[Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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YellowKing
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by YellowKing »

Hoping my FLGS has them in stock by October when STREET MASTERS/AFTERSHOCK arrives. I'm not above sloshing this crap on 218 miniatures. :D
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AWS260
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Painted this guy from Myth over the weekend.

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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

Keesi and Og! Love the colors.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Thanks! This was a fun one to paint.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hepcat »

Do you still play Myth? I keep meaning to dig out my copy and play with the updated 2.0 rules. Just haven't found the time or desire to do so yet.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

I haven't touched it since the first month or two after it arrived. I actually sold it very, very cheap to the owner of my FLGS. It's sitting on their library shelf, so I dug this guy out to bring home to paint. I have to bring him back.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

No tips or progress reports (I still haven't found all my painting stuff since moving; been a hell of a month), but I saw this and had to share:

Enlarge Image

I'm not sure "miniature" quite fits, but good lord that's awesome.
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[Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Zarathud »

I finished the Nolzur’s Black Dragon and it came out much better than the Gargantuan Red Dragon. Next up, the Nolzur’s Blye Dragon. The RealmSmith painting videos were helpful.

I will coat the last of the base Mice & Mystics characters after GenCon. My excessive initial spray of clear coat on the two spiders and two of the cockroaches pulled off the paint. I finished the touchups, and the two centipedes. Next time coating, I will have to be more careful.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Digging into the Mansions of Madness box.

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A Hound of Tindalos:

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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Treant:
Image

And more Myth guys. I'm pretty sure these colors are canon.
Image[/url]
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

First use of contrast paints. This is a Gangs of Rome mob figure...

Image

This was under half an hour work (it was still slightly wet when I took the picture). I have like 30-40 of these guys to paint up, so I’m kinda liking it.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Isgrimnur »

...guys?
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Isgrimnur wrote:...guys?
The generic use of “guys”.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Image

Full mob finished using contrast paints. It probably took more time to prep, base and prime the figures than paint them.

Won’t win any awards but I’ll be happy to put them on my table at anytime.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by baelthazar »

I really love the new contrast paints! Once I get motivated to upload the pictures, I will post some of my Kingdom Death Monster White Lion, and Survivor minis that took me less than an hour each. The results were fantastic!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

I've been pondering getting some for certain miniatures (mostly board game and RPG minor 'group' characters.) It's just a bit of an investment to get started.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Zarathud »

Finished the Nolzurs Blue Dragon except for the base.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
"I don't stand by anything." - Trump
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

Blackhawk wrote: Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:11 pm I've been pondering getting some for certain miniatures (mostly board game and RPG minor 'group' characters.) It's just a bit of an investment to get started.
I'm in the exact same mindset and the images above look great. I just need to figure out exactly how I'd use them and get the right colors but I'm hearing (and seeing) good things (mostly) from them.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Decided yesterday that we were moving gaming night to tonight rather than Thursday. I had a hankering to play Fallout Wasteland Warfare so I started getting the parts and terrain together last night. Discovered at 7 that I was short a Super Mutant. Damn.

I could use a power armor or a mutant hound figure as a stand in, but I always hate doing that. Hmm.

Grab box of super mutants
Find a pose I like
Thorough wash and soak (that resin hates paint)
Rinse and dry in front of a fan
Super glue assembly, only gluing my fingers to the figure once
Prime with airbrush, too humid and dark out now for a rattle can
Dry in front of fan
Paint! Paint like the wind! Contrast paints, save me!

And before 10:30, I have a super mutant that will be pretty passable. I have some clean up to do, but it will work for tonight.

Image
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Pickled ghouls, anyone?Image
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

Stripping?
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Nah. Resin minis, so they always get a half hour (at least) soak and scrub and rinse with diluted Simple Green.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

Ah. I strip in a jar a lot like that (and a lot of people use Simple Green for stripping, too.)
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Blackhawk wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 6:45 pmStripping?
Sure, let me get my webcam set up.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Isgrimnur »

Skinypupy should have some pointers on camera positioning.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Zarathud »

The weather on the weekends keeps being humid, so I don't feel comfortable sealing my Mice & Mystics: 6 frogs, 2 frog captains, 6 bugmen, 6 salamanders, a mole, and a weasel are all done. Along with my Blue Dragon.

