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@ Januine: Thankyou!!!! This is awesome! Downloading immediately!

Thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words.

I have actually noticed some of the brush issues you mentioned bebop, my primary issues have been that paint doesn't always want to flow freely from my brush to the model and the tips are getting "hooked". I was tempted to blame it on inferior brushes but I may have to reconsider that. (I'm using "the army painter brushes")

 bebopdrums2424 wrote:
@ Januine: Thankyou!!!! This is awesome! Downloading immediately!

No worries bebop - 2 things to note; first, it does take a bit of getting used to on how to put in the paints, mixes, materials etc etc. stick with it though. I think there's a tutorial either in the app or on the website. Secondly - the paint database is not preloaded into it. You have to go and pick which paint brands you want to download. They're free but it freaked me out at first as I was all 'do I have to type in every single damn paint I own myself???' you don't!!! I've been emailing with the creator/developer and told him that all the new GW paints from the past 6 months or so are missing from it - he's on it and the GW database will be updated in the next few days to be fully complete.

@ Tom: I think the army painter brushes are subpar. I used to buy a bunch of brushes in bulk at like a BLick art store, and generally if you are really adamant about keeping em clean then they do ok. however i am not adamant and in the throws of creative passion i ruin the hell out of a brush. But if it hooks, no matter how well you keep it, the brush is crap and has become a liability. On the other hand, as i mentioned in a post above, true sable brushes, while rare expensive and not necessarily easy to get, are *SIGNIFICANTLY* better and are much stronger and vibrant.

@ Jan: yeah im totally lost right now lol ... i did download the paint lists but now im trying to add them to project. <_< confuzzled...:p

man, this looks like a great idea. I've been hanging out older guys trying to pick up stuff.

speaking of pickups, do any of you use tamiya paint?

Not anymore. But i know some guys around here like the "clear" paints, like smoke and clear red apparently gets a good blood effect? I used to like tamiya paints when i painted model airplanes as a kid, but its been that long..


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PS...A welc0me to GiraffeX and knightly. Lovely uploads fellows and super glad to Have you veterans in the group!

I was a bit shocked when I bought the forgeworld masterclass modelling books, and they all referenced tamiya stuff.

Found some pics, first up is my first attempts at painting about 9 years ago not great that's for sure, but it built my base for what i wanted to achieve, which was finding easy fast ways to paint at a decent level. I read some black tutorials and thought it would be the easiest way to go with a top down zenithal spray can hit and a lot of badab black

you can also see my first reds here too! the Exorcists are still an awesome chapter I'd love to re visit one day but you kind of move on with painting from chapter to chapter, so next reds I did was my Flesh eaters

well, anyway here's a few models from the beginning.


and here's a little sample of where I am today, I'm sure there's some models i've done better work on but I can't find the pics

Hey guys Trench here again managed to fix my images, would love for some of you guys to look at them (they're at the top of page 2). Been really considering some of the tips I'm hearing here and think I'm going to take them to heart when painting my blood angels today. Hoping to do some advanced NMM and shading, any tips for that?

Nice job on the conversion - works really well. Based on a cairn wrath fig, aye?

Paintjob looks grand though a little hard to tell due to the rough photo.

As for shading and nmm. Everyone really has their own go-to-way. I generally start with mid tones and then then add shadows and then highlights - usually with really thin layers and glazes. I'm not a fan of nmm so not much help there I'm afraid - I'm tmm all the way! Check out youtube though - there are so many excellent tutorials there - for nmm, check out painting buddha's videos; Ben Komets does a great gold nmm tutorial on a stormcast eternal which may be of help

Good luck and welcome to hobby

Jan

re: just a note about enamels

I switched from enamels to acrylics when I picked miniatures back up again (still use enamels for scale models, like my planes).

