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Hi guys and gals... I have been painting a while now and whilst my minis look good on the table and have nealy won a few "best armies" at tournaments, I can't quite get to the standard I want to...

My main problem is whislt my models look nice, they look quite "messy" and I really want to achieve a crisp, clean finish such as some I see around the net. I am more than happy to spend more time on models if I can get the outcome I want...

I am getting really frustrated and seem to have reached a plateau in my painting so I am looking for ANY ideas at all for how to improve... I also completely suck at taking pics so the lightsource is a little cr-azy.

I have added a range of pics from various armies etc so hopefully people can get a general "gist" for my paitning and offer some advice.

Thanks as always




(ignore the dread as I didnt paint him)

Umm...those look pretty crisp to me.....Only thing I noticed is that you use very contrating colors in your paint schemes. I think this might be what gives you the idea that your stuff is "muddy". I personally like your paint jobs!

Yup... For some reason I always do that - maybe I'll give it a go using less contrasting colours...

Cheers

I agree to that. To get a real training effect, try doing a miniature monochrome style, like Jen Haley does. The plague marines might be the best base for that, but the Khorne berserkers will work, too.

Also, bigger areas like on the tanks seem to be painted inhomogeneous. This might be either because of the paints used or because of the primer used.

You're priming black, right? Thin paints and black primer combined suck. Give a grey primer a chance.

thanks for the advice...

Have Checked Jen's site and there's some real god information there... Also her palette and OSL are wow...

Lots of information that's useful - thanks

First off, your painting is not messy. Indeed, your color areas seem very cleanly contained and defined. It looks like you make heavy use of washes. While this is good for adding some depth, it's easy to go too heavy and really needs to be used with progressive highlighting. Take the Slaaneshi terminator. The cape goes from bright highlight to dark shadow very suddenly with no transition. Several other models seem to lack edge highlighting (berserkers, vehicles).

Spend some time working on smooth highlights. Use more thinned washes for more gradual color shifts. You have a very solid base and I expect you will continue to improve!

Looks good.

jmurph wrote:First off, your painting is not messy. Indeed, your color areas seem very cleanly contained and defined. It looks like you make heavy use of washes. While this is good for adding some depth, it's easy to go too heavy and really needs to be used with progressive highlighting. Take the Slaaneshi terminator. The cape goes from bright highlight to dark shadow very suddenly with no transition. Several other models seem to lack edge highlighting (berserkers, vehicles).

Spend some time working on smooth highlights. Use more thinned washes for more gradual color shifts. You have a very solid base and I expect you will continue to improve!

Great info matey - just what I was looking for ... So instead of base/wash/wash/highlight it's more base/thin wash/highlight/thin wash etc

Will give it a go

Nicw work

I think you might be suffering from gw itis.For a long
time I used to compair my painting to what I saw in
wd and get frustrated that I couldn't get that level.
I even stopped for a couple of years.But I solved it!
It might not work for everybody...
Have a trawl round other figure manufacturers ranges.
Look for the plainest figures you can find (but still
like!this is important)Civillian figures are ideal.
The challenge is to make an ordinary figure look good.
I've got this figure,a podgy guy holding a can of
coke.I painted him up and lo and behold he's one of
my favourite paint jobs.I sometimes get brain freeze
when i solely paint 40k stuff.Step back to go forward!

you know what slipstream, i am currently going through the same thing, WD makes me depressed. I might just follow your advice and shop some other manufacturers figures and try to step up my skills

I second giving GW minis a break when you're getting a bit bogged down. I switch to Reaper's fantasy line for a nice break when I feel overwhelmed and it usually works.

One thing to remember is that if you're not in this to make money (and let's be honest, that percentage of gamer/hobbyist is very low) then you shouldn't compare your level of skill to those who are. It's great to use the professional model as inspiration to push your painting skills to the next level, but don't beat yourself up if it's tough getting there!

I would also say that it is easy to get
jaded when you are painting heavily
detailed figures a lot of the time.Simple
figures with very little detail do force
you to alter your style to try to highlight
the figure in a different way.Also when
you do paint simpler figures you find out
a lot more about figure painting.

They look very clean to me.

I have to second the comment about the high level of contrast you're using. That makes the darker sections appear that much more muddy. The different colored areas are competing to be noticed, and that's one of the things, at least in part, that's giving you that "messy" look you're talking about.

You might also try "breaking' your colors, even on the bright ones. It's pretty simple, and really helps tie models and units together by uniting the colors, so they don't fight each other as much. When you break a color, it reduces the amount of contrast between it and the surrounding colors. Which will give you that "cripser" look you're after.

Breaking a color is really straightforward: Basically, there're three primary pigment colors; red, yellow, and blue. A "broken" color is any hue that includes even a hint of all three. So if you've got yellow, like on those berzerkers, try adding the tiniest bit of purple to the mix. Purple being composed of red and blue will "break" yellow. And when I say tiny amount, I mean tiny. Like the end of a pin's worth. Go too far and you'll get brown.

The yellow will still look yellow, but there's a color shift going on that reduces a visual process called simultaneous contrast. Which is essentially the pure hue color competing for your eyes' attention with the muddier colors that you get after a wash.

Read every article you can get your hands on. Read every painting book you can get your hands on. I picked up a lot of techniques a while ago from just reading the masterclasses on how to paint different models. Sort of a "oh, so that how I can get that effect. Read a little on colour theory. Practice.

Ifurita seems to have articles to painting stuff he(she?) always link ( his own website i think ) .
Maybe can check it out -_o