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So I'm here, I figured out I may need a push for getting my things done in the warhammer world so I decided to take a little diary of my WIPS.

I've started the hobby as a 10ish years old in 2003 and stopped after a bit because of the shops getting closed: during the two years I've been trying to play a bit, hanging out at the shop and mostly NOT painting or doing the modelling part of the hobby. I've, late in 2015, started back and with some trades/investments I managed to get a nice solid base of models to work on 40k and fantasy wise.

I'm not a painter, nor I am an artistic guy; I study physics (1st year of master) at the university and the maximum I do is taking some photos with my cellphone during holidays.

I own:
-Dark Angels as first and main army in the 40k universe. I decided to match the last "loyal" "legion" because of dark vengeance and the fact that I loved the BG, I left my old (and few to be honest) Black Templars and joined the Lion's army.
-Space Wolves as second because during the first deal I made I got some models from the old introduction set and loved the miniatures. I know, they (DA and SW) don't hang out very well but probably because of that I'm really into fielding them (sporadically) together
-Tau very few models, I can deploy 500ish points; a friend of mine decided to give up and I got his things
-Orks for kill team, I shared the "assault on black reach" with another friend and got the Orks and templates part for a really small amount of money (let's say the same as a blister )

-Wood Elves as main army for Fantasy/AoS or whatever you call it. This is the first ever army I really loved, I started with the Empire battalion because an aunt of mine decided to gift it on christmas without knowing what I really liked. I'd say I can play a full 2k games although I still miss some key choices (special troops mostly)
-Vampire Counts I really like these guys, as for Tau and Orks I got them via trange ways but in the end I have a nice starting point to upgrade in the next years
-Middhleneim Mordheim band; those are the last empire soldiers I own from the batallion, figured out my cousin had some archers from the weekly magazine that was sold 10years ago and with free company I made them

First miniature:

Last miniature:


I'm now Working on:

-Learning to paint and assembly models, the first tactical squad is over for base colors and looking for suggestions on how to go further

Things I did:
-First Ever miniatures http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-100115-51607_First%20Ever%20Miniatures.html
-Second Try http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692048.page#8850850
-Stitches and scrolls http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692048.page#8853431
- Oiling the itches http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692048.page#8855145

After a while I found the time to start again. I now have bought citadel's base colours as the vallejo ones I was using felt like (with my grade of skill which of course is as low as it can get) shading and not basing.

I'll be posting some updates in the next days

Caliban green here I come

Looking forward to seeing more of your models.

Tip: put your pics in your posts, rather than just a link to your gallery - more people will look at them then.

 Whittlesey40k wrote:
Looking forward to seeing more of your models.

Tip: put your pics in your posts, rather than just a link to your gallery - more people will look at them then.

Thank you

I made two new marines but I changed to citadel's "Caliban Green" and "Mephiston Red" from the vallejo counterparts. I felt like those were already too much diluted, a friend of mine made me try the citadel and forget about the wet palette (probably that too made the colours too diluted for me being a beginner and not knowing the ratios).

BTW these are the new comers:




I also painted the swords and wings of the other marines.

Good start to a nice army there.

It might help to get some more light on them for photos. Lots of shadow makes it hard to get a good look at them, particularly when discussing shades of colors.

 Nevelon wrote:
Good start to a nice army there.

It might help to get some more light on them for photos. Lots of shadow makes it hard to get a good look at them, particularly when discussing shades of colors.

Thanks, I'll try to follow your hint! At the moment I'm just using base colors and even doing that I'm terrible xD

Today I made two new space marines and dedicated a bit of more attention to details: not going outside borders and trying to have a heterogeneous color as of base.

I didn't have time to base them with the martial red but I'll be doing that probably tomorrow.

As of now these are the two new guys:









I also build (up to the top but without turrets) a rhino, during the building I also cut myself and asked my gf for a stitch, that was the stitch she gave me xD

Good progress.

