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First mini ever. I try to learn how to paint minis while looking after my autistic teenage son on late nights when he doesn't want to go to sleep.

Looking for suggestions on how I could have painted the mini better. Also, is this good enough to be called tabletop-quality? (I've just learnt that word )

Yeah man that's definitely tabletop quality, if not above. The flesh tones are pretty nice considering its your first miniature. Nice effort

VERY nice tabletop IMO, but everyone's opinion varies depending on what people play in your area. The flesh could use some additional layers to kick it up a notch, but the cloth is all very well done and the globes/lenses are fantastic. Great job!

Easily tabletop quality... the detailing on the fart globes is top notch!

Very nice looking poisoned wind mortar. Colour scheme is nice, I did something similar with my warp fire thrower.

I think this is above table top quality in my opinion. Nothing super amazing but definitely tabletop or above quality.

When you paint up the rest of the island of blood you might not want to go such high quality (at least on the clanrats) because if you want a playable army it gets annoying with so many models lol

Not sure if your going to play the game tho or just paint them

They look great mate. Keep on posting your progress!!

If this is your first mini you have a very bright painting career ahead of you!

Excellent first go.

Thanks for all the replies. Painting of flesh is identified as a "weakness" so I'll work on that for the next piece and then maybe go back and redo this one.

Also, I do not play the game and I don't stay true to a specific army, I just buy what ever I think looks cool and isn't to expensive on ebay.

I've got a few Skaven and high elfs from the Isle of blood box, a box of Sanginary guards, a few death wing terminators and a librarian, questing knights, Orc chariot and a Orc shaman on boars. More or less all over the place

galdrin wrote:
Thanks for all the replies. Painting of flesh is identified as a "weakness" so I'll work on that for the next piece and then maybe go back and redo this one.

Also, I do not play the game and I don't stay true to a specific army, I just buy what ever I think looks cool and isn't to expensive on ebay.

I've got a few Skaven and high elfs from the Isle of blood box, a box of Sanginary guards, a few death wing terminators and a librarian, questing knights, Orc chariot and a Orc shaman on boars. More or less all over the place

I think the skin tones on this model are nice. Don't hunk they need to be redone but whatever you prefer lol

It's good to paint what you like though (it will save you some money instead if playing lol)

First .. if someone is confused ... yes I did change the name of the thread. Stll want feedback on my completed builds but I don't need a lot of different threads.

Second ... I finished the warfire skaven early this morning. I know I need to work on "seamless blending" but I still feel thats a bit to advanced for my skills.

Comments on the mini? My second completed.

These are great. For the first couple of miniatures they are better than great. Awesome job dude, I look forward to seeing more

Had fun with this Helbrute. Tried blending and think I discovered something right in the end Before I put the mini away. Will try that on next mini.

As Always, any coments that helps me to learn paint minis are welcome. Hard to get good photos of this as all the different red nuances seems to more or less blur together. Armor is more "brick red" and flesh is more pinkish that in the photos.

I've had some more time painting over the last few weeks so I continued with a few rat ogres and a pack master (?). These are my 4th-6th figures that I've painted and some things like thin paint starts to make sence.

These are looking really good!

If you want some constructive advise, I can point out a few things worth looking at:

1) The skin on the rat ogres needs a bit of blending, you can see where one color ends and where the highlight picks up. The way to remedy this is to mix your colors so when you are done base coating your skin, the next layer is applied as a 50:50 mix of the base and he highlight, and not just the highlight. It's also good to keep them really thin using glaze medium. The more different layers you put on the better the blend; for example if youre base coating with cadian flesh and working your way up to Kislev flesh, your first highlight over Cadian could be a 3:1 CF:KF, the next could be 2:1, then 1:1, then 1:2 etc. This is not necessary on models with a little bit of skin but its crucial on large areas of skin like orges. Once the skin is finished, I like to go over certain parts with really diluted red glaze medium to give the appearance of healthy skin. (Which has a pinkish hue, especially in areas where there are a lot of vessels under the skin, and the skin is thin like in the face, especially ears)

2) The fur on the orges looks very dry-brushed on and lacks some depth. You can give it more character if you do them in a few more layers, base coating as you have, then painting the next highlight on, then drybrushing an even lighter color on top of this. You can then blend them all together by washing the fur with really diluted brown wash. (Ie agrax earthshade)

3) Your metals are excellent, they look properly grimey and beat up. If you want to give them even more depth I would play around with putting blue/green colors on the copper parts to look like oxidation. (Most notably on that tank on the ogre's shoulder.) You can also experiment with some really diluted orange paint to give the look of running rust over the silver metallic areas. That'll add an extra nuance of just how used up and grimy the parts are.

4) The eyes: It may be hard to tell in that picture but the eyes look very subdued and don't really stick out to me. You may want to intensify the eyeballs by painting more pronounced highlights in. That's strictly a personal choice though, they are fine as is.

5) The bases: You've done a good job of keeping them neat, but they are a bit bare compared to how excellent the models are. The bit of static grass you've used is a bit flat, and overall doesn't convey the red desert setting I assume you're going for. If you have the means check out ArmyPainter; their grass patches are the best in the industry, they offer a lot of colors and even their desert tufts look much more lively and varied than static grass.

That's really all I wanted to say, congratulations on doing so well for having just started! Hope to see more from you.

Thanks for the comments Hive City Dweller. I picked out a few 15+years old plastic orcs that I had in the pile and thought orc skin would be good to practice blending on. I don't intend to do anything with the bases. This was just a practice in blending. As always comments on what to do better is welcome.

For the first time in almost a year I had some time to paint this week and this is the result. Constructive comments more than welcome!

For your first bunch of miniatures this is all just awesome. Actually that first bit is pointless, regardless of how long you've been painting, these are good models.

For the rat ogre's skin I'd say you could try two things: firstly up the contrast a bit (so start with a darker shade and end with a brighter highlight, at least relatively), and, secondly but related to the first: desaturate/change the tone of the pink a bit, so go more towards brownish and paleish colours, especially in those shades and highlights. Doing this in an appropriate amount of layers might give a little more depth and character to the skin. Or, it might be something you totally hate .

Just checking these out bro, really cool models your a natural! Very nice work. Even though you don't play I'd seriously suggest looking into D&D mate, would work great with these models and could be good to play with friends and family one day

Thank you for the comments.

Ashley_Chaos, I already play D&D but as I live in the middle of nowhere we play over internet using Fantasy Grounds so I have no need for miniatures in my gaming

Lovely models. What colour undercoat do you use? It looks to me as if it is white? I think your style of painting might look better from a black undercoat. Just a thought.

 Fifty wrote:
Lovely models. What colour undercoat do you use? It looks to me as if it is white? I think your style of painting might look better from a black undercoat. Just a thought.

No, actaully I use Vallejo black primer as undercoat and I paint from darker to lighter. Is your oppinion that the shadows are to bright?

Possibly. I think you might be reaching your brightest colour on too large an area on some models, such as the cloth areas of the ork. On the other hand, the fur of the rat ogre was only highlighted at the absolute tips. Perhaps you need more of an intermediate stage...

I'm not an expert painter though, and it is only one person's opinion - it is just a thought. Your models look better than mine anyway.