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I know Flash... and I'm trying to stay vaguely positive about it all, but it's just thrown me somewhat. What with my motivation fairly low at the moment, this hasn't helped to pick it up... I did think this morning on the drive into work that this could mean that I could just paint the DEldar, and not worry if they weren't PERFECT, and that was a mildly satisfying thought... although a small part of me was screaming quite loudly "They HAVE to be PERFECT, dammit!" lol
Sadly, all I got for the Wraithlord was a finalist place (I'm not sure that counts as a commended?)

But you're spot on though - the judging is all too subjective in these things, especially when the actual judging criteria is fairly mysterious, and it really does depend on their frame of mind as well as the other entries.


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(thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure why I'm so dead set on getting a Golden Demon, other than it would be proof of outside validation, and it would be a measure of my work... Is that really all that important? [probably not])

Painting minitures, like many things, is a hobby for most people and is meant to be fun and rewarding in its own right.
We all like to receive praise for our efforts. But that shouldn't be the reason to be painting.

The painter is his or her own harshest critic but (I think) is the most important opinion. If you like what you are doing and can honestly sit back and say to yourself that you have done your best then that is what counts.

Any extra, like the occasional on here or a trophy from a competition, is just a bonus. It shouldn't be the driving force behind the painting because no one is going to win everything and if you are only interested in winning then the losses will be harder and motivation will fall and the wins will come less frequently.

Painting is an art, and art is supposed to come from the heart not the head. If you don't love your own work, then it won't show through for anyone else.

That's my thoughts anyway (although I'm sure I was going to say something else).

wise words Dr H, I agree with every single one of them. I know that my heart just isn't in it at the moment.

Well, don't force it. Let it happen naturally and you and your painting will be all the better for it. You'll soon have the painting itch again.

finnan: I haven't had time to go through your whole blog yet, but I'll make the time. Looks like fantastic work. What attracted me at a glance was the current subtitle for your thread... Props for the Pinky & the Brain reference. Brilliant!

I can relate to losing the nerve for a bit, itll come Fin you do great work and it will call back to you!~

Your painting is some of the best I have ever seen, and your Wraithlord conversions and painting is what inspired me to convert my own, its been built now for nearly 6 months but I will not touch it with a brush until I can get my blending as smooth as you get yours as I think that is the only way to do justice to it, your techniques have helped me improve my painting massively and the fact that you only made it to the finalist stages of Golden Demon last year I found unbelievable (I say only its far further than I'd ever get) I know your on a low ebb with the painting at the minute but when I get to that point reading a new book to do with my army of choice or looking forward to a new codex or new models for them always get me raring to carry on with them, (also just stepping away from the hobby altogether for a month or so can help as sometimes I get a little 40K burn out)
Anyway a bit rambling but what I'm trying to say is we all think your stuff is amazing, validation from outside things like competitions is nice but isn't the most important thing because these can sometimes be unfairly influenced and have weird judging criteria like GW seeming to like in my opinion an over use and often unrealistic use of weathering which I'm not a big fan of personally so I really wouldn't let it get you down, the most important part is you enjoy what you are doing
Sorry for the long rambling post :p

more dragons done, and I feel as if I'm warming up a bit more, so that can only be a good thing. Also minimal progress on the DEldar bases, but so minimal it's not really worth taking a shot of it.

I was a huge fan of the D&D cartoon back in the day, and of the Dragonlance novels, so it seemed obvious to do the dragons in the old chromatic colours ; ) I have a few more of them, so it might be time to address the alignment balance and do some metallic ones ; )
Pretty quick and rough (for me), but they're cool. The black on e doesn't show up too well because he's so dark, but you get the idea.

Good to see you getting back into it.

I like the two together and the black one.

AWWWWWWW those two widdle ones are so cute! :-) and the black one while not cute is pretty damn good too!

when people say you should start on something small to get back into it you really took it literally didn't you Woz! the detail blend on the eyes are brilliant, perhaps you should do something bright again to zing your mind into paint mode?

because you asked so nicely Nerd...
Still working on it - I need to put more yellow in as a highlight, but as ever, you get the idea. Someone said that for Golden Demon you should put just as much time in on the bases as the figure, well I'm certainly doing that with these - they're taking an AGE to do...
(the hole in it is for the pinning on the mini's foot) looking at the shots I want to go in and smooth out the glow - I'm trying out the fluorescent pigments I got and they're very powdery (even diluted down), so I think I'll go over the glow edge with some normal paint again...

That is going to look amazing Fin! a really different and good looking approach to a base, simple and very effective without overpowering the mini to go on it :-) you sir...... are BACK!

Dude you got some pretty cool shet here, and i enjoy it immensely, keep it troop.
Extra cheers for the whole tron theme, they fit eldar very well. Also them scourges you got, bloody fuq'n AWESOME. that bronze armour one was beast and don't let me get started on the white one.
Cool work and oh and



GO GO POWER RANGER

Looking forward to seeing more on the bases, that looks pretty good already.

some more work done on the bases. I need to beef up the glow on the purple one.

