Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I feel I hit a skill cealing. A low one. I can't seem to progress with my work, which I find unsatisfying in two ways... Firstly, no progression is gak. Second, my work doesn't feel good enough for me.
I watched tutorials, guides and how-to's, and with these I came up to my current "level". But since then, I don't feel I made any significant progress. So I needed a new way to improve (besides practice, practice, practice ofc).
So I had the following idea... I will present my model every step on the way and give it to your experienced eyes to dual-critque. This means I will post my current progress for you to review, but also I will add what I plan to do next. This way you can see what I wanted to do, what I want to do and give me feedback on all this things.
You can tell me what I could have done better and what I could do better. This seems to me to be a better way than "here is my finished miniature, tell me!"

So as a first step I assembled a squad of termies (Command Squad). I took great care to remove every mold line which would feth up the final result. I magnetised them as good as I could (still just starting with these) and primed them with Army Painter Bleached Bone. I gotta say I grow less a fan of spray primers the more I use them... Especially the "thick" army painters. It usually goes like "not enough... not enough.. still not covered... nope.... TOO MUCH!" GW actually work better for me it seems.
Anyway, 4/5 went out nice and I picked the best one to show and now work with.

The next step would be a Sepia Shade. Sepia is thinable with water (already tried), so I'd thin it down and cover the Termie with 2-3 layers.
Not sure what Highlighting to use though, I don't like edge highlighting on armor and the bone colours don't do good with OSL. I'm actually thinking about drybrushing with White Skull to give the surfaces some distinction.

Now it's the teachers turn

Whilst washing with sepia and drybrushing could look good, if you're trying to push yourself to do better models, perhaps you could try glazing / wet blending on the armour plates.

To help with the spray can being a bit thick and uncontrolable, try heating the can up just before use.

I run the hot tap and hold the can under it giving it a bit of a light shake and turning it slowly for a few minutes, then dry it off and give a vigorous shake. You want the can to remain warm in your hand after a good shaking (as this disperses the heat throughout the contents) but not so warm you cant hold onto it

Doing this makes the paint thinner and higher pressure which should help a little with the flow problems you described.
Another way to assist is to heat the job (in this case the model) up with a hair dryer first (.. perhaps not with finecast lol) having the job warm makes the paint dry faster on the surface which helps to avoid some of the problems with the paint being too wet/thick.

Alternatively, and this is innitially much more expensive than a single can of primer, an airbrush setup would serve you well. It pays for itself over time ; GW primer is what approx£10 a can... 10-15 cans later and you couldve had an airbrush setup for the same investment. Could be as cheap as a £20 chinese cheap airbrush + the Cheapest compressor you can find (which is likely around £40-60ish) or as expensive as a few hundred pound airbursh with a compressor costing twice that... theres a wide range, and the basic stuff will do a great job of base-coating a mini, and doing some basic shading techniques.

If you really want to do this experiment right it might have been better to talk about your final goal was before applying any paint at all. You've already sort of locked yourself in to a particular approach.

What is the color scheme you're going for? Standard Deathwing?

So with what you have done so far I think that I would pass on the Sepia and build my own wash out of Liquitex Airbrush Medium and... XV88. I would wash it with that, possibly a couple of times depending on what the first wash turned out like, then I would go back with the bone color and build that back up.

FYI - Here's how mine turned out:

I also am not fond of Army Painter spray primers for the exact same reason you say. It just does not seem to go on consistently; sometimes it's just right, sometimes it's gloopy and detail obscuring - and I say this as someone who is pretty sure I have good spray technique, and this was in mid-summer.

I prefer to prime with either 99 cent white or black rattlecans from Lowes in warm weather when I'm not in a rush; or more commonly now, Vallejo Surface Primer run through an airbrush. I actually haven't used a rattlecan in a while come to think of it.

Also be careful warming up the can, I warmed my army painter can a lil too much and when I went to shake it the bottom popped out so now the can wont stand upright...

While true, I feel I need to get better at the more basic techniques. I'm far from good enough imo to be able to use these advanced techniques correctly. After all, IM still at only 1400pts of painted models...

I definately will get me an airbrush this year. It IS kinda a hurdle, but if I have an airbrush, I want it to do more than basecoating, so it should be a more expensive model. Takes some consideration and time (and like above, if I can't do good brushwork an airbrush won't save me ) However, a cheap airbrush for Priming and Basecoating... hm. And being able to get good power weapons...
Thanks for the heating up tips, definately gonna do that now. I have a squad of DW Knights that need to be primed, so there's my guinea pigs for that.

