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I finally finished some models. These are the first models I have painted in about 2 years.



Please give me advice and ideas. I really want to become a good painter and I am willing to try any techniques or ideas in order to improve my skills.



I love miniatures and gaming and have been playing Warhammer with borrowed armies for a few years now. One day I will paint up my own. This is my first "Army" for the Malifaux Game that is gaining interest locally.

























A little about me: Way back (starting 3 years ago) I just painted some DnD minis for our roleplaying group's characters, as we needed them. I have never been very good, but have always wanted to be a skilled mini painter and converter. I have pestered everyone I know about tips on painting and techniques etc.



So please help out a beginner and give me your opinions and comments.

very nice

I think you're being overly modest here...if these are what you consider 'never being very good' then you have some incredibly diligent standards! I think the techniques you've shown here already put you in the upper range of miniature painters out there.

If I were to criticize anything it would be that your choice of highlight tones (on the humans) have led to a very muted set of models, but that actually seems pretty appropriate for the subject matter.

You've clearly got a solid grasp on highlighting, using gloss vs. matte appropriately, incorporating water effects (I think) into your models...at this point I think its just a matter of repetition...continuing to practice the techniques you already know until you totally master them, and perhaps starting to dabble into some of the crazier stuff like object source lighting, non-metallic metals, etc.


Good stuff, and I'd love to see more. Oh, BTW did you know you can have your pics hosted here in the Dakka gallery for free? And you can then link those images to any (and every) other site you want. Just FYI.

Beginner? I'd say you're far above beginner with those models. Very good use of shading and general blending especially in the first picture.

You could try posting that one on www.coolminiornot.com and see what they say. I think you'll do quite well on there, bearing in mind that a rating of 5 or so is good for a beginner given that you're going up against multiple time Golden Demon winners.

Alternatively as yakface has said you could post them into the Dakka gallery and see what votes they get there, we tend to be a little less critical than the populace of CMON.

If I were going to be very picky, which you seem to want, I might suggest another layer or two of highlights and shadows in the greys and browns on the cloth in the first picture and perhaps more layers of green/turquiose to smooth out the blends in the others.

If your a beginner, then i am a noob

Love your models they really look awesome i like the pale humans they got a Addams family theme over them
And i hope i can do as detailed work as you in three years time!

Kathie von Vhoorl wrote:I have never been very good

These are awesome and you're clearly quite talented. Now stop being so modest

I really like the skin tone you've achieved on the human's there, very nice looking. Overall excellent work, you should be able to do a great looking GW army! If painting's your thing I'd do one model of each race perhaps and see what lets you get the most out of your skills before you buy an army up. Keep it up!

redbristles wrote:you should be able to do a great looking GW army

Where'd you pull that from? I don't know about everyone else, but I for one would much rather see more Malifaux than another Ork or Space Marine.

These are actually very, very decent quality. I love the green spectre- things..

Painting wise I would score you a solid 8 . You are a very skilled painter who is good at color selection, highlighting, and blending. It would be interesting to see your take on light sourcing techniques like NMM as well as some more complicated free hand design.

My only criticism is that some of your pics are a bit blurry (the green gribblies).

The Dreadnote wrote:

redbristles wrote:you should be able to do a great looking GW army

Where'd you pull that from? I don't know about everyone else, but I for one would much rather see more Malifaux than another Ork or Space Marine.

The OP said that they would like to build an army for Warhammer in the future in their original post...

Alright I have to ask, cuz im in love with your baby cade. What was ur starting (darkest) skin tone on him

redbristles wrote:The OP said that they would like to build an army for Warhammer in the future in their original post...

Hmm, apologies. I missed that line.

Thanks for the replies. I really need feedback to help me improve.

@yakface and Natorum: I do need more highlights/brighter contrast. I thought I had it down, but after a matte psrayed them... they look really bland. I will try to highlight better with these and carry that ise over to my next model.

@Flimmyyip: I love the Baby Kade model also. The big kitchen knife (doesn't show in pic) by his side is just great. The base skin was done in Tallarn flesh (GW foundation paint) and then highlighted up with Vallejo game color Elfic flesh.

Keep any criticisms/advice coming. I reeeeealllllly want to be a good painter. I would like to actually compete in a painting competition one day.

:hugs:

I have seen this crew done a number of different ways and havent really liked it until these ones. The colors you have chosen fit them very well. Awesome work.

