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thanks Hangfire, very much apprecated : )

yeah, I just use water to thin the paints down. I even thin the basecoat paints down - I think they're far too thick.

Just over a year since I returned to the hobby, and although I haven't been in the mood to paint much lately, there's still a lot on my desk to be painted! (and I do have a bad habit of buying even MORE miniatures, even though I have half-painted ones to finish off)
here's a couple of cool minis from Reaper that were too hard to resist: Sea Elves and a nasty mermaid to plot their demise.

I hope my skills have improved in a year - I know that I can certainly blend better than I could, and my flesh has come on leaps and bounds. Here's to another year of painting : )

NICE!!!!

The colors on your models, in particular the blue is amazing! great work!

thank you guys : )

Snow Day Fun
So here I am, languishing at home and all depressed because I can't be a productive member of society and go to work because of the darn weather [shakes fist at sky]... and, goshdarnit, I *totally* forgot to bring work home with me... [snigger]

What else is a lad to do with his time but paint? So here's my little just-for-fun Snow Day Project. The River Trolls are really nice models, and I'm surprised I resisted them as long as I did. I originally intended to just have his head poking out of the water, but the back's a bit humpy, so had to have more of him, but that's cool, maybe that can be the next one. Details and shading left to do, and the weapon of course, and then it's time for the water effects, which I think I might have to be quite liberal with : )
Alway interesting that I notice the bits I have to clean up in the photos, but not while I'm painting the actual model!

enjoy : )

Good to see you back Finnan, it's been a while.

I gotta ask, your red Striking Scorpion back on page one. What red did you use and what colour ink did you wash it with?

Cheers buddy.

good to be back : )

I used Blood Red as tehbase, and then probably a wash of Baal followed by Leviathan purple in the recesses, then highlighted back up to blood red

nice. will watch this

here we go - (pretty much) finished Lagoon Boy. Still have to do one or two more coats of water effects (which you can't see too well in the photos) on the base, but the painting's done. A nice, fun lille project : )

Truly awesome. I wish I'd thought to be snowed in, but no, I slipped and slided to the station (falling on my arse once), went up to London and then couldn't get back. Painting trolls was clearly a much better way to spend the day.

Regarding the water effect, did you build it up gradually? I had thought of doing something similar with the High Elf dragon (thought the rock would look cool rising up out of the ocean).

I've only done the one coat of water effects so far - I'm going to build it up. It comes out quite thick, which looks quite good, but then dries really flat, so I think multiple layers will do the trick

Beautiful painting

Thats awesome dude.

Is that the GW River troll model? Looks really original.

thank you : )

yeah, it's a GW river troll

it's been a little while since an update, partly due to laziness, but mostly due to various illnesses!

Back to the Wood Elves - I power-painted a squad of 10 dryads over the Xmas break, and now onto the Glade Riders.
I'd originally planned to have them all be on white horses (nice and elfy), but then reconsidered after only doing one! It's come out well, but doing white does take ages! So they're all on different colours. I'm particularly proud of my total cheat with the brown - basically black with a brown muzzle! ; )
Two browns, a chestnut and the white done, the bay and the dun are going to be tackled today : )

Tried to push ahead with my Glade Riders today, but it feels as if I didn't get very far (the joys of unit painting!), so I decided to start on my Hornet (despite wanting to save it as a treat for completing the Riders! I have willpower issues).

So here we are - I want it fairly simple and clean... might do some markings on it later. Also giving lightling another go. It still needs some smoothing out, but not bad so far.
[the black isn't black - it's Charadon Granite]

oh, and I'm not going for a Tron look at all, no siree... ; )

I like the color of your horses. I had issues finishing my Glade Riders a while ago as well. I eventually finished so keep at it. Liking how the Hornet looks so far.

So how do you thin your paints and when you apply them how do you keep from the watered down paint from going everywhere? How do you apply the paints and thin them..cause your work is very good and i am always looking for new ideas to get better!

Cutthroatcure - I just thin them with water; I ALWAYS thin them down, even if it's just a basecoat, so I can get it nice and even without it being thick and gloopy. For that, it's usually 1:1 paint to water.
For shading/blending I'll go 1:3 paint to water, or even more water, and then just build up lots of thin layers of glazes - it does take a fair while to do, but the results are generally smooth.
I use a 00 or 000 brush, and only take a small amount of paint onto it - really small when I come to think of it. Basically you're applying so little paint that you can see it dry and evaporate very quickly, even if you can't see any paint transferred, and you just keep doing that until the pigment starts to build up - like I said, not a quick technique!

Hope that helps : )

Well I am not doing anything super fast and if that will result in an even better looking model then so be it..I mean i spent enough money on everything why not take the time and make them look good.. Also what do you thin them in?

8 pages of awesome! I really love your painting style, it is very vibrant and full of life (as I presume elves would be). Loving how the hornet is turning out! I will be looking out for this thread in the future as there is some great painting going on.

Cain

thanks Commander, very much appreciated : )

cutthroat - I use the plastic lids from the GW boxed miniatures as pallettes, most handy! : ) (and considering my miniature dependency problem, I'm unlikely to run out of them!)

That hornet is just awesome. It reminds me of tron. Seems like a lot of stuff does that recently. But yours is by far the best glowing effect I have seen

More Hornet work done : )
I did this last night, so I'm going to do a bit more tonight - enjoy

more work done on the Hornet. I'm not sure about doing markings on it now... it might make it a bit too fussy...

I think small markings from your craftworld on the armor sections would look great. Just don't put them all over the place

IMO I think it looks very Stealthy and Sleek...Adding Marking may pull away from that Tron look...I don't see any marking on their bikes or cars...Just Saying!

Nice, beautiful rich colours.

.. so, due to a slight basecoating accident, I had to restart the Hornet, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I did the Tron glow darker this time around, just using Hawks Turquoise. Changed my mind about the canopy and went for a contrasting colour. Final touches were the white fill-ins.

Not bad I guess, although I know I haven't gotten the knack of painting vehicles yet! (guess I'm going to have to wait until I get a super-heavy grav-tank )

enjoy

Stunning work as always. TheTron effect works very well for the model.