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I know it looks bad and I know I need to WATER DOWN MY PAINTS lol. I just cannot seem to hit the golden area between too watered down and not enough. But it is the first time I have ever picked up a paint brush. In that respect it could be worse. and I looks better than unpainted but I need some tips from the Vets. I REALLLLY need to work on steady hands. I do not plan on stripping this one down so I can look back on it and see how far I have come in the Future.

There is a lot on the net and much good advice to search.
From my own memories of being a beginner I would say this:
Metallics are really hard to do at first and not look REALLY bad.
Trick is to paint a similar color or black first then the metallic.
There are few times I could make a white then metallic look good.
Too many things to mention other than: better than my first time, goo stuff!
Oh one other thing: try not to contaminate metallics with non, use separate brushes and water cups where possible.
It is like hugging the girlfriend who put on glitter... wearing black.

That's a really good first effort. Colours are mostly where they belong, and the scheme looks good.

Steady hands will come somewhat with practice. I also like to paint sitting low enough that I can rest my wrists on the edge of the table, which helps a lot.

Honestly, this is great! I can hardly believe this is your first model.

As a fellow beginner - what helps me most is:

1) start at the deepest parts of the model, this will save you some back-and-forth if you dab color where it doesn't belong. a clean model will be a good looking model.

2) the final touches to the model makes it look the best - wash/highlight take less time than basecoats (for me anyway), and it makes a model shine. I try not to skimp here.

3) make your painting spot COMFORTABLE! this will help. pinky promise.

Excellent work! I want to see the completed squad

Well I have taken tips into account and this is what I have come up with lol. the new one is on the left and represents more of what I intended to do in the first place. BTW I have no idea why it posts upside down and sidways. windows preview, the file icon, my phone, and photoshop all open it up right side up. as well as if you click on the picture to open a new tab

They're looking good, especially considering they're a first attempt. Don't do yourself down so much!

It's easy to feel worse than you are when you look online ago other people's work. Remember that online pics aren't an accurate scope of everyone's efforts. Just those folk with cameras and confidence.

I am happy with them. I have gotten a few drones done aswell and they all look good sitting together. I am going for a harsh snow tundra planet feel with not so much battle damage as it is damage from the elements. I will be sure to post pics when I get the squad done !!!

You will get better rapidly.
I would paint a squad at a time (10 figs).
By the third squad I wanted to redo my first: no joke.
But get them painted, get them out there and have fun.
Something painted no matter to what level is vastly superior to most stuff I see out there.
I can already see your accuracy improving.

 Talizvar wrote:
You will get better rapidly.
I would paint a squad at a time (10 figs).
By the third squad I wanted to redo my first: no joke.
But get them painted, get them out there and have fun.
Something painted no matter to what level is vastly superior to most stuff I see out there.
I can already see your accuracy improving.

I agree with this. Your paint job is a MILLION times better than gray plastic or primed only. It will make games more fun

So I decided to paint up my drones so as to save the FW for when I had more experience. Some of them have been converted to marker lights for my 1000pt list. I used the iron breaker dry brushed on to show the elements scratching up paint on the armor and drone bodies. I like how it looks although it looks better in person.

Not sure if the maximum file size is per file or per post but here we go lol.

Looking very nice indeed. I love the scheme you chose, it's so clean.

Makes me want to go brush my teeth too, curse brand association.

Looking nice! You can see improvement with even just that second FW. I like the scheme too. How are you doing the bases?

I am going to be doing the pva and baking powder...soda? for the base. My fluff is they have been on an arctic planet for a long time. I almost have a full squad done. I will update here within the week. Working 10 hours a day building Acuras drains a lot out of you lol. Aslo I dumped my pot of Nuln Oil. Does anyone know if it would be okay to water down the Abbadon Black into a wash for the crisis suits? I have enough Nuln Oil for the rest of my fire warriors but thats about it.

Okay, so I lied. I started painting and didnt stop till they were done lol. Its day 34 or is is 37, It has been so long I have lost time. What is time anymore. Time is only meaningful if you have a reason to keep track of it. And When you have been painting as long as I have (4 hours lol) there is none. Anyway lol here is the finished squad. The first one is on the far right of all the pics. Also I just noticed the sloped red on the helmet dead center and have fixed it with shade lol.

RagTagSoldier wrote:
BTW I have no idea why it posts upside down and sidways. windows preview, the file icon, my phone, and photoshop all open it up right side up.

Some digital cameras 'tag' the photo with background data that tells image software which way up the camera was held when the photo was taken, so that the software can auto-rotate the image to the 'right' way up.

Dakka's attachment software doesn't read that data, so it won't auto-rotate. So if you were holding your camera sideways or upside-down, the image will display that way.



You can (usually) get around that by opening the image in a photo-editor, making some small change (adjust the colour slightly, crop it, whatever), and then saving it. When you save it, the editor should save the image's current orientation as the default.