Ferox

Me too! Getting highlights on hair to look natural seems to be a rare skill in this hobby, and you nailed it. As for freehand on the shield: Start with some very thin paint, with just barely enough pigment to see what you've painted. Your first layer should be very unobtrusive. Keep refining the shape with very thin paint until you like what you see, then fill it in with something a bit more visible. From there it should be easy to clean up the edges. Also, I think your photos would come out better if you cropped them a bit -- as it is, the minis look a bit small and lost.

Cut off the base or slot, drill a pinhole into the leg, glue in a long-ish pin (maybe 3-4cm), then poke the pin into the top of a cork and secure with a dot of superglue. I've glued fender washers onto the bases of the corks, which makes them hard to knock over when I set them down on my workbench and rests against my left palm while I paint the figure. Being able to get at the figure from underneath without a base in the way is one of those never-go-back experiences.

I dig it. I see what you mean about the pink tone on the metallics, but I think it works. You could glaze something like brown liner into the shadows to reinforce the grimy, well-used look and take away from the overall "pink" tone if it's bothering you. I love the look on his face -- and the beer mug.

Very sorry to hear about Zoe. I've been there too; it hurts. Glad you can talk about it to help yourself cope. As for another dog: You're not just being selfish. There are a lot of shelter dogs who'll never find a home. Adopt one, and you get a loving pup, but the dog gets a loving family for the rest of its life.

I agree. Again, these were quickies on my part so the color choices weren't my main priority, I'm afraid. That was meant as critique, not criticism. As quickies, these are outstanding.

Great job!

Woot!

I agree about the patches, I should have lightened up with them but I was trying to make them look rather poor for my D&D campaign I guess I overdid it a bit. I dunno... if anything, the patches have too much contrast with the base cloth colour, especially on the mother-with-kids. That one's a bit jarring: the blues and greens are bright and vibrant, and don't look like clothes that have been worn and used enough to merit patching. The patches are more effective on the sweeping woman, where they're closer to the muted colours of her clothing. I think they'd work a lot better if they stood out a little less.

Might that be Blue Liner on the hair? I <3 blue liner. That's looking pretty great right there. What's the base skin tone?

Nice work -- the metals and the face are very well done, and all the details are nice and crisp. I agree that the cloak and tabard look a bit flat, but I don't think they should get much more highlighting -- maybe another layer at the most. The cloth's job is basically to serve as a backdrop to the pouches and buckles and scrolls and books and stuff, most of which are high-value. I'd go with deeper shadows on the cloth, and maybe a very controlled wash on the red-brown trim for the cloak and scroll pouch to bring out the detail. Also, nice work on putting green and red right next to each other and not making it look like Christmas.

Thanks folks! Jen: Yeah, the coat isn't my best work. I probably should have tried two-brush blending with a thicker (more matte medium, not more pigment) mix of paints, but it was one of the last things I did and I was eager to get it done. Fortunately it's not too noticeable in hand.

So the other day I picked up a Citadel Finecast model, mostly to see what the fuss was all about but also as something I might enter in a local painting contest. Unfortunately, there are a few blazingly obvious mould slip lines, and the tip of the staff broke off from the rest (in all honesty, I'd probably have sawn it off and pinned it regardless). Now, my understanding is that (a) resin dust is a pretty serious long-term health hazard, in that it's light enough to get up into your lungs as you breathe, but (b) Finecast models are a combination of resin and plastic (styrene?), the dust of which is heavier than pure resin dust and not so dangerous. Does anyone know if I should worry about Finecast dust? If not I'll play it safe and wet-sand everything. Also, you folks have any advice on things to look out for when cutting, sanding, filing, and drilling these models, I'd very much appreciate the opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes before making too many of my own.

That's some serious progress. Great job on the new figures (although I like the expression on the older Sweeping Woman too). The patches are a great touch, but they look a little bit out of place, like they're floating. I think they'd benefit from some thin highlights and shadows to define the shape of the patches and threads, like the battle-damage in this step-by-step. I've been playing around with this kind of painted-on shape for a little while now, and while I haven't gotten it down to a science yet it doesn't take a lot of extra time. Nice work!

Outstanding info, Laszlo. Thanks a bunch!

This is the fourth PC mini in my Yet Another D&D Party (previously here, here, and here). The figure is perfect for the character, but damned if it isn't a tiny little fiddly critter to get blends on. Hence, the metallics kind of suck. Not really sure what went wrong there; I did them the same way as on Goldar, but obviously less surface area makes it harder to work in smooth blends. Maybe two-brush blending would be easier than layering in tight quarters? I'm pleased with the contrast I was able to establish on the face, and in general with the tones I got out of all of the leather and cloth. The hair is okay -- better than most of what I've done, but not as good as Seoni's. The freehanded symbol of the Raven Queen on the back fits with what the player wanted; if I was doing this entirely for myself I'm not sure whether I would emphasize it more or not. The left hand needs some cleanup. One thing I noticed while working on this guy is that I'm a lot more confident in my brush control than I used to be. I ended up repainting a lot of the cloth and straps several times, working around areas that I'd already finished, and didn't feel particularly nervous about it. (I didn't screw up all that often, either. ) No WIP this time. C&C appreciated.

Thanks, folks. I've been using the Vallejo inks for a little while, and I'm having a lot of fun with them. They seem to fit somewhere between RMS clears and RMS liners in my arsenal. I've been mixing them with more matte medium than usual, but a lot of that is just an attempt to cut down on the shininess. While this thread's up: any suggestions on how to use inks?

Is this a mechanical thing, or is there more to it? I often have more trouble painting the second eye, largely because I have to worry about it focusing on the same spot as the first.