I'd really like to know how you did those slimy tendrils that cover the bases of your models. Would be quite nice for my Tyranids if you don't mind me stealing your idea .

@Darth Bob: I just used GS to make little tentacles and then curved them around on the bases. I painted them liche purple and mixed with warlock purple up to highlight. Then I just painted a clear gloss over them after the mini was sealed. The sludge was made with water effects that had a tiny bit of purple ink in it.



I took some better pics of baby Kade, Pandora and Candy.



















This way you can see my mistakes more easily.

I love those Ghoulish minis you painted the most, excellent use of highlighting and color. Do you use GW paint for them and what is the game you use them for again?

Simply amazing, by god if you think this is a beginners standard I cant wait until you become a "good" painter

you've painted them very nice. At least better then my Malifaux models. Malifaux is getting more and more attention, here in Belgium, it's getting a lot of attention in LFGS

Very nice, excellent painting skillz! I love the skintone on the green goblin thingies. Also how did you do the blonde hair on the little girl with the basket of sweeties?

I can't really offer any advise because all my miniatures are now painted high contrast, which though looking good on the table is not exactly precise. I Personally would do another highlight on a couple of them but that's just me.

I honestly don't believe that you're actually a beginner.

If you are, take it as a complement and not an insult.

If you aren't, then that is still some damned fine painting you have there.

I like the bases. Your transitions are good on your ghosts, and your skin tones and color selection are very good. Personally, I don't buy the whole "beginner" thing here, if for no other reason than your dead-on use of gloss varnish on all the right places and your smooth transitions on flesh tones. I'm not a fan of false modesty.

Thanks for the additional feedback.

@kiltedsamurai: I used mostly vallejo paints. The ghoulish guys are called "sorrows" I painted them blue then highlighted them with scurf green, jade green, foul green, then foul green and GW scorpion green mixed together for the final touches. No mixing or blending. Just simple layering. I have not mastered blending yet. The game is called Malifaux and is put out by Wyrd Miniatures and it is a great game.

@McFlufferson and eledamris: Thank you for the compliments. I have no reason to try and trick anyone on the intarwebz I consider myself a beginner, but that doesn't mean I have not been around awhile. I have over a dozen friends that paint all the time and have given me advice and pointers and I have picked up alot by watching them and listening to them over the years.

I have personally only painted maybe 2-3 dozen minis and that was a couple of years ago. That is when i learned the little things like.. don't use Testors Gloss to paint flesh etc lol. I also received a painting tutorial video for christmas "Hot Lead" I have been watching it over and over almost everyday to learn more. These minis are the results of that.

Eledamris, the skin tones do not have smooth transitions to my eyes. They are just 3 layers of tallarn flesh, 50-50 tallarn and elfic flesh and then pure elfic flesh. I wish I could get smooth transitions like I see people do on the gallery here, but I haven't been able to pull of wet blending or anything like that. As far as the gloss goes.. a 3 year old could do that. I just put clear gloss paint on the stuff that I wanted to be slimey after the mini was done.

"Beginner" does not mean I lived in a cave my whole life and just saw a mini for the first time. It means I have just started painting minis or haven't painted many and I want to get as good as many of the people I see on here.

I would like to be able to compete one day, not just paint to "tabletop" standards. I think anyone can paint to tabletop standards after a few minis and some pointers from friends. I want to actually be a painter that people think is very good!

I will take your doubts as a great compliment though. it really does make me feel good that some people don't think i am a beginner. That is very flattering. I just wish I was a better painter.

If you want to look into a technique for blending and you have a little money then you might want to look at the first tutorial on this page: http://www.miniaturementor.com/painting_tutorials.html.

Laurent Esposito achieves his blends using many layers of pretty thin paints and doesn't use wet blending. This is a very good tutorial if you want to learn about the technique and he shows it on a variety of surfaces like cloth, skin, circular objects etc. Personally I like the way he does it, but it's very time consuming. Your mileage however may vary.

Just to iterate, I have no connection with Miniature Mentor other than purchasing an ongoing subscription as I find their tutorials very interesting.

As I said before, you've clearly got a good grasp on all the intermediate techniques, so at this point its just about refining them with practice and trying out new advanced techniques.

There are TONS of great places to get this information, all you have to do is look.