The 3 heroes and 2 villains from Mice & Mystics expansion are left to paint. And I picked up the Nolzur's White Dragon to paint, which means I'll only have Green Dragon to finish the evil set.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
"I don't stand by anything." - Trump
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Gato »

My first try with the contrast paint
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hepcat »

I really need to pick up a set of the contract paints. I suck at painting miniatures, but I love miniature gaming. Which means I have a ton of unpainted figs that I play with...embarrassing everyone at the table with their nakedness. If I could churn out painted figs in 30 minutes or so with relatively little pain, it would make the world so much better.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, those look great. I also really want to try these paints but haven't figured out which miniatures I own that would benefit from testing out a single color.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hepcat »

I've seen folks painting figs with more than one base color with the contrast paints and they looked pretty dang good. It seemed like they didn't take that long either.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Hepcat has me on ignore again, I see...

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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hepcat »

Oh, nice! I didn't notice your work at the top of this very page! Cool, now I need to order some contrast paints. Looks like Amazon has them for pretty close to the online prices at miniature market.
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[Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Zarathud »

I’ve been happy with using Army Painter inks to add contrast. It’s not an “all-in one layer” but inking doesn’t take much time.

Inking also lets me leave an area less contrasted.

Hoping to drybrush white to bring my white dragonto the right color from a bluish base coat. Watching the RealmSmith videos for my dragons has been pretty interesting.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
"I don't stand by anything." - Trump
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

2 hours work. From this...

Image

To this...

Image
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

Those look great. I painted a Bones snake man as a test with a Contrast Militarium Green and I don't think it worked as intended. My general observation was that the contrast paint (whatever the flow agent added is) didn't really like the Bones material. I had to apply it pretty thick and it still ended up running from certain areas and now I need to go back and do some touch up.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Smoove_B wrote:Those look great. I painted a Bones snake man as a test with a Contrast Militarium Green and I don't think it worked as intended. My general observation was that the contrast paint (whatever the flow agent added is) didn't really like the Bones material. I had to apply it pretty thick and it still ended up running from certain areas and now I need to go back and do some touch up.
What primer did you use?
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

I followed the Bones guidelines that explicitly indicate they should not be primed in any capacity. Just washed and painted straight out of the box. It's entirely possible this paint just doesn't work with / doesn't like the Bones material.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Smoove_B wrote:I followed the Bones guidelines that explicitly indicate they should not be primed in any capacity. Just washed and painted straight out of the box. It's entirely possible this paint just doesn't work with / doesn't like the Bones material.
Yeah, it needs something to grab onto. I’ve tried Army Painter, Citadel Contrast, and...man. Old age sucks. It’s a brand of primer Ive used for years, has John Kovalic illustrations not the can. Anyway. All of these primers work well with the contrast paints, but just on straight resin? I can foresee problems.

Edit: Armory. Armory primer. That's the one I couldn't remember.
Last edited by hentzau on Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

It suggests if I really, really, really want to prime them I can but it should be a brush-on primer, not rattle can. It's definitely something in the contrast paint that's causing it to bead and run. But hey, that's why I was experimenting. :D
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

Bones guy stepping in. Bones are PVC, not resin. They're also hydrophobic, repelling water. One common misconception is that you shouldn't prime Bones. Reaper's own instructions is that priming is not required, and that they can be painted right out of the package. That's true, but is mostly marketing and not the whole story, and it doesn't mean you can't prime Bones.

Here's the Paul Harvey on that. Bones are designed to work directly with acrylic mediums. Washes, acrylics that have been thinned with water, anything that doesn't have a straight acrylic base is simply going to pool and/or run off when applied to Bones. Some brands of acrylic don't even work well on Bones. As such, I recommend always washing Bones with hot soap and water (to get rid of the mold release compounds and finger oils), then priming them.

The only caveat is that some primers will react with the plasticizers in the Bones PVC. That makes them permanently tacky and essentially ruins them. Luckily, the community has done extensive testing and there are lists of primers that work perfectly with Bones. My own recommendation is Army Painter primers if you want a rattle-can, or Badger Stynlrez primers if you prefer either brush-on or airbrushing. I've used both on piles of Bones.

Again, you can paint Bones without priming them, but what Reaper doesn't mention is that doing so seriously limits the materials and techniques you can use. As long as you go by the primer recommendations, you'll be fine. Reaper doesn't tell you all of this, as "ready-to-paint" is what makes them stand out from the competition.

And that... is the rest... of the story.
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