Rhinos are one of those things you should think about har far you want to glue it. You basic rhino hull is used fo so many different tanks, it’s nice to be able to swap things around. The last few I’ve done I left the tracks off and painted them separately. Makes it a bit easier IMHO.

Have you worked with washes before? Your purity seals looks like they could use a little splash. Really brings out a lit of detail/texture with minimal work. That and drybrushing are the lazy painter’s friend.

What Nevelon said. Nuln oil for the guns and armor joints. Basically where you have metal. Make sure to shake them very well, then add 1:1 ratio with water (1 drop of paint to 1 drop of water, making sure it's clean) then lightly wash. Remember, it's always easier to add a second layer than to go back over it again and start over.

Then do the same with Earthshade for your seals or parchments.

If you really want your models to stand out, practice some drybrushing (youtube or google how to do drybrushing, it's really easy) and dust your future models lightly with a lighter green before doing the red/silver/white/parchment.

Rhinos are one of those things you should think about har far you want to glue it. You basic rhino hull is used fo so many different tanks, it’s nice to be able to swap things around. The last few I’ve done I left the tracks off and painted them separately. Makes it a bit easier IMHO.

Yeah I'll be leaeving the rhino without the top glued at least for a bit. I bought it second handed but he didn't have the razorback turrets... I'm going to search for those later on.

What Nevelon said. Nuln oil for the guns and armor joints. Basically where you have metal. Make sure to shake them very well, then add 1:1 ratio with water (1 drop of paint to 1 drop of water, making sure it's clean) then lightly wash. Remember, it's always easier to add a second layer than to go back over it again and start over.

As of washes no, I only tried covering the models with base colors without leaving the borders... I have nuln oil but it's really liquid how to I apply that? Do I need to place it on the palette (a plastic dish in my case) as the other colors or? I watched some videos on youtube but they didn't explain that too much...

If you really want your models to stand out, practice some drybrushing (youtube or google how to do drybrushing, it's really easy) and dust your future models lightly with a lighter green before doing the red/silver/white/parchment.

I'm watching out for drybrushing right now

I also destroyed way too many brushes in the first few tries... I had 1,2,4 da vinci's and the 1 has now two tips while the 4 has been completely annihilated, I now have bought another 4 with longer bristles and I feel like they are better

Drybrushing is what you do with brushes after you’ve already killed them. It does not do kind things to them. My primary drybrush is a splayed wreck.

(side note, look into brush care. Good brushes are worth investing in, and taking care of. Don’t let paint get into the ferrule, and use some brush soap. Synthetic brushes are going to curl, nature of the beast)

Washes can be used in a number of ways. I use them straight out of the pot. You can either use them to coat a whole surface, or targeted into crevices to add some shading.

 Nevelon wrote:
Drybrushing is what you do with brushes after you’ve already killed them. It does not do kind things to them. My primary drybrush is a splayed wreck.

(side note, look into brush care. Good brushes are worth investing in, and taking care of. Don’t let paint get into the ferrule, and use some brush soap. Synthetic brushes are going to curl, nature of the beast)

Washes can be used in a number of ways. I use them straight out of the pot. You can either use them to coat a whole surface, or targeted into crevices to add some shading.

Sorry, but that's fundamentally incorrect. There are brushes designed specifically for drybrushing... I have several, have had the same ones for almost a year and they are still in extremely good shape. If you're using rounded tip brushes for dry brushes, well no wonder.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 suxdavide wrote:

Rhinos are one of those things you should think about har far you want to glue it. You basic rhino hull is used fo so many different tanks, it’s nice to be able to swap things around. The last few I’ve done I left the tracks off and painted them separately. Makes it a bit easier IMHO.

Yeah I'll be leaeving the rhino without the top glued at least for a bit. I bought it second handed but he didn't have the razorback turrets... I'm going to search for those later on.