I think you'll get a lot better info if you look for people doing techniques that you're interested in and then asking them how they did it. We also have the painting and modeling tutorial forum on Dakka (although I don't know how many advanced painting technique tutorials there are, if any), coolminiornot is another site where a lot of great painters post so you could try posting questions there as well.

Beyond that you can go to youtube and do some searches and you'll find TONS of videos on model painting techniques. There are also plenty of videos for sale, many from some of the top Golden Demon winning painters out there. If you can manage to make it out to Adepticon in Chicago (the beginning of April), they hold a bunch of really great seminars from top painters (and you could enter your work into their $10,000 painting competition as well).

Of course Games Workshop and other miniature companies also put out books and articles in their respective magazines (and on their sites) covering many techniques as well.


So if you have the desire to really get better, the info is out there, you just have to put some legwork into finding it...and of course lots and lots of practice!

@natorum: Thanks for that link. I'm very interested in that video series. Watching people paint is very helpful. Seeing something done is alot easier for me to pick up than someone just telling me what was done. The video Hot Lead was very helpful and supplemented all the times I watched friends paint minis and asked them questions. The Miniature Mentor series looks like the exact thing I'm looking for to learn advanced techniques and get better at minis. Super big thanks to you! i will tell you how I like it in a few weeks.

@Yakface: Thanks. I have been a lurker at many mini sites just because I was curious about painting. I have read many little tutorials and some of them are well done, but many of them are done in a way I just don't understand. I guess I need to actually watch it being done. Youtube has helped too. I like Dr. Faust's clinic. I bought the GW how to paint book, but it wasn't that helpful except in teaching me terminology. I've started skimming No Quarter and White Dwarf for articles and have bought a couple of them.

I wish I had the money to go to Adepticon. :( I have never been to a convention/event.

I basically owe my current level of painting to watching videos and local friends. I have seen so many people that paint so well that it blows my mind. Here on Dakka Dakka and a couple of other sites. There are some real experts out there that paint at a level above and beyond what I have ever seen or experienced. I aspire to paint with an advanced skill level like they do. Maybe one day.

So far, almost everyone says I need to highlight more and make the colors "pop". that is very helpful advice and I will do just that.

Thanks again everyone. I hope to start some new minis soon, but may wait for my new DVD series to get here.

I also find watching videos to be much more helpful than reading, especially at first. The word blending is used by different painters to mean slightly different techniques. LBursley has a great youtube channel here: [urlhttp://www.youtube.com/user/awesomepaintjob[/url] where he discusses blending with a different style to some of the French painters in the MM series of videos. On the Hot lead videos there are discussions of blending which again are different to how Laurent does it in his. Just reading about "blend colours a, b, c" is fine when you're happy with the concept but when you're still learning watching someone do it and seeing the result that's built up can really help the pieces fall into place.

If you want a really good tutorial about skin the Julian Casses Warhammer giant on MM I found to be very interesting. Again his techniques are working with very thinned paints but there's a good discussion on there about using a light undercoat to help create highlights for you to help avoiding a chalky look.

Another thing you might want to investigate is colour theory. I've seen some very interesting discussions about how to mix and match colours online which when you're doing display miniatures seems to be a very useful component. It's a very in depth subject but there's a great articule on using it in painting here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1757-urmuth-painting-flesh-and-using-colour

Well then, you've certainly done your homework if this is a beginner's effort for you. You'll go far. Depending on what part of GA you're in, I know a few great stores around there. Consider doing up some GW models for Games Day. You may be surprised how well you do. The woman who won Bronze in Warhammer Monster this year at Baltimore was a "beginner" too, and you look like you're in her class of painter. Also, there are several good conventions in the Southeast where, even if you're not looking to compete, you can get some good comments and tips from some truly world-class painters.

@Natorum: I have ordered the MM DVDs that are available, unfortunately most of the advanced isn't on DVD yet, just downloads. I could do the downloads, but I prefer to work in front of my large TV screen so I can be more comfy and see better. The little computer screen image does not compare. Guess I must wait for them to release on DVD. :( Still, can't wait to get the first DVDs. I'm pretty excited about getting some new lessons/techiniques.

@eledamris: I have been studying alot. i guess that I studied more than painted. I would probably bemore comfortable with my brush if I had been painting the whole time I was picking up pointers and watching video techniques. Now I have to play "catch-up" I would love to go to some conventions some day. Right now, I am trying to convince people to go with me to Dragon Con this year. I don't know if there will be much mini stuff, but should be fun anyway.