The thing I really like about enamels, which I've found is completely unlike acrylics: they never seem to go bad. Of course the pots are 'better' imo, testors little glass pots, and humbrols little tiny paint cans, they all keep very air tight. But while you might need to mix them for what feels like forever, all my enamels that I've had for years and years are just as good as they were when I bought them.

Nerdfest, those reds...seriously, those reds!! You should do a walkthrough for us. Awesome stuff.

I used enamels exclusively as a kid, painting cars and planes with my dad and older brother. Given what I remember about them, I would be hesitant to ever return to them due to the fact that I have three kids, two of whom seem to have made it their life's mission to infiltrate my desk

This looks like fun. Maybe I should crash this party

Testors as a kid until I raided my mother's supply of ceramic paints... Duncan I think was the brand. Bisq-Stains? Ah yes, that was the name. Had a strange odor, but they did work on the pewter miniatures. And apparently they are still around, Hmmm....

bebopdrums2424 wrote:... On the other hand, as i mentioned in a post above, true sable brushes, while rare expensive and not necessarily easy to get, are *SIGNIFICANTLY* better ...

There is a range of sable qualities. All are better than synthetic, and some are not as expensive as others.
I have a couple of Rosemary&co brushes for special occasions (fine details etc.) and then a load of Humbrol Palpo brushes in a range of sizes for general use (much cheaper so I don't feel bad about abusing them, but they are still sable bristles).

and yes, sable is the go-to for Enamels as well.

TrenchCoatCreep wrote:... Hoping to do some advanced NMM and shading, any tips for that?

Can't help with NMM, I'm of the crowd that thinks "if I want something metallic, why not use metallic paint". I just like how metallic paint looks.

Shading. Well that depends on what you want to know; shading is quite a broad subject. Is it the act of doing it (blending etc), or where to shade, or something else?

Guildenstern wrote:re: just a note about enamels

I switched from enamels to acrylics when I picked miniatures back up again (still use enamels for scale models, like my planes).

The thing I really like about enamels, which I've found is completely unlike acrylics: they never seem to go bad. Of course the pots are 'better' imo, testors little glass pots, and humbrols little tiny paint cans, they all keep very air tight. But while you might need to mix them for what feels like forever, all my enamels that I've had for years and years are just as good as they were when I bought them.

Although I will add that they are not immune to drying out; if you don't seal them properly you will still find a solid lump (but if you are lucky, there will be some good paint underneath).

I finished this Red Corsair aspiring champion today. Feedback, opinions and criticism welcome. Thanks fellas!

Very nice Tom. I love the brass tone but a wonder if a hint of druchii violet shade to the brass in the recesses/shadows wouldn't make it a little richer and pop more.
Lovely looking fig though. That demon face on the power pack is cracking

 Januine wrote:
Very nice Tom. I love the brass tone but a wonder if a hint of druchii violet shade to the brass in the recesses/shadows wouldn't make it a little richer and pop more.
Lovely looking fig though. That demon face on the power pack is cracking

Thanks Jan, I may have to try and mix up some kind of rough equivalent and give it a try. Unfortunately I don't have any paint but a bunch of dirt cheap "apple barrel" craft paint, with the exception of a citadel reikland fleshshade and a p3 khardic flesh. If I had realized how rarely I'd be painting skin I'd have gotten something else

Getting better quality paint and brushes is at the top of my hobby wishlist, but it may be a while before I can work it into the budget.

Not to worry - you could try doing a purple glaze instead. Just mix up a nice purple - then thin it right down with medium if you have it, water if not. Apply to the dark brass areas and then feather it out (I lick the brush for this but that's not to everyone's ......taste ) purple is a complimentary colour to gold/brass so gives s nice touch to the metal.

Oh i certainly lick my fair share of paint during a painting session too...im probably too liberal with it honestly...LOL...

nice work tom the horns look really nice, like a brushed bronze look....soft a muted, i really like it. paint looks a little thick in some places...the feet...but a very solid job all around. thanks for sharing! keep it up

Januine wrote:Not to worry - you could try doing a purple glaze instead. Just mix up a nice purple - then thin it right down with medium if you have it, water if not. Apply to the dark brass areas and then feather it out (I lick the brush for this but that's not to everyone's ......taste ) purple is a complimentary colour to gold/brass so gives s nice touch to the metal.

