helps. Your stuff looks good! Keep it up!

Sam, you have grown by leaps and bounds since I first started seeing you post a few years ago. Your work looks great! Keep it up!

This is looking REALLY good, MamaGeek! Love the green gradations. I was never a big fan of this mini before now, and it was painted in blue, I think, in the examples I've previously seen. Your greens make it look great!

Demonelf, I've been off-line for quite awhile here because work has been so crazy, but I just wanted to let you know that since I was last active for any length of time on the boards, you've grown by leaps and bounds! Your NMM is looking fantastic! Not only that, but your color-schemes and contrast of color use look great! Way to go, man!!

Linder is lookin' good! (I'm rather partial to this mini...

I like this - very nice! The whole effect (the figure plus the surrounding) reminds me of Joan of Arc. She was burned at the stake at Rouen. The location where she was executed has a flower garden there now, with a plaque at the spot where the stake was, plus some statues nearby. Your girl isn't being martyred at the moment, but the whole thing is still evocative of "Jehanne the Maid".

GREAT JOB on this mini.

I like it! Nice job!

I like your paint job on this mini. Looks good! You have a very obvious increase in skill from the original version (I think I remember seeing you post pix of when you painted this some years ago...) Those before\after pix are always great - they show where you came from vs. where you are now... Keep up the great work!

Yes, I have to chime in here again. Way back (more than 20 years ago) I started on Heritage minis. Although I still have a soft spot in my heart for them, they weren't the best in terms of sculpting and casting. Stuff like eyes weren't particularly easy. That all changed for the better for me when I bought my first Ral Partha minis, where (Tom Meir, I think) they actually sculpted the eye and lids. It made painting the eyes so much easier. Yes, sculpts like Derek's lend themselves to painting eyes much, much easier. I'm not familiar specifically with the Craftworks\Bette Davis method. I'll have to check it out.

Lookin' great for a speed-paint! Even though it's a speed-paint, the face and uh... EYES!!!! look great!

Love 'em. Love the "Brains" especially.

Nice job, Lyn! All of the detail is good, and you've kept the color scheme very simple, which is nice. The base looks great too. My only critique is that you should try to fix the right eye. The left eye looks great, but it looks like you were having a bit of trouble with right one. There are a lot of painters with tutorials out there on eye painting, and several on this site that are better at it than me, but I'm going to include a couple of simple images I just did in Microsoft Paint that illustrate what I'm talking about. My apologies in advance if this is stuff you already know. There may even be an eye tutorial already posted on the boards. I haven't checked yet. Here goes... You want to make the iris span from the top lid to the bottom, and more of it needs to be covered by the top than the bottom. There needs to be a slight over-lap where it is covered by both lids. Here's the example I'm talking about: Goodeye.bmp Here are a couple of examples of things to avoid: Badeyes.bmp In the first "bad" example, you have the majority of the curve on the bottom edge of the eye, and it just doesn't look right. The second example (although poorly drawn with my limited computer graphics skill) shows the "beady eye" syndrome; you don't want to dot the iris, with white showing all around it. It makes the mini look like he's on amphetamines or something! Mind you - you can make small adjustments to make a mini appear to be looking in a particular direction if you want. Try to nail down correct eyes first, though. These are just the basics. There are folks on here like Fieldarchy, Derek and Jennifer Haley that paint eyes on a higher level than me, for sure. They get in to painting the iris, pupil and sparkle in the eye, and some of their examples blow me away. I haven't tried to get that detailed as of yet, but their examples are inspiring me to step up to the next level. Lyn, I'm only responding like this because it looks like you're coming along very well. These are just constructive tips that I hope you'll find useful and they're not meant to tear you down in any way. Sometimes it's hard through e-mail or chat boards to tell how someone will react. If anyone (Like DEREK or FIELDARCHY...) wants to jump on the bandwagon and add too this, it might be nice...

Angorak, you're kickin butt here!