Ferox

Yeah, that's a good way to put it; that's what's bothering me about the sword. The blends are nice and smooth, but the placement seems a bit off -- in the middle of flat areas rather than across implied transitions. That, coupled with the lack of contrast (medium-light grey to medium-dark grey rather than black to white) and the muted colours used on the sword compared to the gorgeous rich reds that dominate the armour, make it a bit hard to notice. The armour, though, is amazing. Can we see some shots from the right and back? I wouldn't mind a look at the other shoulder pad.

That's interesting. I guess I never thought of it in terms of control. I think I can relate to that. Light on dark lets you control the placement, but dark on light gives you a smoother transition. You can control it, but it's more difficult, and takes a LOT longer. Do you guys vary the technique by the colour and material you're painting? For the most part I find myself going from the midtone out these days, but with skin I generally start with a highlight and shade down because the highlights are so broad.

Incredible work. I love the contrast between the cool, desaturated bases and the vivid red armour.

One PC mini down, one getting its first basecoats, one cleaned up and primered... and there's paint on the 'jack, too. In other news, I'm starting to remember how to use my camera.

Up in Show Off.

Finally finished this guy. I'm starting to learn some things about shading different materials -- shading leather differently from cloth, for example, or a rough canvas-like cloth differently from a smooth linen-like cloth. I'd already started to absorb this in terms of shading skin, but hadn't quite thought it through to other materials. I also learned that I will spend way too much time in Gimp stitching three nearly-compatible shots together, as shown below. My freehand is starting to get a tiny bit better, partly just in terms of the fact that I don't agonize about whether I can add something appropriate (now I agonize about how well I'll be able to pull it off). The base is, I think, a huge improvement over anything I've done so far, or maybe it's just "not cork" and therefore new and exciting. The sword... eh... I was going for something alien, and I went too far in that direction. In my defence, it looks better in the hand, where one tilts it just so for the metallics along the edge to catch the light, something I never seem to be able to photograph. But yeah, needs work. Otherwise, this guy's all sealed up and ready for gaming. Now to paint the rest of the party.... WIP over here. C&C very much appreciated.

Watching with interest. I need to do some light, desaturated leather on another PC fig I'm painting up, so maybe I'll give tanned shadow a try. What did you use for the backdrop in those photos? I think mine is confusing my camera.

Glad to hear it about the skin -- I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pull it off. I've just finished sealing the mini, but I don't think another level of highlights will be a problem over the matte sealer. Worst case is that they rub off during gaming as the figure gets a bit dingy from handling anyway. You're right, there's too much green in the basecoat as it stands. On the other hand, lately I've been putting down a lot of more or less matte washes to shade my metallics, and finding that after sealing I have to bring up the highlights pretty strongly a second time, so I was planning from the get-go to add back a lot of the shininess right at the end. In a sense what you see there is just the backdrop for the real highlight coat. Also, from a story perspective the blade's supposed to be an ancient heirloom from a forgotten era, so if it sells as "sharp-looking mystery material" I'm still happy. No worries; this is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Thanks!

Aside from fixing a few details I've noticed in the latest set of photos, I think he's done: I finished off the metallics, shading with warm colours on the sword's blade, neutral browns on the hilt and pommel, and blues everywhere else. Next I went through and did partial highlights with pure Aged Pewter and the same with a touch of VMC metal medium. I'll go back over the very shiniest bits with the latter, and possibly some pure VMC metal medium, once I've sealed the figure. Before I do so, though, I'm going to work on the transition between green and brown on the front of the blade, try to smooth it out and make it follow the curve a bit better. The freehand on the tabard is the symbol of Corellon, an eight-pointed star. I think I'll go back with a little blue liner and sharpen up the edges. I highlighted the skin with a mix of khaki highlight, sunlight yellow, and linen white. I probably should've based the skin tone on khaki (or ochre?) instead of olive to start with. I shaded by adding progressively more blue liner to the mix, then mixed up a nice neutral grey from colours I'd already used on the mini and added the patterns with a sharpened toothpick. Some were more successful than others. Oh well; first time I've tried it. I followed up with a thin wash of the base skintone to tie everything together. I have a few minor mistakes to clean up, and I might go back over the skin patterns to fade them out a bit from the shoulders and wrists. Otherwise, I think this guy's ready for sealer and basing.

Oh man, the texture on that coat is unbelievable. Saved for future reference. Thanks for the close-ups!

Nice work! I love the red/black/gold look on Protectorate models, and you pulled it off with flair.

Nice work all around! Can we get a closeup on the sauced skipper himself?

I've found that the best way to keep my metallics shiny is to basecoat and shade them before sealing, but wait until I've sealed the mini to highlight them.

I like 'em! Great work. I only have a couple of quibbles: the blue NBC suits and the orange details are much more saturated than the rest of the figures and especially the dirt and (other) debris on the bases, which pulls them a bit out of context. (I would've expected the troops and the girders to be dirtier, fighting through all that grime.) Second, the colour of the rusted girders matches the furniture on the rifles a bit too closely, which to me gives them a plastic toy-like look. And it's nice to find that Metallica's been reading Lovecraft again.

Another possibility would be to sink a long pin into his hand, then sculpt a new blade around the pin. Getting a pinhole properly lined up and sufficiently deep into the broken-off blade might be tricky, but a new blade should be pretty straightforward to sculpt. I suppose you could even make the pin itself the blade by flattening the exposed part with a hammer before you glue it into the pinhole.

Black's tough to work with, and I think you did a fine job on the cloak. To me it comes across as soft, worn leather. The deep red in the shadows is a nice touch, and gives a rich contrast to the hints of green in the highlights.

