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

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

Post by hentzau »

And Planchet.

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

Post by Malificent »

hentzau wrote: Thu May 28, 2020 12:37 am And Planchet.

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

Post by hentzau »

Came and looked at the figure with untired eyes, realized that I had mistaken part of his shirt as a doublet. Cleaned that up this morning.

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

Post by AWS260 »

Enoki, one of the bad guys from Champions of Hara. I wanted his mushroom cap to evoke the bleeding tooth fungus, but he has already been dubbed "Pizza Head" in my household.

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

Post by hepcat »

Ooooh, I like. I have CoH as well and that makes me wanna paint ‘em up now.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Ophion, another Champions of Hara adversary. This is a really neat mini, but kind of a pain to paint, since you have to work around all those legs.

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

Post by EzeKieL »

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

Post by Malificent »

Image

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Finally getting to the monsters. I'm really happy with Cthulhu for the most part. The blending on the hands and feet came out really nice. The head is...fine? I was trying to do something different and it ended up looking horrible, so this was my attempt to tweak without having to reprime the head. The whole thing was mostly contrast paints combined with some regular paints and some glazing.

The Byakhee is a little dull color wise, but I do like the wing outlines.

Next up is Hastur and his crew - so lots and lots of yellow.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Those are amazing. I love the muted colors on the byakhee.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Some WIP Cardinals Guard...with lousy lighting.

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

Post by AWS260 »

The little crosses on their capes (ponchos? smocks?) are great.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

AWS260 wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:00 pm The little crosses on their capes (ponchos? smocks?) are great.
Tabard.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

AWS260 wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:00 pm The little crosses on their capes (ponchos? smocks?) are great.
Ditto that. I super respect freehand work. :)
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

Malificent wrote:
AWS260 wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:00 pm The little crosses on their capes (ponchos? smocks?) are great.
Ditto that. I super respect freehand work. :)
It’s ok at a distance. Kind of sloppy up close. Especially on figs with a lot of folds in their tabards.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

hentzau wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:05 pm It’s ok at a distance. Kind of sloppy up close. Especially on figs with a lot of folds in their tabards.
Smocks.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

hentzau wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:05 pm
Malificent wrote:
AWS260 wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:00 pm The little crosses on their capes (ponchos? smocks?) are great.
Ditto that. I super respect freehand work. :)
It’s ok at a distance. Kind of sloppy up close. Especially on figs with a lot of folds in their tabards.
That was me and the polka dot dress I did. Up close, sloppy. But at a distance, very acceptable.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

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Super happy with how the blending/glazing on this one turned out. Also got to try out using a little miniature makeup brush to soft drybrush the teeth, which worked surprisingly well. And finished in about 2.5 hours, which is record time for me doing something that looks so polished. :)
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

Malificent wrote: Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:42 pm Also got to try out using a little miniature makeup brush to soft drybrush the teeth, which worked surprisingly well.
That's what I use! At least until my Ghost dry brush Kickstarter comes in. And that piece looks great!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

Really nice paint job!
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Zarathud »

Really nice, Malificent.

Finished the Nolzur's Fire Elemental and Water Elemental after receiving some Vallejo Inks. Very happy with how they turned out.

It's about time to clear coat another batch of miniatures, which will include tables and doors. Some of the Reaper woodsmen turned out to be fantasy Luke, Han and Lando while painting them.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

The last of the Champions of Hara baddies. (Unless I can find the expansion somewhere.) Her hair is actually an octopus.

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

Post by Tao »

AWS260 wrote: Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:35 pm The last of the Champions of Hara baddies. (Unless I can find the expansion somewhere.) Her hair is actually an octopus.
I cannot account for the validity of this but you may want to keep an eye on it;

Chaos On Hara

Edit: This may actually be cheaper and more reputable vendor;

Chaos On Hara Expansion
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

You're a terrible influence on me, and I love you for it.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

I've been doing some experimenting. I'm getting ready to start painting Core Space soon, and I wanted to see how well a three-level zenithal primed miniature would do with white contrast paints. Core space has a lot of miniatures with round volumes (IE - big, smooth, rounded parts), and I don't want to spend days blending. I've promised myself that I'll find faster ways to do board game miniatures. There are some examples of this being done, but most are with extremely elaborate painters who want don't just test the base idea - contrast over zenithal - they do a full paintjob, use the most saturated colors, and prime with black and white (and the black is unlikely to tint well.)

