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

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

Post by Malificent »

Image

Still churning my way through Cthulhu Death May Die investigators. Starting to hit the ones where they're going to stretch me - tartans, argyle, patterns, etc. We'll see how quickly I manage that.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Tao »

There is a youtuber that goes by Kujo, he did a really cool video on painting a Tartan pattern. I know I have seen a few others but that one stands out.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Tao wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 2:37 pm There is a youtuber that goes by Kujo, he did a really cool video on painting a Tartan pattern. I know I have seen a few others but that one stands out.
Thanks! I've found it and bookmarked it for when I get to those minis.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

I haven't shared for a while because I was too lazy to upload pics until I just realized I can just link my instagram page :mrgreen:

Some Gloomhaven minis









Some Dungeonology minis:









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

Post by hepcat »

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

Post by Tao »

Dana Howl is a miniature painter on Youtube, whom I think some OO folks have posted links to in this thread. She has just started a structured online "How to paint mini's for beginners" series. I like her videos and I am intrigued by this approach, so far I have watched the first two. She will be releasing them one per month. Be forewarned, this is really really basic stuff so far but figured I would put it out there if anyone might be interested.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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I've decided that my biggest painting weakness is contrast. Not the GW paint line, but painting contrast dramatically enough with regular paints, especially highlights. The contrast on my pieces is way, way too understated. That's going to be an overarching theme in my painting for a while - learning to really emphasize the contrast.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

I've been in a slump, craft wise, for a while now. I've been printing tons of the Atom City post-apoc terrain, but haven't got a lick of paint on a model in a month.

So last night I finally shook myself out of it, and said just get something done, so I decided to start with something simple. I had this 3d printed crater that I wanted to try out some UV resin that is kind of a neon yellow-green in the bottom of it as a radioactive puddle. I had bought some UV resin from Green Stuff World back in February, and broke it out for the first time, and found that it had already solidified in the unopened bottle...not completely, but it was kind of like a gelatin consistency. So, that sucks.

Then I decided to move from that and try and paint up some of the Atom City stuff I had printed. I grabbed my airbrush and decided to give it a good cleaning before I set into working on the diner. Good thing too, because the action was all messed up, despite my cleaning after every use. Whatever, I disassembled it, gave it a thorough cleaning, and when I went to re-assemble it, I sheared the threads off of the inner nozzle when re-attaching it. Just snapped that sucker clean off, with minimal pressure.

Clearly, the gaming gods are laughing at me.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

hepcat wrote: Wed May 06, 2020 7:36 am Excellent work!
Thanks!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

And now it appears that I have a massive clog in my printer. Awesome.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Apr 16, 2020 6:52 pm If they don't cancel Reapercon in September, I may just have to go.
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It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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Blackhawk wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 11:49 pm I've decided that my biggest painting weakness is contrast. Not the GW paint line, but painting contrast dramatically enough with regular paints, especially highlights. The contrast on my pieces is way, way too understated. That's going to be an overarching theme in my painting for a while - learning to really emphasize the contrast.

There is a site with a series of "Painting Contrast on Miniature Figures" articles (scroll down) that I've been getting a lot of mileage out of on rectifying this.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by YellowKing »

Thanks for that link Blackhawk.

I DEFINITELY suffer from too little contrast, mostly because I'm too lazy to mix colors. I hope to rectify that once we're in a new place and I can set up a more permanent painting station.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Image

Taking a break from Cthulthu Death May Die to paint some Galaxy Defenders. Being sci-fi, many of them have their eyes covered, so yay for that!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

Gloomhaven Spoiler Alert!!!

We unlocked this class and I painted it!





