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Ok, I decided to give up on the cold drake.
While ive painted models smaller than this, the detail of these scales do not lend themselves well to an airbrush when the body curves back on itself like this.

Oh well Here is a mini dragon to ridicule.

Ok I finally took some better pictures of that wraithlord and had fun playing with a method of presentation.
critiques and suggestions welcome.

Click to zoom in on detail, its pretty big.

And now for something Completely (somewhat) different.

Ive seen people around using larp scale 40k weapons made of wood, or whatever, in games they are reffing. Why? I dont know. Because holding a big chain sword makes you feel like youve got a quad. Anyway I felt like doing a power sword so grabbed a wood dao/scimitar whatever ( it looks similar in design to a wraith lord sword minus protrusions) and I thought Id give a shot at my version of a hi-tec power sword. Now I too can pretend I have a quad in games. (sorry for the bad mass-effect references)

And now, for some battletech.
I was playing around with painting at this scale, considering applying to CSO. That looks like a no go so here are some btech related stuff Ive painted lately
all airbrushed as usual with only minior paintbrush touch up.

Granted while tey arent great, airbrushing a savanah master is HARD
My favorite is the mad dog.

Painting part of another batch from Iron wind minis, I finished a trio of shards
I like these little guys a lot. They are quite fun to paint and I love the crystalline/energy creature concept.
Perhaps enough of these could make a cool counts as Nid army, since so few seem to still play Vor.
And a fourth picture showing my family of shards walking the nanite swarm dog. Arent they a cute carbon hating family =)

Another batch done
This time two more IWM battletech mapscale dropships
The Broadsword painted in a star adder : rho provisional scheme
And The Union class dropship painted in an "art scheme" of the Summer's Storm (Or a SENMM, That being Space Earth Non Metal Metalic)

Two more Iron wind metals (fox miniatures) battlestar galactica like ships.

The Pandora is a heracles class Novastar
The Cerberus is an Orion class Novastar

95% airbrushed. The colonial seal and ship names are transfers. I only managed to color match th e transfers to the paint job underneath on one side of each.
These are my first attempts at custom designing and using transfers. I cant wait to paint a few more of these and play a game with someone.

Painted a few more battlestar universe ships.
this time cylon ships made by fox miniatures

Finished another Battletech mapscale dropship.
This is an Overlord C painted roughly based on the Clan Hells horses Omega galaxy scheme (Grey with hellish accents)
So I went with Hellish landscape with dark grey accents.
The Hells horse emblem is a transfer and the rest is all airbrushed.

I just finished a cylon resurrection ship with a hubble background.

Airbrushed as usual. model made by fox miniatures.

Listrel wrote:... you weren't thinking of entering golden demon but you should really give it a little thought painting of this standard deserves to be awarded.

I do get rewarded. The work is its reward and compliments are reward. When im having a really messed up day going in and painting before going to bed is really Zen. Of course that requires ive already gone through the less zen part of planning out how to paint it.=)

ender502 wrote:...Second, I think you have an issue with composition. As I said before you have incredible technical skills but you are using them in a way that can blind a viewer to the forest because of the trees.
Let me give you an example... A canvas is blank. You put paint on to fill it. But models are not blank canvasses. At this point your painting distracts from the model..and the model inhibits the painting. They oppose each other rather than complimenting one another.
An example of your work...the submarine looking vehicles are insanely good...why? Because the painting scheme compliments not only the model but the purpose of the model. Fantastic work!

Again, you have incredible skills. Please take this as a constructive criticism.

Thank you Ender, I do appreciate the criticism and agree mostly.
I believe there is a spectrum. On one end you are doing "miniature painting" you paint solely to bring out the detail the sculpter put into the mini. In this end of the spectrum you only do appropriate colors, shading, composition to make it look as real as possible. shifting away from this extreme you get a bit of freehand to low detail areas and you push contrast to make the mini stand out. I believe most mini painters exist in this near end of the spectrum. I believe my battlestar minis are nearer this end with the armor painted a little more fantastical than necessary. But I find it pleasing to the eye and as a fleet I think they look great.

On the other end you have painting miniatures(not to be confused with miniature painting) In this extreme you flat ignore every aspect of the model and paint what you like on it An example of this would be(and I want to see a skilled artist do this) take a general smooth person shaped mini and paint it to look like a mini. Other than having blobs for head arms etc it has no detail whatsoever carved into it.

While I think my painting spans this spectrum I will be the first to admit that my average is roughly centered in the spectrum. I like to do some freehand or more fantastic accenting of the details present, but I nearly always paint based on the details present, or to compliment(I feel) the art of the sculpt in a way that is not "miniature painting"

An example outside of miniatures. A porsche 911 is a beautiful design. It needs no awesome paint job. jet black is beautiful. However pushing away from "realism" you might add a bit of highlights to accent the way the sun falls on it. Or you might paint some awesome flames/tribal/whatever art onto it. The art has to be chosen carefully for the combined composition to be pleasing. A strong juxtaposition of hello kitty on a Porsche, no matter how well done is wrong and almost no one would like it. While flames border on tacky for something so expensive, done subtly flames or tribal could really make the car a sight to behold. This is the aim of most of my painting and I realize very few will agree with my choices on composition. For instance, I personally believe my two best works are the Wraithlord and the Tigershark. many will have their own favorites, but on these two I believe my choices were the best compliment to the feeling of the model, or rather to my perceived feeling of the model.

But to reiterate, I agree with you almost 100% and I thank you for the criticism. keep them coming. they only make me better. I take what I will from them and hopefully improve in some manner as a result.

jbob5590 wrote:... I don't think the bright paint job takes anything away from these models, I mean who would paint an alien spacecraft in a drab grey/gunmetal scheme. The bright colors add to the model rather than take away from it.