I like the cloak on Nightslip and the vials on Juliet. Good job all around, but that's what stands out to me. One thing I've read about painting white is that white surfaces are defined by their shadows, since almost by definition the non-shadowed parts will be reflecting everything. I think your issue with the whites on Nightslip is that you started with a light grey to highlight up to white, rather than starting with white and adding in big deep shadows. Have a look at Ghool's tutorial for a better, more detailed explanation.

Nice job!

Thanks folks! Jabberwocky: I'm not really keen on static grass for the base, but I might do something with snow. Marsya: Maybe it's the pics, but the leather and brass are pretty warm in-hand. The fur and cloak aren't far off, either. I was trying to emphasize the skin by keeping it cool relative to the rest of the figure... but then I tried a lot of things on this guy.

Up in Show Off.

This is the third PC model I'm painting for Yet Another D&D Campaign (the first two were Nayl/Zith and Seoni/Shawna). Goldar here represents Kaveki, our Goliath Barbarian. I think I did a pretty good job. This is the first time I've really made a from-zero effort to portray texture in leather. I'm really pleased with how it came across on both the armour and the straps. I'm also pretty happy with the cloth, although it's been glazed often enough that the texture on the highlights is pretty subtle. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the base. Eventually I just decided to wing it and let the cork work its magic, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I did it up in the khaki triad, shaded it kind of harshly with nightshade purple, and finally glazed random bits with some really thin Vallejo sepia ink. Perfect result for a rugged warrior from a mountain clan. I did some glazes on the skin as well, and while I'm pretty happy with how they turned out I think there's plenty of room for improvement. The markings are... serviceable, I guess. They don't really detract from the miniature, but they don't add anything either. He does in fact have eyes -- which I went over at the end with gloss varnish, so they're even eye-like -- but you wouldn't know it from the photos. WIP thread here. C&C very much appreciated.

Don't feel like you've screwed up if you have to retouch an area. It happens to everyone; better to get the confidence that you can do it and move on. Mini painting, like most things, isn't about not making mistakes: it's about making mistakes and correcting them before they get out of hand. Besides, painting in small, constricted areas will help you improve your brush control, and brush control is vital to just about everything. Yeah, seriously, brown is just a dark dull orange. Or a dark dull yellow. What you have on the tabard is more like a dark bright orange. I'd call it brownish, depending on the context, and I've used RMS Intense Brown -- which isn't too far off -- as a base for leather quite a bit. If you want to dull it down, you can take a bit of blue and mix it in, then go over the tabard again. If you don't have blue, black will probably work reasonably well, but you'll want less of it. You probably need better brush control and a brush that holds a sharper tip. For the brush, you probably want a Kolinsky sable -- and in this case, bigger might be better: the tip will be just as sharp, but the belly will keep the paint fluid for longer, so it'll flow better. For the brush control... well, that's one place where everyone needs more practice. You might find it easier to paint accents like the one on the blade by slopping gold over the whole thing, overshooting a bit, and then coming back in with silver to clean up the edges from the other side. Keep the GW brush for mixing paints and applying things like glue and varnish. Kudos on the attempt. Even if you can't do it yet, attempting things like clean basecoats and detailed eyes will push your skills and develop better brush control. One answer is "brush control", yes, but that's not the whole story. It looks like your gold was pretty thin when you were painting the rivets. That's good -- but if you have too much thin paint on your brush, it'll all gush out and do what it just did. Even with a bigger brush, painting is a constant battle against impatience: get only as much paint as you need on your brush, and wipe the rest off on a damp paper towel if you need to. Don't worry about wasting paint; it'll last nearly forever. Better to have to touch up an area because you didn't have enough paint on the brush to do it than to get too much paint on the model. Another thing you can do to emphasize the rivets is to paint them up -- not worrying too much about "coloring inside the lines". Then thin some dark blue or black, get just a tiny bit on your brush, and let it run into the "reservoir" to create a nice shadow around the rivet. Finally, take your leather colour and touch up the surrounding area. (I make it sound so easy, don't I?) Save it, definitely. Strip it if it'll make you feel better. Move on to your next mini -- try to paint half a dozen figures in the next week or so, if you can. You'll be surprised how quickly you improve. Post pics here, get some advice, and you'll improve even faster. Then a few days before the con, come back to Eldolan and paint 'im up with all of your new-found skills. If nothing else, your neatness and brush control will be vastly improved, and that's really all it takes to produce a tabletop-standard mini. You've catalogued every flaw you've found with this miniature, so let me point out you did well: the colour scheme. You may not like the orange-brown; I don't mind it, but that may be my laptop's display. Overall, you're sticking to a cohesive, warm palette that looks really damn good. You have plenty of variation in tone, from black and dark-brown to the creamy off-white of the leggings and bow. You have plenty of variation of hue, from the purple-red coat to the yellow-green hair. Either you've studied colour theory before or you have a good intuition for colour -- and the latter, like a musician having perfect pitch, is going to make learning this game a lot easier. You also did a solid job of preparing the figure. I think I see a mould line on the bow, but the rest is clean, and you obviously got the primer right. And speaking of paint, you've thinned your paints well enough to avoid chunky-basecoat syndrome. That's not an insignificant achievement.

Heheh, I know I'm doing something right, Jabberwocky: both times you've come into this thread with a critique, I've already addressed it but haven't taken photos. I'm hoping to finish this guy off tonight. Glad you like the brass and the texture highlights on the leather; I'm really pleased with both of those.

Heh! I had no idea until you pointed it out. The highlights on the folds serve just as well, visually speaking, and the few stripes at the bottom (where there aren't many folds) cement the illusion. As it happens, I was just reading Matt DiPietro over on the Privateer forum writing about using detail to direct attention on a figure. This seems like a good example of that principle in practice.