Talking about spoilers, it annoys me to no end that so many people don't spoiler tag their Gloomhaven pictures :grund:
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Image

The fleur-de-lis on her dress are kind of all over the place, but after glazing over them a couple times in red to create that faded look, they don't look half bad. Now that I'm looking at it, I want to go back and put the browned bloodstain on the axe...
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Malificent wrote:Image

The fleur-de-lis on her dress are kind of all over the place, but after glazing over them a couple times in red to create that faded look, they don't look half bad. Now that I'm looking at it, I want to go back and put the browned bloodstain on the axe...
Great work!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

I think the patterned dress looks fantastic.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, that's a really impressive paint job. I always try to match the game art but you've hit it out of the park.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Thanks all - I tried and fell flat on Roxie's patterned coat - woo, that was horrible, so it was nice to get a win on this. Might even encourage me to try freehanding the little grid pattern on the sweater of the next guy.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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One thing that I've seen used to good result in drawing grids is to simply start off with rows of dots, then connect them. The hard part is getting lines to naturally follow the folds. Some people will actually get a piece of cloth with lines or a grid and replicate the folds to figure out how the lines should change.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

In case some of you are interested, Red Grass Games just launched a Kickstarter for a rotating handle with swappable caps. The company is well-established, the previous version of this was very well liked, the price is decent, and the shipping date is in two months.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

I have one of the original Redgrass handles and I still prefer the Citadel handles over the Redgrass. Just seems to fit my mitts better.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

The dress looks awesome idd! I nowhere near have the confidence to do patterns :ninja:
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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I broke out my mini paints for the first time since last fall, with this guy from Myth.

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

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AWS260 wrote:I broke out my mini paints for the first time since last fall, with this guy from Myth.

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

Post by Malificent »

AWS260 wrote: Fri May 22, 2020 5:04 pm I broke out my mini paints for the first time since last fall, with this guy from Myth.

Image
Good stuff and I like the basing - something I haven't gotten into yet.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

That's just the standard base he came with. I take credit for painting it green.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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AWS260 wrote: Fri May 22, 2020 8:04 pm That's just the standard base he came with. I take credit for painting it green.
Ah, I still like the mini overall :)
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Thanks! I should do this more often -- it's a nice mental break at a time when I really need that.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Smoove_B »

I think you nailed all the colors here - nice little differentiations in tone.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

Started painting the Western Legends buildings!


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

Post by EzeKieL »

AWS260 wrote: Fri May 22, 2020 5:04 pm I broke out my mini paints for the first time since last fall, with this guy from Myth.

Image
That's really nice!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

EzeKieL wrote:Started painting the Western Legends buildings!


Where did you get those from?
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

hentzau wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 12:37 pm Where did you get those from?
https://www.etsy.com/hk-en/listing/7160 ... at_2&bes=1

Because of COVID I've been buying way to much on Etsy :oops:
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Image

Image

I think after lots of practice, I've finally both figured out the right thinness for my paints and gotten better at brush control. Things are going smoother and I can do small details I wouldn't have been able to before.

This leads to me realizing that I've reached a point that I recognize from my photography hobby. Where I'm definitely better than average Joe Schmoe who hadn't done any work or practice would be - enough to have friends and family, say "those are totally amazing". But because I'm following a lot of miniature folks, I know what really amazing looks like and I'm not it. It's the "sometimes, you're the expert in the room" syndrome. If someone doesn't know any other experts, it doesn't take too much for you to cross that bar for them.

It's kind of comforting knowing where I am in the progression. I kind of stalled out in photography because the next steps I needed to take were expensive and time consuming. Right now, this hobby is less so.

Next step is either faces or shadows/highlights. Probably the latter, since doing good faces depends on those.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

These definitely look really nice!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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

Post by Blackhawk »

Malificent wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 2:03 am
This leads to me realizing that I've reached a point that I recognize from my photography hobby. Where I'm definitely better than average Joe Schmoe who hadn't done any work or practice would be - enough to have friends and family, say "those are totally amazing". But because I'm following a lot of miniature folks, I know what really amazing looks like and I'm not it. It's the "sometimes, you're the expert in the room" syndrome. If someone doesn't know any other experts, it doesn't take too much for you to cross that bar for them.
I started painting miniatures a little over 30 years ago. I reached the point you're describing a little over 29 years ago. I'm still there, mostly because I'm lazy. I know what to do to bump it up, I just keep finding other things to do.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

I dug out some 30 year old Redoubt Musketeers. Gave them a quick paint job. Their poses are a little rough...most of them are looking at the ground. But that just means you can’t see their crappy faces.

Image

Still need to figure out how to do their bases. Ground cover would be easiest.
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