Thank you, As above I think this depends entirely on what you want and what most people have preconcieved about the message the model sends. And sometimes (monolith) I believe that a different interpretation can really add to it especially for alien spacecraft, as you said.

And to build further on what you said I think the monolith is another example. The commonly accepted theme of the necrons is an ancient, robotic husk of a race with barely any personality bent on efficient destruction of the living for their god. However, knowing that the monolith is a kind of living metal, questionably semi sentient, and that a very small handful of necrons retain their original personalities with minimal degradation I think its fair to assume that in the eons those might wish to muralize their role in the universe as an inexorable force of death with their gods behind them. So I felt it reasonable, and interesting, to have the Necron lord have instructed his monolith to change its surface to express this to all before their inevitable extermination.


Thanks for the critiques everyone =)

I got a whole boatload of fighters painted. They are fleetscale BSG sold by Fox miniatures. Yea airbrushing something that small.... painful.
And in the que is a ravenstar studios galactica with other ships

What fleet would be complete without the galactica.
This model is a Ravenstar studios model (resin) I painted a lot of armor panels on it to blend in with the rest of my fleet.
all airbrushed except the crest and the name galactica.

The average battlestars took between 8 and 12 hrs, the cylon capital ships took between 8 and 15 hours.

A quick construction mech to try for something moderately different.
The background is some airbrush touched up cardboard printout buildings.

And now for my b5 fighter ships

I love these little guys, only an inch in size but so cool!
Minis made by this guy www.bwhiii.com who actually sculpted nearly all of the ships in my collection on commission for others.

Paint jobs are inspired by but not meant to be canon. Edited: to say canon and not cannon =)

And now for some small display mats for my many ships as practice for large gaming mats

Yeay Just finished a challenging but altogether fun commission for dashofpepper (hope I got the name right)

I tittle this one. "Dis es hough wii ROHLLL!" excuse my poor understanding of orkish.

Or perhaps, "you know the War Boss that rides around in that thing aint afraid of Nothing!"

It took approximately 24 hrs to complete. 100% airbrushed
Edit: this is an attachment, so click on the image to open in a new window and click again to zoom in for detail. this image is 2000 px wide(scaled down from a 3000 px raw image)

I have a world eaters pred Ive never finished painting. maybe one day Ill get the motivation to tackle that complicated beast.
Its kinda sad because its about 70% done.

Finch Claw wrote:Have you entered any of your stuff into the golden daemon?

Nope and probably never will =) Im cheap and dislike flying anyway.

Just painted a batch of aerotech battleships as I seem to be on a star ship kick =)
and Ive started painting space terrain, ie that moon in the background.

ships by iron wind metals.
click on images to zoom in.

Finch Claw wrote:What are the moons made out of?

Cheap styrofoam

And for the next, a Kraken with snake skin camo.

I just finished the work on 3 IWM battlestars

First the Invincible Gunstar

next the Hades Missilestar

And finally the Zeus Warstar.
I like how these worked with the busy background. When I first painted those backgrounds I didn't think Id be able to use them because they were so busy compared to my fighters, but they seem to work well with these battlestars. I didnt do as nice of a job on some of the transfers. oh well.

Cosmic wrote: I hope that you continue to learn and progress with the art of the airbrush well into the future.

Cosmic.

Thank you Cosmic, Much appreciated! I hope we all make prettier and prettier minis. in a manly way of course=)

Now for another set
The previous set was iron wind minis, this set is from fox miniatures.
The Harrier, Heavy Missilestar, and the Ministar I like how the lighting on the ministar turned out.

And now for the Cylon Basestars in attack and defense configurations.
These are also Fox miniatures
click on image to enlarge, they are big.

Ive considered some marine chapters but dont feel like buying them since I dont paint marines. But there are a couple chapters whose paint scheme are perfect, particularly a couple chaos marines.

And for the battlestar ships I painted a big 6x8' space mat with hex grid.
I hope this thing looks good on the table top!

A batch of paintjobs done.
First a pair of battlestars on comission. I added more lighting to this set and went with a compromise on the bases between pretty but hopefully not too overpowering.

Next three shards. I love these little guys.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Shards? From Vor the Malestrum? Great job whatever they may be.

Indeed shards from Vor.
Or if your asking what the heck game is that.
Its a fairly forgotten game that was trying to compete with GW about a decade ago that had some very cool minis.
Sold by iron wind metals if your interested. The vor manuals have to be found online.
I like the rule set as it is a skirmish game with better initiatives and tactical rules (IMO) but not as suited for huge battles as 40k

And for another
A Diorama made by Iron wind metals Graveyard dragon and other components.

dad1946 wrote:Atropos, I know this has been asked before, but do you have plans for doing any type of video tutorial.

I'm ressurecting this thread in hopes that you have some new work or tutorials to share with everyone. Thanks

Dad1946, Im still painting, madly some weeks. Ive shifted to painting starships as I find them an interesting challenge.
I had started doing video tutorials but they ate so much time, and my day job and family also eat so much time I put tutorials on indefinite hold in favor of painting in what little time I had for hobby.
One of the cons asked if I was interested in teaching an airbrush class and frankly I am very intersted, but that too would take a lot of time to iron out what I would teach. (and Id rather paint over teach =)

Im sorry I neglected Dakka since Ive still been painting wargame minis(starsihp wargames) I had thought I was posting here as well as elsewhere.
Well here is a set of back posts. mainly a lot of fighter scale and fleet scale ships from wing commander