Yes, the colourscheme should be Standard DW. Now this is something I can adequately do: acrylic medium. Good one. I will get me a bottle of this stuff. Easy to do and can't hurt too much So that's the next step: my own washes. Will take a day or two, had to order it at amazon.

Boy, on those pictures he's fething ugly...

Alrighty guys, I'm back. The Liquitex finally arrived today and I went to work, with this results.

So far I'd say I made a leap. Thinning with an acrylic medium helped and I like the XV-88 better than Sepia, which I find to bright for armor. But gosh, basically having to fine basecoat that thing all over is an ardous job...
The XV-88 did taint the armor quite a bit, I had to go over with Ushabti up to three times to get the bone back. I also fethed up some rivets in the crotch area and some minor recesses, but that's practice for me.
It is, however the best termie I have so far. Let's hope I can keep this up. I definately learned something and I plan to keep using this technique.
Any critique/feedback?

Boy, he's ugly in the pics... Zoom and flashlight do NOT bring out the pretty sides...
Edit: Removed the pics, decided I need to work on this a bit more today.

Next I'd go for some OSL (really try it again with Screaming Skull and a whitened SK) and then go for the reds on the weapon.

Here are the new pics. I finished the basecoat. Now you actially have something ts critique. "Paint this one red" isn't really constructive for me and you.

This is about the best I can do for now, and still.. he looks just off to me. I can't point my finger at it (besides those fething rivets... so tiny! Or is it the general... smudginess?)
Any hints appreciated...

Did you wash it? Looks like it needs a coat or two of Reikland Flesh Wash to give it some depth. That would be a simple technique to take care of that "off" feeling.

So far its primed with Army Painter bleached bone, shaded with selfmade XV-88 and then finished basecoats. So yes, the bone colour is washed. The blotches on the base are remnants of this. The lighting in the pic isn't that great I fear despite an extra lamp shining down it..

Hi Thairne,
I went into DEEP detail with a tutorial i did over at slave to painting a little while back - you may find some of that helpful?

http://www.slavetopainting.com.au/tutorials/troy-cleary-july-comp.aspx

The tutorial doesn't feature a clear picture for some reason, so see a proper picture of the finished product here:
http://www.slavetopainting.com.au/gallery/Troy%20Cleary.jpg.aspx

It's a painstaking process, but the results are something really worthwhile, i believe.
I hope you find it helpful.

I've read through it and the result is awesome!
I'll definately try your very in depth tutorial with my next one. Hope I'll choose the right colours since I currently use only Citadel's. I saw a conversion chart somewhere here... Hmmm... Gonna be a colorful batch...

I still would really like to know what went wrong here.. I need to learn from my mistakes and not only follow tutorials.

I don't think it's so much a case of 'what went wrong'. It's more a case of looking at what you do, how you do it and how it can be improved. There is no wrong, mate.

 Dullspork wrote:
FYI - Here's how mine turned out:

Get out of here, 'Eavy Metal! This thread's for beginners only!

Heh, guess we all need anything to strife for... But looking at those 9,5/10 is one of the reasons painting is a bit frustrating for me. You look at these pieces of art and just go "I WANT THAT TOO!" Then you sit down, do your very best and it comes out 'meh'.

@Chuloopa
Yes, so far I didn't do anything 'wrong', but it still looks off. And I want it to look not off I took another pic with the flashlight, but those are just horrible. But I think I figured out what's disturbing me... He looks somewhat grimy, not smooth enough. Looking at yours and Dullspork's, they look just way more cleaner and tidy. Now my precision isn't the best, but beside a little smudge on the left eye you basically cannot see without zoom it's pretty ok. So it's not that.
I think it's the build up with the bone colour that's setting me off. It's still somewhat grimy and dark with the shading...

I'll go and put a coat of 2/1 ushabti/screaming skull on the armor to brighten the colour, highlight with pure screaming skull and edge highlight with 1/2 white scar/screaming skull. That should be somewhat close to Chuloopa's effect. Might be I need more screaming skull in the first mix, I find those two colours are already really close.

This is it. I'm done. With the Termie and nearly with painting... the frustration keeps building and I keep not improving.
Add to that that I royally fethed up th eyes and only after sealing saw I missed that purity seal on the flamer... He's good enough to field, but considering the work and time and energy I put into it... Nope.

I'll give it one more shot with chuloopas guide and follow it STEP BY STEP with my own colours. If that doesn't work out... I dunno. Take a break or something.