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Just added a post to my blog on painting flesh - http://cmdante.blogspot.com/2009/11/fleshing-things-out.html

It goes into a bit more detail about the process than has been covered here. Hopefully you all will find something useful from it.

I intend to use my blog more in the coming weeks and months to add tutorials, project logs etc so feel free to chime in.

Cheers,

Dante

Cool I have to admit I'd be fascinated to see you converting and modelling an Imperial Guardsman from a wide variety of regiments in the typical pose or activity they are associated with (Like a disciplined Cadian Marksman, a Catachan about to start a knife fight, a Mordian marching in formation lock step etc). They just seem made for utter personalisation something you are hugely adept at.

Thanks mate.

Not a bad idea that actually! Some would be easier than others but it would be fun trying to characterise the regiments in one model.

Will give it some thought!

Cheers,

Dante

Glad you like the idea!

Been ill lately so no painting. Still not back in action, however yesterday I helped (read - watched) my wonderful girlfriend kit out the second bedroom (read - painting room!) in the flat with some new furniture and storage to organise all my books, mags and GW stuff:

Wardrobe Storage (the drawers on the left are all full of models and GW games)


Painting and Modelling Desk (tidy for the first time in months! new storage drawers underneath)


Display Cabinet (not much to show really!)


Books and Mags



Got some bases to be making on commission for a set to be cast and sold too so will be starting on those when I'm fit and well again.

Cheers,

Dante

Ok, I managed to tear myself away from MW2 for long enough after recovering from illness to do some more on this chap.

I've pretty much finished the body now and have built and started painting the base. At the moment the base isn't even a third of the way done so try to imagine it with some foliage and snow!



Next up - the arms and finishing the base!

Cheers,

Dante

My God.

He's gorgeous. I'm impressed, and very very jealous.

Cool stuff.

whats the expression???

oh yeah:

JOYGASM!!!!!

I love that trooper SO... much.

thanks for the tip again

DC

Mmmmm .. those white armor plates look awesome. Anything you would like to teachify us on how to approach that would be awesome.

Love the color of the boots as well.

- Blackbone

Awesome as usual mate, I agree with Blackbone on the boots, I don't know why they just seem to reinforce that cold winter feel. Oh and the more tutorials part.

Kanluwen wrote:My God.

He's gorgeous. I'm impressed, and very very jealous.

Thanks mate.

Death Gear wrote:Cool stuff.

Ta!

deadly chicken wrote:whats the expression???

oh yeah:

JOYGASM!!!!!

I love that trooper SO... much.

thanks for the tip again

DC

Lol, thanks mate. No worries!

Blackbone wrote:Mmmmm .. those white armor plates look awesome. Anything you would like to teachify us on how to approach that would be awesome.

Love the color of the boots as well.

- Blackbone

Thanks mate, yeah will put together a little tutorial on my blog in the not too distant.

Bloodthirster wrote:Awesome as usual mate, I agree with Blackbone on the boots, I don't know why they just seem to reinforce that cold winter feel. Oh and the more tutorials part.

Ta buddy! The scheme has really occured quite organically and has been influenced along the way by US WW2 paratroopers (hence the green BDU and brown boots), even the white armour was inspired by the white washed helmets and tanks of the US forces in the Ardennes.

Cheers,

Dante

Nice work. I think that the tones that you have here will look really good. Its interesting to me that miniatures of this size are starting to look like some of the nicer historical display models. Keep up the goodness! I can't wait to see more.

Really coming along well, I love the overall look of the piece. Thanks for the more in depth look at how you paint skin. It was an interesting little read, hope you don't mind if I steal the idea and give it a try.

Normaly I would not mention something like this, but I know that you seek perfection in your figures. I think that the balance of the legs is wrong, given how he is standing. With one leg up, the rest of his weight should be centered on the foot on the ground. You are showing this with the angle of his shoulders, but not with his hips. Think of the classic "captain morgan" pose, his hips are angled, and his standing foot is centered under his body mass.

I hasten to add that all of this may just be an artifact of the picture angle, and I am not, by any means, an artist, so I could have this totaly wrong.

Lovely work otherwise, and the painting is outstanding.

xenite wrote:Nice work. I think that the tones that you have here will look really good. Its interesting to me that miniatures of this size are starting to look like some of the nicer historical display models. Keep up the goodness! I can't wait to see more.

Thanks a lot. I think the quality of GW sculpts has gone up so much that it is certainly possible to get some great realism in terms of posing and proportions (with some converting) to edge towards historical display pieces for sure.

