Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, mmmyeah... Was looking forward to my first two painted ultras but now I'm kinda dissapointed after few shots. The highlights are kinda rough, have to thin that paint a bit :(
Should have expected it, seeing how I can't paint for jack and never painted anything before xD My first ultra was a mess, stripping the paint and repainting the poor guy.
Overall, a blending job gone wrong.

Should be in my gallery if anyone would like to check it out, and leave critics/piece of advice? Both are welcome.
One thing I didn't know is that you could highlight something like mixing ultramarine and space wolves grey for fine highlights, then S.W.G. for final highlights. I went straight to finals.
Same for blending, any advice for this would be appreciated. Cause I'm thinking also mixing Ultramarine blue and s.w.g. and blend it bit.

Don't mind the camera, it was taken by mobile phone. Don't have any camera at all :/
As for those ultramarine haters out there, keep it to yourselfs :p I love all chapters, I'm just taking up with ultras to train my painting skills.. Seeing how these two are the first marines I've ever painted.










Didn't link everything, just the good ones I guess :/

You'll get more responses if you put the pics in the post

Hmm, isn't the gallery here to do just that..? :s
Sec..

Btw, just realized shouldn't this go to Painting & Modeling Showcase o.O bit tired, and its 5 am here, uh..

thats well above table top quality and will recieve high scores in painting at tourneys.

The only reason you would need to paint better is if you want to compete in painting comps, and if you wana do that go to art school.

There's also painting better for the sake of painting better.

For these maybe tone the highlights down a little as it just seems to stand out a bit too much. The pouches are perfect though. The bases are also quite good, with the dust on their legs being perfectly subtle as well.

n0t_u wrote:There's also painting better for the sake of painting better.

QTF.

Thinner and less contrasting highlights will do the trick, as well as using different colored highlights for separate areas.

To get more harmonic highlights you could mix white with blue you used for armour in 50/50 ratio. I think it'd help.

Thank you for the praise, guys :') kinda felt this is rubbish, lol.

I could do slightly drybrush of ultra blue over ghe highlights to thin them a little, would that work?

You think the ground is also good? I was aiming for second like hes in a mud or something, but I was missing snakebite leather to finis

h the painting, so just used scorched brown, graveyard earth and bit drybrush of dark angel green and fortress grey (missing codex grey) foo much rubble on second, fhe third was better.

But someone told me to paint highlights out of the pot, which is why they're like this, later I've learned theh should be neither dry nor wet.

Whats interesting is that Im only doing this out of fun and cause I just love 40k. so these are only for enjoyment but only if I do it right. Hoping to do orks someday and chaos s.m, possibly raven guard too. cheers!

Hey, no rubbish. For a first time ultra, those are pretty rockin'.

Let me tell ya, I've picked up some interesting paint jobs off of ebay before. There are posts floating around on that very topic if you search.

Plus, if you expect to be a pro right off the bat, well, you won't. Practice makes perfect good sir!

If you're going to go with Raven Guard I'd say practice as much as possible with black as it can be a tricky colour to pull off. I am however a fan of using a dark blue to highlight it when it comes to hair and a dark grey if it comes to armour, though the two are not set as such and can be swapped around. Basically mess around more to see which you like best then go with it.

Personally, I quite like the highlights as they are, makes the armour look worn, the paint coming off on the edges like you'd expect for something that'd see that level of wear and tear.

Otherwise you're off to an excellent start.

OK here is my input to you being a anti-smurf, but I like to see them painted well and yours are very good even if they weren't the first two you ever painted. So you got skills trust me you have freehand highlighting and looks like some blending. plus the bases look good you should be proud of your models I would be.

Plus your level in your models are way ahead of me when I started painting marines.

Cheers

What I see is you go blue right into white highlights. Step it down into white. The bases seem to be flat also...more than likely it is the picture doing it to the bases, but if not, remember the bases are part of the model and need to be painted on the same level as the model or it can fall short. Include highlights and depth to the bases by simple drybrushing/dusting. Overall looks good!

Tyris1013 wrote:So, mmmyeah... Was looking forward to my first two painted ultras but now I'm kinda dissapointed after few shots. The highlights are kinda rough, have to thin that paint a bit :(
Should have expected it, seeing how I can't paint for jack and never painted anything before xD My first ultra was a mess, stripping the paint and repainting the poor guy.
Overall, a blending job gone wrong.

Should be in my gallery if anyone would like to check it out, and leave critics/piece of advice? Both are welcome.
One thing I didn't know is that you could highlight something like mixing ultramarine and space wolves grey for fine highlights, then S.W.G. for final highlights. I went straight to finals.
Same for blending, any advice for this would be appreciated. Cause I'm thinking also mixing Ultramarine blue and s.w.g. and blend it bit.

As for those ultramarine haters out there, keep it to yourselfs :p I love all chapters, I'm just taking up with ultras to train my painting skills.. Seeing how these two are the first marines I've ever painted.



