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Ok so here is an Ogryn I did last night. took about 3-4 hours on him. I did the best I could. There was a wash under the white coat of primer but I don't think that came through. Besides that I only did black highlights on the pockets because they looked funny just matte brown.

I only paint with a brush and water. What can I do to get better? I have painted over 100 figures at this point and I still feel like no matter how much time I put in on a figure it still looks not as good as the effort.

Do I need to buy an air brush? Use higher quality paint? Am I not putting enough coats on(1-3 depending on color)? Do I need to learn how to highlight better?

I use one type of each color. Do I need to buy different shades and work in layers? I dono possibly I am being too hard on my own work. I mean it's great Table Top Quality but when I take a picture of them and look at them up close they are not as great.

I'm by no means a painting expert, and within a few gours you're likely to get a flood of advice from far more experienced painters than me, however here is my best shot:

Expand your pallette a little more, my process for painting pretty much anything goes as follows: Prime, Basecoat, wash, reapply base, highlight, edge highlight, possibly wash again.

Currently I own: 4 reds (including a glaze), 5 greens (including a wash), 4 Browns (including wash) and 3 metals (plus a black wash not included) and when painting these colours will likely use every pot of each colour for a different part.

Edge highlighting will mean you wont need to apply black just to change up your pouches, it will already be defined by light and shadow.

The washes here let you add depth and shadow, complemented by the edge highlighting, doing all this in thin layers helps give a developing colour gradient without becoming chunky.

Pick your colours carefully, the green on the gun for example seems a little flat and blends somewhat too well with the rest of the miniature, you could do with varying the colour in some details to draw the eye into the finer details.

Watch youtube tutorials, there are some amazing painters willing to share their tips for free, it is the best resource you can get.

An airbrush is not vital, everything I do is with a basecoat and standard GW brush, water and normal (occasionally thinned) GW paints. It just takes patience and practice.

Edit:

As an example my Ogryn uses a similar colour pallette to yours, but by expanding it using a number of washes, battle damage and edge highlighting gives a more "natural" finish, again this is nowhere near masterclass level but its a good example



Flesh is base coated, washed with devlan, re applied base coat on muscular ridges, and highlighted with a lighter flesh tone.

Melcavuk. You are awesome! The way you modeled your figures is going to give me nightmares. They are so wicked creepy and have so many little details and bits all over.

Well here I have a few snipers that I have used a wash on and put a few more details into. It's been a while since I painted anything and I think I am just to afraid to go in and do anything to the figures. I also put a Bone 'ed next to my other ogryn for reference (Both Ogryn don't have a wash atm). The Bone'ed was much more detailed and had more things for me to paint. What about these?

Hi there, like Melcavuk, I'm no expert painter (and not nearly as good as he is!!), but I'll ofter some advice that I'm just getting comfortable with too.

First and foremost: your paint jobs are pretty good. Those guys look like they'd look great on the table, so you should be satisfied with that. Buuuuut... I also know how when you take a photo, or look too closely all the imperfections jump out at you.

Get yourself Devlan Mud. This is my current favorite wash. I use it undiluted on bases to make them look really, well, muddy. I dilute it 1:1 with water (I never go so far as to use anything fancier than tap water - some folks only use distilled or whatnot.) and use it to wash faces and hands. This alone will make your models look quite a bit nicer! The photos above don't capture the details in the cheeks, eyes, nose, fingers, etc (and your eyes won't either) - splashing on some diluted wash will add those shadows that you'd see if the model was life sized. You could also consider adding some paint medium (the pigment-less liquid that paint is made from, I believe) - I think the new GW stuff is called "Lahmian Medium". This thickens your wash, and makes it somewhat transluscent. I use this in black washes, and it makes for some absolutely amazing shadows. If you make a full pot of your diluted wash, add one or two tiny drops of a surfactant (eg, dishsoap) - this will reduce the surface tension of your wash, and allow it to flow into cracks better. Another thing: when the wash is completely (really completely!) dry, hit the high points with the original base color to allow them to "pop" back out at the viewer. I keep a full pot of black wash made up this way that I use on just about every model I paint. It adds a really nice effect, and I cringe just a little bit when I think back to how flat looking my models used to be without it...

Then there's drybrushing. Some hate it, but if done right it can look really nice. Patience and slow color changes are the name of the game here. Try drybrushing a textured base first: paint it scorched brown, drybrush bestial brown, then drybrush snakebite leather, then drybrush bubonic brown (or by that time, just do a white to finish it up). Let it dry for a bit, and slop down some Devlan Mud!

But I just discovered the optivisor. A super-dorky headset that magnifies 2-3 times what you're looking at. Holy smokes, I'm a convert! Be sure to get a good quality one, with two lenses (two eyes), as the monocular ones are really hard to get used to and you'll end up painting eyes on foreheads, etc. Just do a google on it, I paid about 30 US$ and it was worth every penny. I can now outline, instead of drybrush. I never thought I'd be able to do that, as my hands are not that steady. With the uber-dork visor, my hands are steady as a rock. That alone has really upped my painting game.

Anyway, some food for thought. Let us know how it works out.