Deff Dread red Edition wrote:Really coming along well, I love the overall look of the piece. Thanks for the more in depth look at how you paint skin. It was an interesting little read, hope you don't mind if I steal the idea and give it a try.

No problem, the tut was done for exactly that reason!

lasgunpacker wrote:Normaly I would not mention something like this, but I know that you seek perfection in your figures. I think that the balance of the legs is wrong, given how he is standing. With one leg up, the rest of his weight should be centered on the foot on the ground. You are showing this with the angle of his shoulders, but not with his hips. Think of the classic "captain morgan" pose, his hips are angled, and his standing foot is centered under his body mass.

I hasten to add that all of this may just be an artifact of the picture angle, and I am not, by any means, an artist, so I could have this totaly wrong.

Lovely work otherwise, and the painting is outstanding.

I don't think the pose is 100% perfect, but at the same time I think it is natural enough (or at least appears so) to be passable. I had reached a point with him though where I felt enough time had been spent sculpting that I wanted to slap some paint on him.

Really appreciate your comments though, constructive feedback is always welcome mate.

Was playing around with some of the photos tonight and created a zoomed in version on the face to give a better idea of highlight and shading positions for anyone interested that has read the flesh tutorial I did:



A little rougher looking at this size I know, but bear in mind that pic is almost as big as the entire model!

As you can see, most of the definition, contrast and depth come from the shading and a few well placed highlights to define the features.

Hoping to get the arms done at the weekend if it'd stop raining long enough for me to prime them!

Cheers,

Dante

I'm really amazed at your painting. The tutorial for skin tones on your blog was truly great and I will be trying out some of your techniques on my upcoming models.

The eyes on your models look so realistic, I see your models and I get inspired to paint. I just have to think more about what I'm doing and take my time.

Cant wait to see more. And that's saying something as I don't usually go crazy over IG.


Slappy

The face is looking great, and the sculpted legs are awesome..

Very clean room too.

This is coming along really good, nice to see him coming together finally.

I think he´ll look really good once the base gets done, the color selections are nice and as ever, the use of them is excellent.

Good job so far!

wow nice sculpting all i've ever sculpted was...erm a scarf(ahem) for my traitor ig...lol to the Transformers pumpkin, KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK MATE!!

Thanks a lot guys, really happy to have inspired you. Really hope some of you give more sculpting a go and post some pics of your efforts, thats what the tutorials are aimed at doing after all!

Cheers,

Dante

I was asked by a friend over on Warseer about brushes and how to paint eyes, to which I have responded with a blog post including a short tutorial on painting eyes, and a look at the equipment I use to do so.

I've made this as a blog post tutorial as it is a fairly common question and it's handy to have a reference to point to if it's asked again in future rather than simply leave it as a post lost in a thread -

http://cmdante.blogspot.com/2009/11/eyes-have-it-how-to-paint-eyes-on.html

Hope that helps some folks and answers any questions.

Cheers,

Dante

Another great tut mate

Cheers mate, it's actually of benefit for me doing them too since I put some thought into what I have actually been doing on the fly mostly, therefore it allows me to refine some things etc.

Got a few more in the pipeline but I guess they are better served with some step by step pics so expect some in future.

Cheers,

Dante

Wooo feels like its been a long time since I got anything done on this guy! Finally got the first of the arms done tonight so thought I'd post some pics. Really just want to get him finished now!

Sorry about the quality of the images. Couldn't get the lighting right and was too lazy to dig out my proper background. I'll save the proper pics for when he's finished!






He's not my best of most tidy bit of painting, but I've been trying out some new things on him so he's certainly been fun. The base looks terrible in the pics but the snow looks fine IRL. The light is just bouncing off the varnish on the snow making it look like a big white blob!

Going to try and finish him off this week so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Dante

It looks amazing CMDante. Just one question, how do you do the armour so it look so wellused, I mean how do you do so the metal under the white on the armour, it look so natural. please tell me!!

Thanks!

I used a few different techniques, will put together a tutorial on it for the next arm!

Cheers,

Dante

Brilliant Dante! Just brilliant! The only thing I will say is that I don't think the silver eagle really works with the white on the helmet. I think the gold on the chest-plate pops a lot more and has that much starker contrast, which in this case is good. looking forward to more soon.

Ok, I'll be waiting Dante

I only just found this blog; Awesome work dude.

I am reading your blog post on skin tone now; I've always been lazy at that ,and I'm now starting to take painting pretty seriously.

Also, Pictionary rules, and I like your Classics Prime and Megatron battle-in-a-box.

Keep up the good work buddy, I'm looking forward to seeing more.