Ferox

Great work. The cloak's outstanding, the detail is crisp, and the face is expressive.

Finished up the Carnivean and started assembling the Striders. I need to have 15pts painted for next Sunday if I want to sign up for the ladder at my FNGS*. ------ * Friendly Nearby Gaming Store -- it's not quite local, but not too hard to get to.

One bookshelf, getting crowded and not all that well-lit. Unsatisfactory; needs to change.

And, finally, the big guy's done. This is the biggest model I've painted so far, and probably the one I've spent the most time on -- total and per unit area. It's the centrepiece of my (admittedly very small) Legion of Everblight army, and I pushed myself to make it as good as possible. I think I succeeded. WIP thread can be found here. Thanks to Ghool for advice and feedback on shading down from a highlight. C&C appreciated.

And based: The base, I'm sure you'll all be shocked to discover, is two layers of cork supplemented with Milliput. I basecoated it in Khaki Shadow, did the rocks and random splotches with khaki shadow mixed with some random blue-purple nonsense I had on my wet palette, shaded with Nightshade Purple, drybrushed with a mix of Terran Khaki and Khaki Highlight, and finally highlighted with Ghost White. The ring at the bottom that's only halfway in the frame is done with three coats of Vallejo Gloss Black, which is awesome for bases and for which I haven't found a use anywhere else. So absent anyone pointing out flaws here, the next stop is arc markings and the Show Off forum!

I don't worry about it. Painting is something I do for fun. If I'm not fired up about painting, I don't paint -- I do something else instead. Eventually I find myself flipping through my tutorials links and ogling the Show Off section and I start to want to paint again. It's okay to not want to paint for a while, especially when something frustrating happens like Anirion's trip to the brush cleaner. It sure beats training yourself to think of painting as a chore.

Excellent -- that's what Explosion of Spines is for. Anyway, little by little I've managed to finish the paint on this guy. And get some reasonably lifelike photos out of my camera, though my lighting setup is still inadequate to the task. I first shaded the carapace with Red Liner, getting all the little grooves and creases and notches. Next, I went back in with Blue Liner, but tried to keep to the overall shape of each plate -- the warmer red shadows should be a bit less deep than the cooler blue shadows, so I'm using blue to emphasize the shapes I want to emphasize and red to pick out interesting details that don't otherwise contribute to the lines I'm trying to emphasize. Finally, I darklined around the plates with Brown Liner. The tongue and cheek bits got basecoated in Imperial Purple, shaded with Blue Liner, and highlighted with a mix of Linen White and Red Liner. The teeth and claws got basecoated with Khaki Shadow, washed with Brown Liner, and highlighted up through Linen White. Finally, I glazed the highlights on the skin with some Snow Shadow and the shadows with a bunch of blues and purples -- I just started playing around on my wet palette, didn't really have a plan -- and finally some Brown Liner in the deepest parts. So I think this guy's basically done. Now, on to the base.

Full of win!

Congrats! And here I'm having trouble getting 15 points of Legion of Everblight painted up for next Sunday's WarmaHordes ladder....

That's not an accident. You started painting Anirion in order to improve, and it's obvious from the progression of photos you posted that you did. When you start over again, you'll be starting with better skills than you had two weeks ago, and will probably do better still. Mini painting is repetitive enough at the brush-stroke level that you don't end up with even basecoats or smooth blends across a whole mini by fluke. (Colour selections, maybe, but that can be trained as well.) Now that you know how to paint to that standard of quality, with those paints, you'll be able to do it a second time -- probably better.

Those look great! The black orcs and hellbeasts work really well together; the poses are all quite natural.

Great work all around. You really brightened up the small treasure base since it appeared in WIP -- looks good, nicely balanced.

I picked up a box of daemonettes mostly to convert myself a Forsaken, as I'm deeply unimpressed with the PP figure. But somewhere deep in the throes of finishing my thesis I decided to build one out of the box, and once I'd built it I had to paint it, and I'd just picked up a bottle of Red Liner and some Vallejo Smoke, and... well.... I'm pretty happy with the way the skin came out: I learned a few things about painting skin tones on this one. Also, I really like Vallejo Smoke. Trivia: This is the first model that I've pinned to a cork to paint. I can't say I'm gobsmacked, but I might start to get irritated whilst painting the Legion figs I've based over the weekend. (Also, I learned that I need to pin every damn joint ever, because I thought I could get away with simply gluing these joints -- "Oh, it's just a plastic mini, CA should hold fine" -- and proved myself wrong.) C&C appreciated.