Didn't link everything, just the good ones I guess :/

For a first attempt that's amazing. My first army was also Ultra Smurfs so I know your pain

Tyris1013 wrote:
Whats interesting is that Im only doing this out of fun and cause I just love 40k. so these are only for enjoyment but only if I do it right. Hoping to do orks someday and chaos s.m, possibly raven guard too. cheers!

This is what it's all about - having fun (too many people seem to forget this!) I like what you've done, The only thing I'd say is, as others have said, it could do with a bit more blue highlighting before the white, and just do the white on a few edges of the armour. Your smurfs are darker than what I've seen before and that works really well, it gives them a bit more of an earthy realistic look. Good work, keep it up.

Your highlights are to thick, get a thinner brush for them

Looking sharp, mate! My recommendation would be to experiment with blending, as opposed to the sharp edge-highlighting that GW uses for their Space Marines. This is partially personal preference, but getting really sharp, clean edge light-highlights is really hard.

Blending instead involves using very-thinned layers of paint to create a subtle color transition over a surface. I think it gives miniatures a more realistic look than the GW-style edge-lining, and I personally think it is an easier technique to master (I still can't edge-highlight very well. A skill I'm working on).

I'd recommend checking out this video series (the first of five is linked):




I love GirlPainting's videos, I pretty much learned to paint by watching her. She uses a blending style, and explains it pretty well.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Your highlights are to thick, get a thinner brush for them

Thinner highlights aren't a matter of brush thickness, it's a matter of brush control (and to a lesser degree brush quality/condition). I do most of my detail work with the equivalent of a Citadel Standard Brush, and I know of people who use a Basecoat Brush for just about everything.

Like I said, these are my two actually fully painted marines. The first one was painted, but with awful blending job so I striped the paint off of him.

Amazingly enough, I have steady hand and I used fine detail brush for highlights. So the only problem is that I've used too much and from a pot. Some of you say it gives the armor a nice rusty look, it can probably be done the same with thinned space wolves grey for highlights, no? Its just the way I highlight, correct? (bit tired, had a wild party xD so sorry if I can't read quite well now)

thats well above table top quality and will recieve high scores in painting at tourneys.

The only reason you would need to paint better is if you want to compete in painting comps, and if you wana do that go to art school.

Awesome, thank you I've only scratched the surface, and its good to know I'm on a right path. Sweet
Glad you folks like the dusty/muddy effect on the ground, I don't like factory marines :(

So just to repeat, ultramarine+space wolves grey mix (with steady approach like 15/30/45 mix being numbers S.W.G while U.B is 50 mix with 15/30/45 for blending?) and U.B.+ S.W.G. mix 50/50 for all highlights, while S.W.G. for extreme highlights? Can anyone confirm this? Or is it better to use with mix with Ultramrine blue? Specific skull white?

I know you'll all say "look up for tutorials" -thing is, I did tons of research, and somethings you can't learn overnight. Gotta memorize it and double check. I'm familiar with lots of youtube artist and ultramarine guides, so no problem there.

There's also something bugging me, someone suggested mixing Baddab black and Asurmen blue wash together for Ultramrines? Is this generally a good idea? And you mix it on the palet, right? Or should I do basecoat, first layer of regal blue, blue wash, second layer of U.M.B+R.B 50/50 then black wash? Help me out with this :(

I'm also not doing Raven guard yet, cause I have loads of S.M. sheets, and lots of ultra sheets.. Want to waste those first before ordering Raven Guard sheets.

OK here is my input to you being a anti-smurf, but I like to see them painted well and yours are very good even if they weren't the first two you ever painted. So you got skills trust me you have freehand highlighting and looks like some blending. plus the bases look good you should be proud of your models I would be.

Plus your level in your models are way ahead of me when I started painting marines.

Cheers

Thanks man, really though my bases suck cause I'm not sure which colors to use in general. I only know calthan brown as foundation for everything, perhaps sroched brown afterwards.. Maybe graveyard earth. Need to get snakebite leather I guess.

Surprisingly, there's no blending on marines unless you count color transition from Regal blue, to Ultramrine Blue with Regal blue mix 50/50 and Ultramrine blue final

This is what it's all about - having fun (too many people seem to forget this!) I like what you've done, The only thing I'd say is, as others have said, it could do with a bit more blue highlighting before the white, and just do the white on a few edges of the armour. Your smurfs are darker than what I've seen before and that works really well, it gives them a bit more of an earthy realistic look. Good work, keep it up.

Amazingly, I achieved this look by accident. My second marine was regal blue and was too dark, so I had to drybrush him at the very end with all the details painted.. PITA
I was actually worried that they might look way too much to Crimson fist, does anyone know?

As for final thoughts, I did simple highlights but to my eyes It just looked it wasn't enough, which Is why I did bit thicker.

Does anyone know would drybrushing ultramarine blue over highlights do anything wrong?

Thanks for all the feedback guys, you're all awesome! Helped me lot and made me think even harder Cheers