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Hi All,
I recently painted up a few ironguts, but I'm wanting to improve how they look and am unsure how to do it. It feels like my current paintjob hasn't made the details of the model really prominent, I'm also not sure if the colours I've used are too pale. Any critique/comments would be great!

Cheers,

(I think I posted this in the right section....)

I can see literally nothing wrong with those ogres.

In fact I'm bloody jealous. The detail on those pants is amazing. The pale green skin and tattoos are great as well.

But if you want to add some details to them to make them stand out a little bit then I would suggest adding some blood to the weapons. That's about the only thing I can think of adding to them.
GW's "Blood for the blood god" paint is supposed to be very good for fresh goopy blood.

Cheers for the positive feedback! These are the first models that I've really spent some time on, getting above a tabletop standard, I'm glad I'm going in the right direction!

.

 Snrub wrote:
I can see literally nothing wrong with those ogres.

In fact I'm bloody jealous. The detail on those pants is amazing. The pale green skin and tattoos are great as well.

Thought I'd stop by to help, realized he was far better than me and had nothing to offer too hahaha.

Should ogres have more rusty/worn metals? Their chain looks very clean. I've done a little rust with pigments and really liked the effect.

 Yonan wrote:

Thought I'd stop by to help, realized he was far better than me and had nothing to offer too hahaha.

Should ogres have more rusty/worn metals? Their chain looks very clean. I've done a little rust with pigments and really liked the effect.

lol, ditto. Though I would agree - with the blood comment - a little bit would be a nice "pop" from the low-contrast (and stunning) paint job you have on them. And yeah - IMHO - Ogres wouldn't bother to take care of their stuff, so rusty, dirty corroded metals would be appropriate. Doubly so for Nurgle Ogres.

** I'll also add - your basing could use a little something - it's very flat. Some rocks, fallen trees, etc. I'd also try to make the lines between the snow and grass not so neat. Have a little grass coming up from beneath the snow, and a little snow/slush breaking into the grass areas.

Schmapdi wrote:
** I'll also add - your basing could use a little something - it's very flat. Some rocks, fallen trees, etc. I'd also try to make the lines between the snow and grass not so neat. Have a little grass coming up from beneath the snow, and a little snow/slush breaking into the grass areas.

Agreed. The bases could use some extra detail. Rocks or fallen enemy soldiers or the like.

 Yonan wrote:

Thought I'd stop by to help, realized he was far better than me and had nothing to offer too hahaha.

Should ogres have more rusty/worn metals? Their chain looks very clean. I've done a little rust with pigments and really liked the effect.

Some rust and corrosion probably wouldn't go astray considering they are nurgle ogres.

Although like I said before though, as is they are beautiful models.

Yeah there's definitely an aesthetic choice between clean and dirty and I can't fault anyone for choosing one over the other.

miskeliborski wrote:
It feels like my current paintjob hasn't made the details of the model really prominent, I'm also not sure if the colours I've used are too pale. Any critique/comments would be great!

First of all, well done! There's always room for improvement, blahblahblah, but this is genuinely nice painting - especially if it's a first step beyond simply "getting it done."

I can, though, see where you're coming from about bringing the sculpt forward. You've gone for a pale, Nurgle-y scheme that contains mostly pale colors. It makes perfect sense, but it doesn't allow a ton of room for strong contrast and that's what helps make those details pop. One trick to adding contrast without radically changing the saturation (they look good pale - you don't want to totally scrap your chosen scheme before you've really tried to make it work) is to play with temperature. Subtly tinting raised/top areas with warm colors and recessed/bottom areas with cool ones gives a similar sense of light and shadow to the usual "brighter highlight, darker shade" method, but doesn't require nearly as large a shift in color.

If you have a test model (even just a part or some paintable scrap with a bit of variety in its shape) laying around, try a little experiment: Pick a neutral base color (white, grey, etc.) and basecoat the whole thing. From there, add a small touch of blue or purple to your base and paint your shadows. Now paint your highlights with the base, tinted slightly with yellow or orange. The model should still be predominantly [your chosen base color], without it having been significantly lightened or darkened, but it should "read" the same way, in terms of imagined lighting, as if you had washed it down, retouched the basecoat, and highlighted with a brighter color. You can have your (pale, fetid, worm-ridden) cake and eat it ([vomit]) too!

Really? They look fantastic!

Cheers for all the replies and suggestions! I think I'll play around with some rust and texturing the metals a bit more. And the bases definitely, I might look around the forums and see if there's any good looking stuff I can add to the bases to make them a little less generic

The models themselves are very nice, but the base lets it down a bit, I'd build the snow up a bit to make it thicker and then have it fade into the grass and maybe add some snow to the boots, just so it looks a bit more realistic.

I WISH I could even be at the stage of asking for advice to be that good, let alone improve from it!