Oooh, nice. How'd you do the greys on the cloak?

Great job! The teeth and gums really stand out.

I suppose you could shade with a reddish purple like Red Brick, then glaze blue into the deepest shadows.

Could be, yeah. I ended up with some pretty chalky highlights on Argonnite's cloak, and that dates back to when I first started really thinning my paints. My understanding is that it has a lot to do with how the pigment in the paint behaves (although I don't understand much more than that). Thinning with some flow improver and/or matte medium instead of pure water seems to help, as does wiping excess paint off onto a damp paper towel -- a dry towel will pull off too much medium and leave clumps of pigment behind. Glazes should be very thin, as you want most of the underlying paint to show through. More opaque pigments need more thinning, and in general it's better to thin too much than too little. I'd suggest starting with a small part of the model, maybe the back of the cloak at the shoulders, and glazing over the lowest highlights to see what happens. The idea isn't to flood the whole model, but to tint a specific area with a controlled application of very thin paint. As for thinning and consistency, here are a few links to help you out: Blending through translucency How to blend by olliekickflip (I link this so often I should just stick it in my signature) Working with glazes Good luck!

Looks like your highlights are getting a bit chalky, especially on the hood. A light glaze of your basecoat green should help even those out and smooth out the blends. Other than the chalkiness, I like the look of the cloak, and the purple shadows are working nicely. I'm a big fan of thinned paints, but one thing to watch out for is loading your brush too heavily with paint. If you do that with a thin mix, it'll want to gush right out of the bristles and pool everywhere you don't want it on the model. If you don't have a second (dry) brush handy to mop it up, it's tidemarks everywhere and a whole lot of cursing. The key is to take only a little paint, then dab some of it off onto a damp paper towel. I find that this kind of painting is incredibly forgiving of little mistakes, and doesn't take a heck of a lot longer than using thicker paint -- you're spending less time waiting for layers to dry, because your layers are so thin.

Well done, sir. That's a look I haven't seen yet on Skorne, and you nailed it. Got any more Cyclopes in that scheme? I'd love to see a Brute or a Savage in purple lacquered armour.

That mini looks great, sgtoku! Smooth work and good colour contrasts.

Really good stuff, SK. Clean lines, solid contrast -- it's a pleasure to look over the mini and notice something new every time.

Assembled the Warmongers -- I'll probably get 'em based, too. Finishing the Carni, 'mongers, and the Shepherd gets me to 15 points, which is a decent place to start playing actual games. I also picked up a box of daemonettes, which'll combine with the hormagaunts in the bits box to make me an ersatz Forsaken. I'm not a big fan of the studio model. Update: 'mongers are based, and so is the Shepherd.

Thin your paints, take small brushfuls, and wipe most of the paint off the brush onto a damp paper towel. It takes longer to build up highlights and shadows this way, but it gives you more control -- you don't have huge amounts of paint in the brush that'll gush out onto the mini when you touch it -- and any mistakes you make will be the next thing to invisible. I linked to a blending tutorial on the first page that goes over this technique in detail; now that you have some more experience, go back and take a look.

I don't know which 21-27 paints I'd recommend, but I can tell you which paints I've been pleased with and which I wish I'd left on the shelf. I started out by painting generic monster minis for a D&D game that's long since vanished. I got a lot of mileage out of a dark green (Pine Green, I think) and the intense-blackened-walnut brown triad. (If I had to cut that down to a single brown, Blackened Brown's probably the best pick.) I also use Blood Red on pretty much everything red I paint; I like the dark reds triad in general, but if you're doing a lot of layering and glazing it's worth shading with a purple, brown, or green. Green Ochre is an excellent base for pretty much anything yellow or tan, and the Twilight Blue triad is about my favourite set of blues ever. Blue Liner and Brown Liner are essential, not just for lining and shading, but also because they mix together into a gorgeous rich black. I have bottles of Pure White, Pure Black, and Cloudy Grey, but I never use them: I find "true" greys and blacks dull and lifeless compared to what I can mix from blues and browns, and the linen-leather-ghost white triad is much more interesting for top-level highlights.

Sounds good to me. Blackened brown might also work well; you'd have to add more, and would end up with a less saturated purple.