Looking good so far. I like where they are going.

Have you decided on what colour the figures are going to be? Wouldn't want them clashing with their bases...

no idea yet! I'm still thinking blacks, greys and yellows though, so I should be okay with the bases (I did think about that when I chose the colours!), and if that is the scheme, the purple ones will only serve to make the yellows stand out more... the other option is a deep ruby red... not sure though.

Good O. I was sure you would have thought about it, but I was seeing each new base with a different colour and could see scheme choices going out the window.

Sounds good with the yellow. But see how it goes. You know what you're doing.

More base progress. I'm not terribly pleased with the green one at the moment - I can't seem to get it bright enough, but I don't really want to resort to highlighting up with white, but I don't think I'm going to have too much choice. It's just too flat at the moment. I've always been a bit rubbish at doing greens, so this might be my Green Curse coming into play.
The others aren't looking too bad. One more to do which is going to be blue, so I'll see how that one goes. If it goes okay, I might switch the green to blue...

Looking cool.

Something you can try with the green is using yellow to lighten the green layers and, if you want to be really bold, highlight with yellow.

that is highlighting with yellow Dr H :( It's just coming out slightly 1970s avocado bathroom suite... I think I'm going to have to go with the white

Oh dear.

Maybe it's the picture, but I can't see yellow in it. The orange one for example, I can see it's a light orange through to red. The green one looks like it's green to green.
Not that I can teach you about painting. Can you not be more bold with the yellow? A bit like this:

the shot isn't great, I'll give you that, but I think the real problem is that there's a lack of room (plus my inability to do greens!) - it's such a tiny space that I don't have much space to blend from the green to the yellow and have enough of the yellow showing for it to register. I think the widest parts of the icons are about 2 or 3mm, so not much to work with... having said that, I'm not entirely sure why it's working on the other ones and not here as it's not as if there's a ton more room on them. I could try starting off with a darker green base and glow and build up from there...?

I hear you on the lack of space. Keep at it and good luck.

I blend from green to yellow all the time. It's tricky. You need to start very dark (as you suggested) and blend up through nearly pure yellow. Problem is that yellow paint is translucent... so it doesn't cover the green... rather it tints it. So to get a brighter highlight with yellow you've really got to be pretty heavy handed. However, it's always better to do many thin layers than one thick layer.

Here's an example of a recent figure just after airbrushing.


Then to make it a richer, more vibrant green... I washed the figure with somewhat diluted Biel-Tan Green, but then pulled most of the wash off... I just wanted to tint the figure towards blue... which the wash did nicely.


I used to shade up through white. The problem is that this seems to wash the figure out quite a bit, making it appear much more "flat". Something I wouldn't recommend for a GD entry.


Hope this helps!

<3 the dragons!

Hi Fin, I also suggest the blending up to yellow! and what Gits says is actually the best benefit to doing it, the yellow is translucent so you can adjust the level of brightness as you go with your layers, I know you're no stranger to multiple layers (ridiculously so) so you should be able to fine tune it easily? I blended the greens on my sallies with yellow as I wanted a look like the image on the front of the book. I could have gone further with pure yellows but I wasn't that committed time wise here's a couple of examples from my stuff.






So quoting from The Waterboy.................. "YOU CAN DO IIIIIIIT"

For what it's worth, Finn, I just wanted to share a little bit of how you've inspired people:




It's not as good or as original as what you put out, but I always appreciate your advice and hard work. I'm looking forward to more on your bases and whatever else you cook up. Also, keep drawing.

Thanks again.

Mars - as soon as I saw the image, I went "oooh!", which is always a good reaction! Loving the momentum and motion on the completed figure - great stuff. Glad I could give someone some help! : )

Gits & Nerd - I think yellow is the way to go for a vibrancy of colour with the green base, and some very tasty examples to have : ) What yellow did you use to highlight up? I tried it with Sunburst, but I think I might have to go up through Golden and Sunburst... Again, the problem is that I have a decided lack of space in which to work - I notice that both your blended highlights are super-smooth (and lovely - frankly jealous), but they also have quite a bit of room in which to work... I think I'm going to have to start again with Dark Angels Green as the base, work up through to a lighter green for the inside edge of the glow and outside edge of the icon, and then go in with the yellow... Or ditch the idea of green, and totally cop out and do another blue or orange...


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... the other option is to do the inside of the icon white, and then just have a coloured glow on the outside, lightsabre-style. That would be very strong and bright though...

Well, since I'm using Vallejo paints... I go from Vallejo Air "Yellow" up through Vallejo Game Color "Moon Yellow"... which is an equivalent to the old GW "Bad Moon Yellow", a color I adored.