Thanks, I will give it a go! I appreciate the tip, I wouldn't have thought to use purple...somewhere in the back of my head I can hear my high school art teacher saying "Did everyone remember their color wheel?"

bebopdrums2424 wrote:nice work tom the horns look really nice, like a brushed bronze look....soft a muted, i really like it. paint looks a little thick in some places...the feet...but a very solid job all around. thanks for sharing! keep it up

Thanks Bebop, much appreciated. I've started to realize that it's well worth the extra time to do lots of thin layers rather than going for "immediate coverage, glob glob glob"...I get a little over zealous Chiefly when considering the F- quality of paint I'm using, I'm going to start going really thin with it as you had mentioned you prefer to do.


I tried two new techniques on this, my ninth mini, glowing eyes and the electrified power weapon wet blending thing I see so many people make look really cool. All in all, I am relatively pleased with the end results, for a first go and what have you. I watched a "feathering" tutorial just now that I wish i has watched before I did the power fist, but it'll serve me well in future efforts.

Hi I'm Metsuri and have been painting about 30 years now.

I have been on bit of break of hobby from hobby couple of year due to small kids and other things past couple of year. But now it seems that things are settling again and I'm finding time to paint again.

I have been passionate about improving my painting and getting the best results for a decade and below are couple of my "showcase" figs before the break.
Hope to have something new to show you guys soon.

 bebopdrums2424 wrote:
Not anymore. But i know some guys around here like the "clear" paints, like smoke and clear red apparently gets a good blood effect?

Tamiya Clear Red is great as blood, you get nice shiny, dark look, straight out of bottle. Stink is bad though.
The swords on the Punk Zombie below are painted with Clear Red.

Hell yeah i'm a massive brush licker! I find it takes less time between model and mouth to feather or blend colours nothing wrong with that I suppose, it's not like i'm having a pash session with them or anything............ that's only on weekends and cold nights

Heretic Tom, it's funny you should ask about my reds, already in this thread many have said to find one 'thing' and learn how to do it to a level you're happy with, it was red for me! that was the first colour I wanted to learn how to paint and I actually used an Anja Wettergren article from a White Dwarf article which I adapted to my own tastes which led me to my other 'thing' I do I always tell myself to highlight 'one highlight more' so if I think it's enough I always add a brighter one to my models and if that's too bright it all gets bought back by adding a wash over the whole model.

So, my reds are simply: Red, wash agrax, red/orange. orange. orange/vomit brown. vomit brown, carroburg crimson wash. Done. I can do a tutorial for anyone interested if you want? i've got one in my blog somewhere but I'd be better off doing a fresh one I think

Sable is made out of wolverine, so we have all been licking wolverines!

I spent a year painting nothing but nmm and I still dont think I quite got it. Heres my best shot.





It helps have lots of pastel shades available, you have to go really crazy with highlights, building it up to almost white - I used vallejo light skin tone for the brass and pale bluegrey for the steel.

I'd like to offer my input, meager as it may be, to the discussion here if I may.

I'm 32 years young, and have been playing/painting 40k for about 14 or 15 years now, since about age 16 or 17. Prior to that, I routinely painted scale models, mostly WW2 vehicles & aircraft as a young child and into to early teenage years.

I do not have any pictures of my early, original/first minis at present, as Photobucket is currently offline & down for maintenance as I'm typing this. That said, I will try and post some 'before' pictures later once it's back up & running.

My most current projects have centered around the grand re-visioning of my Blood Angels 5th Battle Company, of which I am making steady, if not inexorably slow progress on. My goal is to really push myself to paint this army to the highest degree possible. To go all out on the modeling and painting and have an army that I can be proud of.

