Learn for my horrible failure! 77083: Medium Fire Elemental

[Maledrakh]

So every now and then I try something new, and fail miserably;
 
Gah! So ugly! Take it to the city walls and kill it with a rock!
 
 
Reaper Bones 77083: Medium Fire Elemental. I am not at all pleased with the result.
 
This one was a bit of a struggle, and in the end, a failure. But I have learned some lessons that I would like to share, before taking a shower in my shame:
 
a) Translucent Bones also need an undercoat of sorts.
First Fail: I started out (after washing it) with yellow ink. -It did not really show, and just made a sticky mess of everything, But it did tint the model a bit.
After that had dried for sereval days, I did some drybrushing. Problem was the ink did not stick properly to the bones material, and rubbed off in places. And then the drybrushed paint would not stick. After several goes, I at least got some colour on the mini.
Lesson learned: The next translucent bones, I will undercoat with matte varnish. Maybe that lets the paint sit on the mini.
 
b) Thinned down paints definately do not stick to it, when the basecoat fails.
Yes, you see the results. Not good at all. Paint has not built up properly, leaving flaws and ruining the effect completely.
I tryied to combat this by mixing some opaque bone paint into the mix, but this really ruined it. Big mistake!
Lesson Learned: opaque paint does not go with (this kind of)  trancelucency. It just jars.
 
c) Thinning with water only goes so far.
I mainly thin with water, mostly because I do not have any medium or acrylic paint thinner. Problem is that this effects the paints coherency in additon to the fluidity. The paint somewhat falls apart.
Lesson Learned: Use medium insted of water to thin paint for translucency, when painting Bones or large surfaces.
 
What are your experiences with the trancelucent bones?

Edited June 8, 2014 by ladystorm
LINKED FOR NUDITY

[Grimreaper71]

The painting experience sounds like it was a miserable time but the miniature looks splendid.

[robinh]

i see nothing wrong with the paint job.  Possibly a subtle darker red to bring it out otherwise you have the fire done pretty well.

[Inarah]

Aside from the yellow "breasts" I think it looks great. Maybe a little more highlight on the hips and shoulders and it would look even better.

[72moonglum]

Yeah, actually I like the blackened tips of the wings and the hands.

[Marvin]

I agree with all posted above, basically. Not terrible at all. Little work with the ta-tas and thighs, like mentioned, and it'd really smooth out I think. I like it!

[Bruunwald]

Gah! So ugly! Take it to the city walls and kill it with a rock!

 

Well, you can't kill it with fire! 

 

Seriously, I like it. I think the base is really cool, too.

[Dr.Bedlam]

It doesn't look bad at all, although I'm sorry you had such a frustrating time with it...

[DocPiske]

Not bad; pretty good actually. I found adding acrylic medium to the ink helped a lot with getting it to adhere to the translucent Bones. Also, I would recommend a gloss or semi-gloss "primer" over a matte; a matte coat would frost the plastic and make it less, not more translucent.

[Dog_Soldier]

The transparent Bones I've painted I "base coated" them with Delta Ceramcoat Gloss Exterior/Interior Varnish. It worked fine for giving the paint and inks something to adhere to.

[TGP]

I like what you did out on the wings. Wish the whole mini was like that.

 

I might have saved the bright yellow for just the eyes. Those wings are spectacular, worth saying twice.

[Slendertroll]

Hey, like everyone else, I think that actually turned out pretty cool! It's possible some of the problems you see in person aren't coming through in the photo, since we can't easily tell the difference between transparent and opaque?

[MissMelons]

I don't understand what's wrong with it. You did a better job than I could pull off I'm sure. 

[malefactus]

I will preface this by admitting I have a tendency to play the Devil's Advocate, but I think your creation is a TERRIFIC looking piece. The heat/flame colors going out to the darkened wing tips is a FANTASTIC effect, & the burned base is SPLENDID. Allowing for differences in taste, I think it's VERY WELL DONE!

[odinsgrandson]

 

As for how she turned out- well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice that agrees with you.  She's no where near as nice as your zombies, for example.

 

 

By the way, I've been told that some paints will stick to raw bones better than others- and I haven't heard anything about inks.  I'll make sure to avoid them on bones (I have Reaper's clear brights and I wonder how they'll take to raw bonesium).

 

I've been thinking about doing some combinations of translucency and opacity on some of the ghostly bones that I have, so thanks for letting us know about your experience here.

 

 

 

 

To be fair, I think there's one more thing that you should be aware of.  From the look of your painting, I expect that you start out dark and work your way up.  That method is great because each step makes the mini look better, and minimize the 'ugly stages' on a mini.  Most of the time, that works great (again, just look at your other works).

 

But when you're painting fire, you really have to embrace the ugly stages on the mini hard core, because your is highlighting is reversed (the lightest places are the source of the flames).  It's pretty frustrating to work with, and requires a little more imagination/experience to know what the mini will look like based on the current hideousness.

 

I feel like the longest ugly stages I ever have is on fire and magma characters (my Charsaug was probably the worst- and he was pretty slow working out of his ugly stage).