@ OP Gotta say your skin tones are good! you could add a little more depth potentially by washing with a brown/dark tone before highlighting with the top color you used? (could even base dark brown, highlight tan or w/e, wash brown, then re highlight.. thats what i like to do with my orks... well using green wash/paint of course )


The metallics you have that seem to not look as you wish could be muted a lot/look a lot more soft/natural if you washed them (especially copper on bullets for instance)

as others have said, try hardlining some highlights around the permiter of geometry, then lightly dry brush between the edges for highlights (my 2 teef at least)

The snipers do look a lot better I have to say!!!

I am by no means a great painter, but figure you'd rather hear something than nothing!

If you put the time into each piece to base/highlight/wash in a similiar color and then re highlight using the brighter of them, after the wash (using drybrush/hard lining edge lining whatever you call it) (if you did employ these techniques, then as you feared they didn't come across much in the original ogryn)


really like your camo job on snipers =]


keep em comin!!!



EDIT: quote from OP "use one type of each color. Do I need to buy different shades and work in layers? I dono possibly I am being too hard on my own work. I mean it's great Table Top Quality but when I take a picture of them and look at them up close they are not as great. "

Yes that is what the difference it appears between your skin tones and green on armor. Start your armor using a dark green (or brown or whatever color), then highlight it using a lighter shade, then wash it using an ink of the same base color/darker than the highlight you just used, then re high light using the lighter shade you used before (after giving ink a good 20-30 min to fully dry)...If you go back over the ones already painted, pick a green in a slightly lighter shade and try highlighting the edges of armor then light dry brush the raised areas over the entire thing. could even try inking them at this point and re highlighting, depending on how much work you want to put into your existing models. They are perfect examples of good tabletop quality, but if you are personally striving to improve your skills no time better than the present!!! I typically use agrax earthshade over the clothing/metal/bullets/any gear my orks have to give it some depth/dirtiness. I think that it could translate well over to your guard as well, but just my 2 teef again. I'm just a lil' git.

@ OP: The scouts are a far better example of how well you paint, on the much larger and comparatively less detailed Ogryn it can be hard to give him real definition, on the finer detailed scouts it showcases that you have the baqsics down and can do TT style well. With the right highlights the models would really pop to accentuate the colours you already have down.

One other thing that might be working against you is the photography, the vast majority of my pictures are on a white backdrop (literally an A4 envelope folded in half), done with my wifes DSLR, and with a flash gun and free standing lamp. This way you can really show off the job you have done and do it justice (photos are the enemy, they show up every detail we'd rather hide). You can also use photo editing software to adjust the colour balance to better reflect how the model actually looks (computer monitors can distort the colours away from how they appear to your eye).

There's a tonne of technical things that can bog you down in painting but when you get the hang of them they become second nature (I still only know the basics), the most important advice I can give is to have FUN. I have dropped so many armies because painting them became a chore, its part of the reason I convert so much and tend to complete jobs that amuse me more than full working armies. If painting is becoming a chore then take a break, people paint better when they enjoy what they're doing.

Wow TY everyone and keep the advice coming. Yes now I think I am going to go back to those ogryn and carefully add some black ink / wash to the majority of the figures and then go back and Dry Brush the skin at the high points.

A quick way to improve the models look is to give the entire model a wash.

Quickest way to do this is to buy GW/Citadel wash (now called "Shades"). You simply brush on more of the stuff then you think you need over the entire model, letting it pool in the recessed areas.

What it does is darken recessed areas giving the impression of shade and at the same time making raised details stand out.

Looking at the GW website with the new Shade pots, you want are Agrax Earthshade for a brownish dirty look (eg, for skin/faces) and Nuln Oil for a dark look (eg, for weapons/clothing)

-Edit- The washes are transparent, tinted a certain color.

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:I use one type of each color.

In my opinion, this is your main problem. It's a bit of a simplification, but basically no colour looks good on its own. For example, the green armour plates on your ogryns would look a lot better with a darker shade of green for a base and your basic green on top (you can also do basecoat, wash and basecoat again). This creates depth for the paint job and makes it look better. Once you get the hang of this, you can practice highlighting a lighter shade on the edges that would naturally catch light on them.

Also, how do you prime your miniatures?

paints and tools (like an airbrush) are only 30% of your results!
if you get an airbrush you will have to invest a LOT of money and its a hard tool to master, or even use properly!

practice, thinning your paints, using (de)saturation and hue's (color theory) to shade, highlight and match colors... those are things that will make your paintjob look better!

Pancritic wrote:

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:I use one type of each color.

In my opinion, this is your main problem. It's a bit of a simplification, but basically no colour looks good on its own. For example, the green armour plates on your ogryns would look a lot better with a darker shade of green for a base and your basic green on top (you can also do basecoat, wash and basecoat again). This creates depth for the paint job and makes it look better. Once you get the hang of this, you can practice highlighting a lighter shade on the edges that would naturally catch light on them.

Also, how do you prime your miniatures?

