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My Wife has been very supportive of my addiction, I mean hobby. She has started to paint miniatures, and she is doing pretty good so far.

the two things she would like to know is this,
1) what can she do to improve her painting.
2) and could she do commission work.

1. Alright, these are very good for beginner and *ahem*a woman*ahem* (Just kidding) But they definitely need more highlighting and shadows. And the places where there is highlighting, such as on the edges of the carapace, it's not gradual enough. And here comes the most often given piece of advice: USE A WASH! It really helps bring out the darks in the model.

2. With some practice and using the advice from me and the others that will be posting, I don't see why the wife-lady couldn't do commissions in the future.

Tell her what I said

Any guides I can direct her to?

For what techniques?

Washes and shading.

I have tried to explain some of this stuff to her. I paint a little bit better than her along with having the basic idea of washing and shading. but as it goes with all relationships she doesn't believe me so if I can let her read guides and comments then she will hopefully get it lol

Toeko wrote:Any guides I can direct her to?

A great source of advice/guides is the GW book "How To Paint Citadel Miniatures". I found that very useful and easy to follow.

I would commission her! To paint, that is!

With shading, you want to start with a dark color and gradually use lighter and lighter colors in smaller amounts as you go. For washes, you just put the wash in areas where you really want the detail to be brought out. The more wash you use, the darker the shadows become. I don't have any links to any specific tutorials on those, but Chris Dubuque:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jawaballs?blend=1&ob=4
and Les:
http://www.youtube.com/user/awesomepaintjob?blend=1&ob=4
have some awesome tutorials that cover a variety of techniques.

Thank you all very much.

JDM wrote:I would commission her! To paint, that is!

She laughed and said how much.

As for improvement the biggest thing I have to say is practice, practice, practice. The models themselves don't look half bad and look cleanly painted.

A great technique for tyranids is the dry-brushing painting technique

Example of one of my models

the chainsword really shows the results of the technique.

How it is done is to make sure you have decent sized brush, wet the brush first but dry it off so that it will have a little residual water in the brush making it easier for it get pain from the pot(especially for a large model like you Tygron) and dip it in the color that you want.

Lets use the blue on the Tygron's armor for example, now don't dip the brush too heavily into the paint because it won't work right.

Now brush most of the paint off onto a paper towel, but make sure you don't brush all of the paint off you will need it for the model.

One of the key points of drybrushing is Edges, Edges, Edges.

Now with the brush brush it along edges and details, and for the armor example start at the front edge of the armor and brush it along length wise of the natural direction of the Tygron's armor to the back of the armor, this should give it a natural bone like appearance. With how 'dry' the brush is it should be fairly easy to stay out of the recesses of the armor like where one armor plate overlaps another.

Now for the blue that is on there I would do a heavy drybrushing first, but leaving most of the core armor black so that you have some nice heavy blue edges but still keeping the core of the armor black.

Here if you have any Inks or washes, i think Delvan Mud wash would look good for the paint style you have on your models but I would do a 50/50 mix of the water and wash over the entire model. This would be before you would paint the eyes cause you might want those to really stand out.

Now if you really want to hit those highlights get a lighter blue than the one you applied first and do a lighter dryburshing of the second blue doing the same thing as you did for the first. Hitting the edges and details of the armor making it really pop.

now for the claws it looks like you have bleached bone on them (if your using the games workshop paints) I would hit those up with a pure Delvan Mud wash (just dip the brush in and paint on) making sure the wash seeps into the recesses of the claws then hitting up with a drybrushing of Bleached bone, then a really light drybrushing of scull white.

then for the green skin, wash it with delvan mud then hit it up with a lighter green drybrushing and it should look great.

Hope this helped

found a fairly decent video tutorial on youtube of drybrushing and it hits the core of what I was trying to get at in my explanation, even though it is on an airplane model cockpit it hit the core of how to do drybrushing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcIYkCz-Dco

fox-light713 wrote:making it easier for it get pain from the pot

I thought pot made you feel fuzzy inside.....

Lol

Has the wife-lady watched the tutorials yet?

Nope, she is saving it for the week. I work long hours so she needs something to do.

I think if she washed the green bits with a green wash, it'd bring out alot more depth and shading. It looks a tad flat at the moment.

EDIT: Looks great by the way

Keep us updated on new models.

No. Whoever said drybrushing is good for Nids is wrong. Nids are not models that can have a quick highlight to make them look good.

The best way to paint Nids requires two methods. The carapace requires blending, and I'll use yakface's carnifex as an example, as it is so well done. http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/649-Hivefleet%20yakface%20Gunfex2.html?m=2

Anyway, the other method for the 'skin' or whatever you'd call it is washing. Get your base tone, then heavily wash it with the wash that would correspond with it, then once that is dried, reapply the base tone on the 'ribs' and other raised areas.

Every other detail, like the eyes and bone would be painted as normal.

yeah but blending is a bit rough for a new painter, and the results of drybrushing can be adequate.

A place I found loads of good tutorials when I first got back into painting is www.coolminiornot.com, just don't look through the galleries before or after your own painting session or you might develop a complex lol.

The model is basically one paint per surface. This is where everyone starts, but not what people pay you for.
The GW painting book http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1290203&prodId=prod1290009 is a good companion for the next steps. There are other good books by other companies as well. The best book I personally know is in French language.

As a guideline:
Next step is 2 paints per surface (add an ink/wash or quickshade) to make the lower parts darker.
Third step is 3-4 paints per surface, adding highlights (e.g. drybrush lighter colours on the higher surfaces to increase "visual depth" even more)

Next step would be to abandon this path and do it like professional painters, which is 10+ paint layers per surface ("blending").

This website is where painters post their stuff: http://www.coolminiornot.com/

i would suggest buying the "how to paint wargames minitures" book from games workshop it spells all techniques out in an easy to grasp fashion.

Show Her. Get a bone eg: Chaos Possessed spine or a Skull, or just the carpace of a 'nid, Then Paint it over a layer of bleached bone, show her then was it with devalin mud then show her, she'll really see the difference


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mabie Was the rattle bit on the tail of the trygon with badab black to show her

I personally love the black carapace with blue edging. Keep up the good work.

1> (more) Highlights and try the feathering technique
2> Not at this stage might need some more techniques.