What Nevelon said. Nuln oil for the guns and armor joints. Basically where you have metal. Make sure to shake them very well, then add 1:1 ratio with water (1 drop of paint to 1 drop of water, making sure it's clean) then lightly wash. Remember, it's always easier to add a second layer than to go back over it again and start over.

As of washes no, I only tried covering the models with base colors without leaving the borders... I have nuln oil but it's really liquid how to I apply that? Do I need to place it on the palette (a plastic dish in my case) as the other colors or? I watched some videos on youtube but they didn't explain that too much...

If you really want your models to stand out, practice some drybrushing (youtube or google how to do drybrushing, it's really easy) and dust your future models lightly with a lighter green before doing the red/silver/white/parchment.

I'm watching out for drybrushing right now

I also destroyed way too many brushes in the first few tries... I had 1,2,4 da vinci's and the 1 has now two tips while the 4 has been completely annihilated, I now have bought another 4 with longer bristles and I feel like they are better

Lol ok, I seem to have missed a few things Nuln oil is a wash. Meaning it has a higher concentration of water so that it is designed to not cover up your base coat. Grab a junk model, clean it off some, grab a brush full of nuln oil and apply it. See what it does, how it flows, and how it dries. This is the basic of a wash. Glazes and Tints are in this family, but they act differently because of the chemicals mixed in. There's more to it as well, like sometimes you'll see that paint and therefore washes, are made of little pigments. Pigmented paint sometimes likes to dry like coffee. I.E it spreads away from the center, and this can sometime make it move away from the cracks as it dries. This is not normally something you have to worry about, but for future information, grab a medium or a fluid that you mix in that retards or slows down the drying process. This causes the pigments to have a longer time to settle into cracks. I use Pledge floor care, that you can buy in any grocery store.

As for brushes, dont destroy good bushes. Buy a drybrush brush, GW sells them, Vallejo sells them, reaper too. I buy my stuff from www.thewarstore.com but you can get them anywhere, and you'll def want a few different sizes. These are stiffer brushes that are designed to be beat up. But the most important thing is to maintain your brushes. Wash them gently in soap after every painting session, wash them out OFTEN. As in every few minutes while your painting. There was an awesome thread here on dakka or bolter and chainsword where everyone got together to give a tip of the day, if you can find it, read it all.

But generally, for your first lessons, follow the basics.

1: learn to primer correctly. Wash the model in thin paint i.e if you prime black, give it a thin paint (not quite a wash) coat of black.
2: Paint your base coats
3: Learn and apply drybrush coats
4: Wash the models, the thinner the paint, the more work but the better it looks
5: Pick out details
6: Finish the model

Here's some links to my painting blogs:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/700248.page

http://imgur.com/a/w59hI

Thank you for your kind and exhaustive words

Today I cleaned a bit of mess and used nuln oil all over the miniatures, I'm kinda worried I did something wrong: the miniatures look "oiled" but deeper than before (if I understood it correctly this "wash" is supposed to place shadows) and a bit darker, I like the result but I probably need to use a bit less on the future models

Here are the pics:





I only posted the two last I made even if the others have been oiled too

Lol you did alright Remember, you always want to thin the wash. And make sure you shake it up really well, and mix really well with the clean water. But yes, that's why I told you to use a throwaway model that doesn't mean anything to you. Yes, the wash makes things "deeper" by adding shadow and inversely making details and highlights stick out more than before, bringing detail to the model.

The next thing to try is to "pull" the wash away from areas you don't want that much. Remember, when painting, the most paint ends up where the brush stops. So take a shoulder pad for example. You want the top to be your highlight because that's where light hits. So start your wash there and pull your brush down to the bottom. Then do it again from top to bottom next to it, and keep doing that till you have very little wash on the top and more towards the bottom where the shoulder pad should be darker. If you end up with too much wash, you can take a dry brush and soak some up, wipe it off and do it again.

 nintura wrote:
Lol you did alright Remember, you always want to thin the wash. And make sure you shake it up really well, and mix really well with the clean water. But yes, that's why I told you to use a throwaway model that doesn't mean anything to you. Yes, the wash makes things "deeper" by adding shadow and inversely making details and highlights stick out more than before, bringing detail to the model.