White spray paint matte (2 coats) - then I dip in a 10(Possibly more than 10)-1-1 water black paint paint dish soap. They look awesome like a Black and white comic strip and it makes it crazy easy to see details.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also rather than buying a whole new color just for highlights couldn't I just mix in a tiny bit of white or black to the original color on a paint palette to make the color?

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:

Pancritic wrote:

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:I use one type of each color.

In my opinion, this is your main problem. It's a bit of a simplification, but basically no colour looks good on its own. For example, the green armour plates on your ogryns would look a lot better with a darker shade of green for a base and your basic green on top (you can also do basecoat, wash and basecoat again). This creates depth for the paint job and makes it look better. Once you get the hang of this, you can practice highlighting a lighter shade on the edges that would naturally catch light on them.

Also, how do you prime your miniatures?

White spray paint matte (2 coats) - then I dip in a 10(Possibly more than 10)-1-1 water black paint paint dish soap. They look awesome like a Black and white comic strip and it makes it crazy easy to see details.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also rather than buying a whole new color just for highlights couldn't I just mix in a tiny bit of white or black to the original color on a paint palette to make the color?

That is an option but not always the best policy. Take red for example...If you try to alter the color of a red with white your going to lean towards pinks, and thats not what you would want as you would want a lighter red. If you add black your going to start towards the color of maroon...which could work, but prob not. So now we have to look into getting premixed shades because we don't want maroon or pink to highlight or low light. Red Gore or whatever colors they are called now would be your dark, blood red would go on next, then you could go to a smaller section of blazing orange, and if you really wanted to a thin line of vomit brown. Greens - dark angels green, snot green, scorpion green 9think thats the names)

If you really want to save money and mix your own paints invest in a wet pallete, and the colors white, black, red, blue, and yellow, some washs and shades. It takes a lot longer to mix your colors and to continue getting the colors mixed the same each time. With those colors listed you can almost make any color - invest in a color wheel as well if your mixing.

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:
Also rather than buying a whole new color just for highlights couldn't I just mix in a tiny bit of white or black to the original color on a paint palette to make the color?

If you want to mix your own paints for highlighting and shading, you need to learn some colour theory. Like Kal-El said, adding white to red makes it more pink, so you need to know how colours behave in relation to one another.
Try this site for information about saturation and hue.

Those pictures you posted with the undercoated ogryn look a bit odd. All the white seems to have pooled in the recesses of the miniature. When you spraycoat them, do you make sure that the primer covers the miniatures in an even fashion?

Since then I have painted all my ogryn and I only applyed a wash to the derp de derp ogryn I made out of a mold and green stuff.

THE new GW washes are suck. Seraphim Sepia as its called is labeled and looks like what Devlin Mud was. It comes out as a rust color and i think it ruined it. Agrax Earth shade comes out like a very light grey color. I ended up making my own wash with brown and a tiny bit of black in an empity GW paint pot. It came out 10x better than the new GW toilet water they are selling.

I will post pictures of the ruined Ogryn and the wash I used on my Spetzna Storm Trooper Squad.

In defense of the new GW washes:

Agrax Earthshade is my new Devlan Mud, its a shade lighter, doesnt apply quite as... vigerously but pools better in recesses without leaving smears on upper surfaces.

Seraphim Sepia is good for old clothes, flags etc to give it a worn look or an off white but I can see what you mean here.

And remember nothing is ruined, near enough every model can be stripped and repainted.

Melcavuk wrote:In defense of the new GW washes:

Agrax Earthshade is my new Devlan Mud, its a shade lighter, doesnt apply quite as... vigerously but pools better in recesses without leaving smears on upper surfaces.

Seraphim Sepia is good for old clothes, flags etc to give it a worn look or an off white but I can see what you mean here.

And remember nothing is ruined, near enough every model can be stripped and repainted.

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:Wow TY everyone and keep the advice coming. Yes now I think I am going to go back to those ogryn and carefully add some black ink / wash to the majority of the figures and then go back and Dry Brush the skin at the high points.

Melcavuk wrote:In defense of the new GW washes:

Agrax Earthshade is my new Devlan Mud, its a shade lighter, doesnt apply quite as... vigerously but pools better in recesses without leaving smears on upper surfaces.

Seraphim Sepia is good for old clothes, flags etc to give it a worn look or an off white but I can see what you mean here.

And remember nothing is ruined, near enough every model can be stripped and repainted.

Commissar_Tiberius wrote:Since then I have painted all my ogryn and I only applyed a wash to the derp de derp ogryn I made out of a mold and green stuff.

THE new GW washes are suck. Seraphim Sepia as its called is labeled and looks like what Devlin Mud was. It comes out as a rust color and i think it ruined it. Agrax Earth shade comes out like a very light grey color. I ended up making my own wash with brown and a tiny bit of black in an empity GW paint pot. It came out 10x better than the new GW toilet water they are selling.

I will post pictures of the ruined Ogryn and the wash I used on my Spetzna Storm Trooper Squad.

In defence of it being toilet water. It smelled like farts when I opened it. It had the paint all globed up at the bottm and it refused to mix with shaking, had to use a brush. Finally I don't know how you use shades but normally I do a nice coat over the entire model of one shade then I will go back and dry brus over anything that got too dark.