Glad you're diggin' it. The sword isn't actually NMM -- the basecoat is actually a mix of green and pewter, so it has some metallic sheen to it. That's maybe most obvious in the photos from the first post. I like to shade metallics with glazes of matte paint and highlight them with ever-shinier metallics, so that the reflectivity as well as the lightness follow the light/shadow pattern. Lately this means I'm mixing my base coat metallic (in this case, Aged Pewter) with something nonreflective (in this case, Forest Green). It's the same basic process as NMM, only done using metallics. Here's what, as far as I can tell, is the tutorial that really popularized the method, and another look by local paint-meister Jabberwocky. I've found that true NMM requires a lot of skill to pull off -- if you can't blend smoothly and consistently over small areas, you're hosed -- but shaded metallics still look pretty decent if your blends aren't smooth. True NMM also photographs a lot better, but shaded metallics really come alive in the hand.

Finished off the leather this evening. I've been trying to add texture as well as lighting with the shading and highlights. It's kinda working. The ochre leather got a bit of thinned brown liner for shading, then some thinned VMC Smoke for tone, and finally some khaki stuff for highlights. All of this was done in a roughly crosshatched pattern, unlike the cloth which is done with smoother, more continuous strokes. The "black" leather on the boots and stomach got shaded with blue liner and highlighted with hatched twilight blue, and then a mix of twilight blue and some khaki thing I had on my wet palette. So far it actually looks like well-used but well-kept leather. We'll see how much of that survives the varnish coat. As before, I added a bit of red for the shadows and highlights further up the mini. I also got started on the sword blade. I started with thinned VMC smoke, then worked a bit of red liner into the deeper shadows. There's a tide line on one side of the blade, which irritates me to no end. I'm thinking of shading the rest of the metal with a cooler green/blue mix, just to make the blade stand out a little more. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? Also, I finished off a couple of bases, one of which will probably be Zith's: The green mossy growths are packing foam from WarmaHordes blisters stuck on with superglue, a nifty little technique I found out about just today via one of Gareson's blog posts. I'm still figuring out just how it works and what kinds of effects I can achieve, but so far I like it. Next up is the metal, then the skin. I'm looking to add some freehand as well: probably an eight-pointed star on the tabard (symbol of Corellon, Zith's god) and some kind of simple and unobtrusive pattern on the hakama, but maybe some filigree on the blade as well. Any suggestions?

Comes out pretty matte for me, more so than Liquitex matte varnish but not up to the same standard as Testors Dullcote. Lately I've been finishing my gaming minis with one coat of Liquitex gloss varnish straight from the bottle, then one coat of thinned RMS brush-on sealer.

Working on some PC minis for Yet Another D&D Party and kicking off a Protectorate of Menoth force for Warmachine. Might also see how many bases I can build, just to have them on hand when I finish painting stuff.

Got some work done shading and highlighting the blue cloth. I shaded the tabard and belts with browns and highlighted with a mix towards khaki highlight, while the torso armour got purple/red shadows and rosy highlight... er, highlights for a bit more contrast with the skin. The ghost white hakama (or whatever it is) got some shading with the khaki triad, which turned out a bit too grungy. I tried glazing in some twilight blue to cool it off a little... bad idea, it went towards a greenish-brown. Finally I glazed over everything with the base ghost white, which brought the colours back to something reasonable but washed out a lot of the contrast. I may go back and work some very neutral grey into the shadows, or maybe go a bit more towards pink. Any suggestions?

What's this? A new TaleSpinner WIP? O frabjous day!

I'm right there with ya, Dr. B. MG, I really dig the highlights and shading you did on the trousers, especially around the knees. Makes it look like he's been living in those clothes for months now.

I'm painting this guy up as a Githzerai Avenger of Corellon for a D&D campaign that's kicking off this Friday. I, uh, probably won't have him finished for the first session, but you never know. Here he is basecoated: Yeah, painting him with the forearms and sword glued and pinned on is a royal PITA, but I don't trust myself to be able to get that delicate a pin-joint lined up properly after paint. Maybe a skill to learn for later. Eyes are correspondingly rudimentary. Looks like I have a little cleanup to do around the border of the Ghost White cloth. Otherwise, I think I'm doing pretty well. This is basically the studio scheme with blue instead of green, a different skin tone, and Aged Pewter + Forest Green for the metals. Blacks are Midnight Blue + Walnut Brown, which I'm digging immensely. Comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated. If nothing else, I could use a gadfly to remind me to darkline my s#!t for once....

This guy's a quicker paint; I think I have about two or three hours in him total. Mostly I'm getting a feel for how Midnight Blue works as a substitute black, and how my recipe for Githzerai skin looks in practice. So far, so good. That eye in there is really tough to get at. I half-assed it; it doesn't look so bad inside a shadowy cowl. Pretty pleased with how the colours play together on this one. In retrospect, I should've spent some more time darklining the transitions. They didn't look too bad while I was painting, but I'm also testing out a new set of sealers for gaming models: one coat of Liquitex gloss varnish, covered by a slightly thinned coat of Reaper brush-on sealer (which is a bit more matte than Liquitex matte varnish). Looks good to me, but it does kind of wipe out subtle contrast. I did actually go back over the metal with some highlights after sealing it, but apparently only the fourth photo came even close to catching the fill light, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Looks like I was a bit too heavy-handed on the cloak's highlights, too: they're a bit abrupt even through the thick layer of varnish. Well, I've been trying to clear this guy off my workbench quickly to make room for the next project or three, and for what I intended he's a rousing success. C&C very much appreciated.