The next thing to try is to "pull" the wash away from areas you don't want that much. Remember, when painting, the most paint ends up where the brush stops. So take a shoulder pad for example. You want the top to be your highlight because that's where light hits. So start your wash there and pull your brush down to the bottom. Then do it again from top to bottom next to it, and keep doing that till you have very little wash on the top and more towards the bottom where the shoulder pad should be darker. If you end up with too much wash, you can take a dry brush and soak some up, wipe it off and do it again.

Thank you again
I didn't do anything today, I'm quite busy and the Italy catastrophe didn't make me fall for painting.

Yikes, I guess that was a bit close to home for you. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

Here, I wanted to show you what a proper wash looks like when finished I wanted to find my skaven that I did using what's called "grayscale" washing as I'm really proud of them, but unfortunately I doubt I'll ever find them after warseer went down.

I started off with a black base coat, drybrushed a few layers of successively lighter grays, then drybrushed the demons, and once those were dry, washed the model a few times with different colors on different parts.

I painted a bit more today and wanted to change from just the bolters so I painted a missile launcher guy, primered others and assembled 3 plasma cannons.

These are today's photos



Yes the bazooka boy is missing a shoulder-pad but I only noticed it after priming while base coating, I'll be adding that tomorrow since I wasn't at home



@nintura thanks mate, I'll try dry brushing as next step after base coating and shading all the models I actually own ( I miss 10ish tactical men, 5 terminators 6 bikes and the heroes :( ) but before the vehicles (land raider, dreadnought, 2 rhinos) and assembling of the others (3 speeders, 4 grav cannon, 5 dithering knights).

Also by trading I gave my few Tau-s for a small force of Grey Knights (2 dread knights 10 troops 1 draigo), so I now own:
Dark Angels as main force
Space Wolves as main allied detachment (but I want to get rid of some of these guys and keep just QG, cavalry and 1 troop)
Ultramarines (1 librarian, 5 scouts, 3 centurion devastators)

Obviously all the models are not painted xD

Looking good! Just need a bit of drybrushing to bring in highlights, or if you have subscribed to GW TV on facebook, watch the salamander painting video they posted today and pay attention to the "edge highlighting" section. Those will really bring out the detail in your models.

 nintura wrote:
Looking good! Just need a bit of drybrushing to bring in highlights, or if you have subscribed to GW TV on facebook, watch the salamander painting video they posted today and pay attention to the "edge highlighting" section. Those will really bring out the detail in your models.

Yeah I noticed your post after I replied so I edited the post, I didn't want to be rude and dodge your advices
I'll give youtube a look then!

Remember, dry brush before putting all your base coats on. You want to work from inside out, like this:

1. Prime and primary base coat. In your case, Dark Angels Green
2. Drybrush (lightly!) on top of the green
3. Wash primary base coat, in your case Nuln Oil or Drakenhof Nightshade. Remember to thin.
4. Base coat rest of model, like Eagle, shoulder pad details, eye lens, guns.
5. Wash rest of model.
6. Pick out details and highlights, like edge highlighting.
7. Finish with a varnish or matte spray.

Cool, cool. Dark Angels are looking good. The Chaos dude with the powerfist looks wicked. Well done.

EDC

 nintura wrote:
Remember, dry brush before putting all your base coats on. You want to work from inside out, like this:

1. Prime and primary base coat. In your case, Dark Angels Green
2. Drybrush (lightly!) on top of the green
3. Wash primary base coat, in your case Nuln Oil or Drakenhof Nightshade. Remember to thin.
4. Base coat rest of model, like Eagle, shoulder pad details, eye lens, guns.
5. Wash rest of model.
6. Pick out details and highlights, like edge highlighting.
7. Finish with a varnish or matte spray.