Here are a few models/group shots,













Those are my meager offerings for the moment. I'm very proud of how far I've come, and look forward to trying new effects, such as my attempt at Object Source Lighting on my Deathwatch Terminator Librarian



For a first attempt I'm not at all unhappy, though there's always room to improve.

Looking forward to sharing what little I can and learning a whole lot from those gathered here. So many amazing painters have already joined in here already. If anyone has any questions, or comments/critiques regarding my minis, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks, and take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

Very nice work fella. Am loving that terminator. His head with the OSL and the skin tones are lush. Really nice work there. He looks bloody fierce!!

digging the blue highlighting on that terminator...I like the OSL too

...that head would look great for a nurgle chaos terminator though!

Heretic Tom wrote:I finished this Red Corsair aspiring champion today. Feedback, opinions and criticism welcome. Thanks fellas!

Spoiler:

That's a fine model, mate! My only suggestion would be to paint the vents in his chest the same bronze as the other metal areas, otherwise the chest and head form a fairly large 'blank space' between the chainmail and the horns and the eye gets a bit lost. Alternatively, painting the lower half of the helmet (ie. the grill over the face) bronze would achieve the same.

Definitely a great bit of progress!

weetyskemian44 wrote:
I spent a year painting nothing but nmm and I still dont think I quite got it. Heres my best shot.

Spoiler:

It helps have lots of pastel shades available, you have to go really crazy with highlights, building it up to almost white - I used vallejo light skin tone for the brass and pale bluegrey for the steel.

To be honest, I think that looks fine, as I am in the camp that doesn't believe NMM needs to be pushed to ultra-shiny to look good; I wouldn't paint regular metallics that way, so I don't with NMM either. Instead, it's all about the contrast and the texture to me, which is something that I find can get a bit lost with some metallic methods. That lower pic in particular does that just fine, you'd be hard pressed to get that kind of worn, battered look so precisely with traditional metallics (or at least, I would! )

An extreme example of this in practice is this Skaven I did a while back, there's practically no 'shine' to it, instead the NMM methods are used to give the armour plates a real patina of grime and rust and filth which wouldn't work nearly as well with conventional metallics; you'd be using so many washes and such over the top of a metallic paint that you'd lose the metallic effect anyway.



Damn, just realised those pics definitely need retaking at some point! Still, it does demonstrate the technique.

Yes it works really well for the corroded look!

I've only been painting since 1994.

Here's some pics of my work circa early 2000s.





I actually lost quite a bit of ability through not painting... this is my work late 2000's...





Got a tiny bit better by the early 2010's...



Best effort try at 2015 P3 Grandmaster:





After that abysmal effort, I decided to train extensively for maximum improvement in one calendar year. Thanks to great feedback from fellow Dakkaites: Jah, Odinsgrandson and other great painters I've met IRL over the course of the last year...

Here we are in 2016...



Basically, for anyone interested: My "Training" gallery chronicles my painting "practice" from Aug 2015 to now. I hope its informative. http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-1795-48162_Training.html

 Paradigm wrote:

That's a fine model, mate! My only suggestion would be to paint the vents in his chest the same bronze as the other metal areas, otherwise the chest and head form a fairly large 'blank space' between the chainmail and the horns and the eye gets a bit lost. Alternatively, painting the lower half of the helmet (ie. the grill over the face) bronze would achieve the same.

Definitely a great bit of progress!

Thanks! you were right, I painted the grill in his chest, breaks it up quite well. Thanks for the advice, I should have done that from the start...I'm going to chalk it up to laziness, which feels a bit shameful



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 keezus wrote:

Basically, for anyone interested: My "Training" gallery chronicles my painting "practice" from Aug 2015 to now. I hope its informative. http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-1795-48162_Training.html

Awesome, thanks for sharing. Great stuff, it's interesting to see someone's progression like that, makes it really easy to see how you've improved certain skills, like your highlighting for example.