So I grabbed an old Battle Masters horse. Battle Masters was the result of a deal between Milton-Bradley and Games Workshop back in the early 90s. I haven't had the actual game in years, but I have two full sets worth of the low-detail semi-GW miniatures that I've used for all sorts of stuff, including painting experiments. They're on-scale and have the kind of shapes and patterns you see on miniatures, but not on toys. Anyway. I took one out, grabbed my Badger Stynlrez (my primer of choice), and went to work. I painted the bottom areas with gray, the sides with a mix of gray and white, and the top and raised areas with white. I didn't make any attempt to be neat or 'stay in the lines'; I just wanted an approximation of zenithal priming to see how it worked with contrast paints. I let it dry and did the front half with Apothecary White and the rear with Blood Angels Red, let it dry, and then quickly brushed on some pure white/red areas.

I'm actually pretty happy. The shaded areas were tinted, while the white primed areas kept the pure colors. The colors looked right, even though the painjob was ugly and sloppy.

I think that a properly airbrushed zenithal highlight going from gray to white would work pretty good with contrast paints. I think I'll actually go ahead with the process.

I'll try and get some pictures of my 'experiment horse' later.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by hentzau »

I’m not completely sold on the idea of zenethal with contrast. I got a solid result out of one type of mini, and a not great result with another.

Image

That was the solid result, BTW. Image
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

It's something I'll need to experiment with to see if I can get right. In the last couple of years I've discovered that painting every miniature in a board game to 'character' standards just isn't practical. Some board games would take me two years to paint, long after the 'new' fades.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Blackhawk »

I finally got around to photographing some of my recent stuff. These four are from Monolith's Conan boardgame. I'm not terribly happy with them, and it took way too long to get them to this so-so state.

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

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This set is from Sword & Sorcery. The first three are the characters my kids and I were playing, the next are the gremlins (the weakest enemies), and the last is a set of the chests & doors, of which I have four of each. I was much happier with these than I was with the Conan stuff.

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

Post by Malificent »

I think all of them are fantastic. I backed the second sword and sorcery so it’s great seeing painted stuff.
Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:20 pm This set is from Sword & Sorcery. The first three are the characters my kids and I were playing, the next are the gremlins (the weakest enemies), and the last is a set of the chests & doors, of which I have four of each. I was much happier with these than I was with the Conan stuff.

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

Post by Skinypupy »

I absolutely love seeing these. You all do incredible work.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by EzeKieL »

Finally finished painting all of Western Legends and giving it a go this afternoon ^^. Can't wait!

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

Post by Punisher »

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:15 pm I finally got around to photographing some of my recent stuff. These four are from Monolith's Conan boardgame. I'm not terribly happy with them, and it took way too long to get them to this so-so state.

Image
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With all the skin she is showing, you'd think she'd be as tan as Conan
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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She was the worst of the three to paint, by far, and I'm the least happy with her.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

Starting to notice that I'm getting an instinctive feel for some things based on experience. So even though I had never done a particular blending technique on some of these, it just felt natural, which was a super fantastic feeling.

More Death May Die monsters

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

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Looove the blending on the star vampire's lower legs.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

Finished my Champions of Hara minis.

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

Post by Punisher »

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Jun 17, 2020 4:44 pm She was the worst of the three to paint, by far, and I'm the least happy with her.
That was more a comment on the card picture and not a comment on your paint job. I think it came out nice. The face could use show more detail, but I still struggle painting flesh and almost never can get face details myself.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by Malificent »

AWS260 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:35 am Finished my Champions of Hara minis.

Image
These are fantastic. I love the guy with the bear.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

Post by AWS260 »

They were really fun to paint. The sculpts are so creative.
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Re: [Miniatures] Painting tips and progress reports (with pics!)

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Punisher wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:54 am
Blackhawk wrote: Wed Jun 17, 2020 4:44 pm She was the worst of the three to paint, by far, and I'm the least happy with her.
That was more a comment on the card picture and not a comment on your paint job. I think it came out nice. The face could use show more detail, but I still struggle painting flesh and almost never can get face details myself.
I repainted the face twice. The problems with her are that A) there is very little sculpted detail in the face, whether due to the sculpt or the plastic, and B) here skin is so damned pale that the color is very hard to work with while staying with flesh tones.
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