Cash's Workbench

[Corporea]

Awesome! Also- Consider Phlebas totally rocks. Although I loved The Player of Games and Matter better, but Iain Banks is fantastic period! Great gallery!!!

[CashWiley]

[Thrym]

Shaft is Walnut based. Mid is a mix of Woodstain Brown and Chestnut Gold. High is a mix of the mid plus some Stained Ivory. End is Chestnut Gold with some Stained Ivory highlight. I know, it's woodgrain and not bark but I wanted to try that effect. Artistic license!

 

So the wood grain is darkened from drifting in the sea and then settling in a tepid lagoon fed by sulfur springs before drying on a beach where the two pirates found it. Yeah. Plausible. Maybe.

[chaosscorpion]

Cash,

 

It's looking really good.

[CashWiley]

I bent the queen's scabbard when I was gluing it to the 'plinth', chunks of paint came off the back and side.

 

Got the dog glued on and painted in. I'm going with a straight neutral black finish for the base. I know, I hate basing. But this gives it a nice clean look that makes the paint really stand out. I like it, so does my #1 fan (my old lady) and frankly everyone who will see it has no clue it's not 'standard' basing :)

 

Tonight...trying to bend the scabbard back into place and repairing the chunks of paint that fell off. They're thick enough that it will be noticeable, like the terrier's sword, I think the primer went on thick (the double priming for zenithal didn't help that). It will definitely be visible to us, I'm hoping I can hide it enough that the casual inspector won't notice it.

 

Speaking of the scabbard, I kind of dislike that the flag hides the back of the queen...I should have mocked it up first and not spent as much time painting those spots (her sword hilt in particular).

[chaosscorpion]

Darn Cash that sucks, hope you can get it all blended back together. And basic black for a base is basic basing. It's all good if it makes people go "Oooo look at that...isn't that cool. I wish I could do that"

[CashWiley]

Things are getting chaotic! Since I recently added a Gallery to the blog to help people (me) find completed minis, I also changed the first post of this thread into an index to my WIPs and completed minis.

[Thrym]

Tonight...trying to bend the scabbard back into place and repairing the chunks of paint that fell off. They're thick enough that it will be noticeable, like the terrier's sword, I think the primer went on thick (the double priming for zenithal didn't help that). It will definitely be visible to us, I'm hoping I can hide it enough that the casual inspector won't notice it.

 

Can you lightly sand the paint edges out a bit? Then you can paint it all back together no issues.

[Ludo]

Ludo's redneck fix. Go to your auto parts or hardware store and get some glazing putty. It will go on thin enough to be level with the paint but strong enough to not chip back off.

[Flow]

 

 

1.) I love this. It has tons of character and you really are talented.

 

2.) I have an NMM question and I'm cheap and lazy and like free advice (this means I'm trying to avoid buying the very much suggested L2PK for NMM). I understand blending. I understand that the sword is simply using blended greys and whites to create the illusion of metal. But - how do you determine the pattern?

 

Meaning this - the left side of the blade (as you look at it) is dark/light/dark from top to bottom, and the opposite side is the...opposite. Light/dark/light from top to bottom. I suppose I understand why one side is the reflective opposite of the other, but was it arbitrary that the left side was dark/light/dark? Meaning - could you just have easily done light/dark/light on the left side and the opposite on the right? What sort of logic goes into how the pattern is determined?

 

I have a feeling I am seriously over-thinking the NMM here but I'm just trying to wrap my little monkey brain around how the pattern is chosen. The effects are self-evident and look really good. I need to learn to do this.

[MonkeySloth]

The LTPK doesn't really cover how to do the pattern outside of the two figures that comes with it, in fact I found it really disappointing for everything but the color recipes. They're basically set up as paint by numbers with maybe a sentence or two explaining the whole color you're going to paint but none of that info is really that useful.

[Doug Sundseth]

The patterns of light and dark in actual metals are caused by specular (direct front surface) reflections of localized light sources. When you paint in things that are intended to be specular reflections, you need to consider the position and size of any notional light sources.

 

TL;DR: There's no standard pattern of reflections.

[Slashhamster]

I read various articles discussing NMM before attempting it. The general guideline seems to be you want the highlights and shadows reversed along hard edges. It isn't completely universal though. I like the suggestion in this guide which has you roughly sketch out the shading on paper so you can eyeball it and figure out if it looks 'natural' to your eyes. I'll probably do that in the future. So far I've mostly just looked at a lot of examples and tried to adapt them to whatever it is I'm painting.

[Flow]

TL;DR: There's no standard pattern of reflections.

 

Okay - so it *is* a little arbitrary, as really the artist can choose on their own the precise position of 'notional light sources'.

 

Typically I've approached highlights and shading as if there is a light source beaming down on the mini (e.g., the sun), and my desk lamp provides a great guide for doing this. It seems this is really a standard - so many miniatures are painted with a top-down imagined light source. But the positioning of reflections on NMM blades like this has been confusing me as they don't seem to follow that same pattern (necessarily) but still often look really good.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Flow

[Doug Sundseth]

Remember that some of those light sources are going to be light-toned objects in the light, so it's a bit more complex than finding the highlight positions for zenithal lighting. Those kinds of light sources wouldn't have much visible effect on matte surface lighting, but for reflective surfaces you'll see much more. In photography, for instance, you can often see the windows in the room, or the lights, ... or the photographer ... in the reflections in the eyes of the subject. And big shiny things like cars are very difficult to photograph well for the same reason.

 

The end of this path is SENMM – "Sky Earth Non-Metal Metal", BTW, where you use more colors to get more believable reflections.