Oh okok! What is the Varnish spray?

@evildrcheese Thanks man, I know they're not the best but I've started roughly 15 models ago, I'm writing this as a motivation!

Varnish is a finish that protects your models from dings and scratches. It's see-through but makes your models shiny. Some people don't like that too well, but it doesn't bother me. There are other alternatives too. I use Pledge floor care by Johnson and Johnson. This stuff is magical and you can buy it at nearly any grocery store, or something like it.

I just take a brush full and slop it on the model like you're doing a wash. The more the better, but do at least 2 coats and let them dry for a day between coats. This does a couple things, first it protects your model. Secondly, it makes the color look deeper, sort of like several clear coats on a car make the paint job look better.

Also, this stuff is great with paint. I mix it in with my paints, with water, and it thins it down while also reducing the drying time, and makes it easier to paint.

 nintura wrote:
Varnish is a finish that protects your models from dings and scratches. It's see-through but makes your models shiny. Some people don't like that too well, but it doesn't bother me. There are other alternatives too. I use Pledge floor care by Johnson and Johnson. This stuff is magical and you can buy it at nearly any grocery store, or something like it.

I just take a brush full and slop it on the model like you're doing a wash. The more the better, but do at least 2 coats and let them dry for a day between coats. This does a couple things, first it protects your model. Secondly, it makes the color look deeper, sort of like several clear coats on a car make the paint job look better.

Also, this stuff is great with paint. I mix it in with my paints, with water, and it thins it down while also reducing the drying time, and makes it easier to paint.

Atm I'm still finishing so I mustn't, as if I understood it correctly it freezes the model in its state without risk of damaging but negating the option to work on it anymore right?
I did a bit of inventory of my miniatures and I may be a little off but these are the things I own

1 master (Dark Vengeance
1 librarian power armor (Dark Vengeance
6 bikes (Dark Vengeance
20ish tactical marines with bolters
1 laser
1 missile launcher
5 normal terminators (Dark Vengeance
1 land raider (double laser)
2 rhino
5 assault marines (1 flamer
4 plasma cannon

to build
4 grav cannon
5 deathwing knights
3 land speeder

Those are the Dark Angels forces I own, I also have some troops from other chapters:
Space Wolves
1 QG on Wolf
3 Wolves cavalry
many termies and 10ish troops

Grey Knights
1 Draigo
10 troops
2 Dreadknights

UltraMarines
1 Librarian (termy or to be switches with the DA one
5 Scouts
3 devastator centurion with grav

No, not really. You can still paint over varnish, certainly the Pledge floor care that I use. It's a bit glossy, so you just have to be careful, but there's plenty of professional painters who put a coat on after reaching certain milestones because they work on their models for so long, they don't want to risk damaging it before it's finished. Ultimately, just test it out on some old model down the road

This is an old photo of the things I got, I just found it under a pile of trash in my dropbox



Many have been replaced (assault mostly which I didn't use) and the wolves are on the fly for leaving (too many termies) although I really love the land raider and one day I will surely play it with Deathwing Knights (and probably swap the weapons to allow a QG to stay in too).

Today was Plasma day, I decided to change a bit from the monotony of bolters and primer a plasma with his backpack, unlucky while resting wind made the dish fly and I lost the backpack, I then cut the wires and made him wear a normal one :(





I then based it but will upload the photo tomorrow once the base has dried

The last days I also planned on some upgrades: I bought my second BaC and looked into what legion to join

Looking better! Just need to focus on the wash a bit more, and they'll be tabletop ready!

 nintura wrote:
Looking better! Just need to focus on the wash a bit more, and they'll be tabletop ready!

Yup ^^ I'll probably go for a rhino or dreadnought next days

Rhinos are needed on the tabletop, but I hate painting them. Dread are more optional, but one of my favorite things to build and paint.

You are progressing nicely!

I today tried to teach my girl how to paint without myself knowing how to!

I'll be posting images later