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 I'm currently painting a Great Unclean One and was having a blast. The color was coming out great until I put a green wash on him and then it totally ruined it. I was able to salvage it by drybrushing some of the original color but now I just feel like I'm in a funk trying to fix him.

Yes. A few years back I finally got finished painting my Farseer, and decided to try a thin Asurmen Blue wash to add a nice tint and really accentuate the blue. I could've used Badab Black and not been able to tell the difference. Almost abandoned the model there.

I also got painting my French 15mm FoW armour, and found a nice blue-green I liked, which after several vehicles and a steadily-falling liking saw me finally acknowledge that they'd not look out of place in a green field, and whatever shade it had first started out as was not what it had ended up looking.

They're currently in a box, with the painted ones waiting for me to get the energy to strip them, and the rest awaiting a more suitable colour--my first choice was out of stock at my FLGS, but it didn't match my French dice... I should've just waited, thinking about it. Hindsight is a bitch.

Oh man I've had that.

First Epic Butcher I was painting was looking good... Had great color and detail... Then some how I got a bunch of red paint on him. I went to pick him up to put him away after finishing a session and that's when I seen what I had done.

Just recently I was working on a Dark Angel Librarian and the wash I used didn't turn out too well. I haven't gone back to fix it yet because of 'painter's remorse'.

Me, pretty much every time I say:

"Right, lets try painting eyes, how bad can it be?"

Each and every single time it ends up practically ruining the model.

 Compel wrote:
Me, pretty much every time I say:

"Right, lets try painting eyes, how bad can it be?"

Each and every single time it ends up practically ruining the model.

"It's just white with a black dot. It's easy enough."
*An attempt at eyes later...*
"Dear Lord it's that one image of Steve Buscemi."

I keep two clean and wet brushes and a bottle of acetone to hand when I'm doing fine detail like eyes. Usually you can wipe and wick the paint off if you realise immediately... For all other cases controlled application of acetone.

I have massive painters regret on my Aquila lander. But it being 8/10th milliput, I'm SoL trying to strip it.

The three empty industrial size bodies of simple green agree with you.....

sadly yes, Khan was going perfectly fine until I did his face.......man I wish I didnt glue the head on so good like that. O could rip it off and and strip that

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Me, pretty much every time I say:

"Right, lets try painting eyes, how bad can it be?"

Each and every single time it ends up practically ruining the model.

"It's just white with a black dot. It's easy enough."
*An attempt at eyes later...*
"Dear Lord it's that one image of Steve Buscemi."

And that's why I've completely given up on doing the whites of the eye. Only pain and despair result.

I tend to do a little to much making up as I go along. For a while I thought I had a nice and unique color scheme going for some of my elves; a lovely blue and a rusty orange. And then, several models in, I realized that they looked exactly like the Florida Gators. Regret did indeed ensue.

I've remembered another one. "Ok, so, high elf army. How about locate them in Avelorn, that way I can include some wood elf models if I ever wanted to for things. So, red is the complimentary colour of green..."



Looks good, I like that. Works out well, lets try an archer.

First Imperial Knight I bought was due to be used at friends house for a big game - the night before I built it and painted it.

The assembly was actually pretty good, the paintjob? Yeah, I *just* refinished painting the thing - and that game was over a year ago.

There's more things I regret in my painting history than I don't. Probably why I don't finish a lot of models.

 Compel wrote:
......

It takes a high level of mastery to make a model come alive so much his eyes follow you around the room. This creepy little chap makes you a Master Painter!

Also, I just do the eyes first. White infill with a light black or blue stripe down. Then wash up to the white when the skin is done and your golden. Of course it doesn't always work like that!

Of course "Mad Eyes" Luther was supposed to a a frothing Imperial Priest so got a pass.


This guy actually caused me allot of grief like the OP. After the effort of making him (it was a conversion comp for the original GW plastic characters), I couldn't help feeling the Imperial Green robe was too dull. After much deliberation he got a Purple robe, then after one game where his Evisorator broke he now looks like a pimp and lives in a box all but forgotten. Swing and a miss for me!

I view the act of painting as reducing the potential awesomeness of a built into a mediocre tabletop paintjob. I still enjoy the process, and mostly the results, but I wish they were better. Practice makes perfect I guess, and I am getting better.

My major problem with eyes is getting them to look the same way. The mechanics of doing them is not hard, just the execution.

Paint orb white
Slash of color down the middle
Use the skin color to clean up around the socket and get the eye back where it belongs. (I paint sloppy)

I suffer more from builder’s remorse then painter’s. If I have a cool head, or shoulder pad, or other unique bit, who gets it? Do I save it for a special project? Do I glue things to lock in a cool pose, or magnetize for flexibility? What options should I equip? How much to add before things get cluttered?

 Nevelon wrote:
I view the act of painting as reducing the potential awesomeness of a built into a mediocre tabletop paintjob.

Same here. I love building models, but I get terrified of the idea of putting paint on them and "ruining" them.

Oh, it definitely is. I'm about halfway through my KoW army and kind of regretting that I went with a green/grey scheme instead of a bright blue/grey or a blue/red scheme. But I'm not going to change that now.

The idea of getting models perfect is something I find odd, because unless you're a photographer and taking pictures up close, you're going to be seeing the models from three or more feet away - too far to see anything but obvious mistakes.

And I never bother to paint eyes. Again, 3' and a brown wash on the face makes all the impression needed.

I seem to get it most when I use to try and experiment with Badger Minitaire Tint. These work like a glaze but can be really strong at time. I experimented the with blue the most and found it can really dull your colors down. I never had to restrip anything, it just didnt come out the way i wanted it exactly.I used the on models I didnt care all that much about though since I was experimenting .

 infinite_array wrote:
The idea of getting models perfect is something I find odd, because unless you're a photographer and taking pictures up close, you're going to be seeing the models from three or more feet away - too far to see anything but obvious mistakes.

For me it's less that people will notice--especially at 15mm--and more that I know the imperfections are there. If you handed me some of my painted models and ask me to point out the flaws, I'd know exactly where they are, and they might as well be lightbulbs in the darkness to me. They're the first and last things I see when I look at my painted models, and it really dents any sort of pride I have in the actual finished work. It's like an artist accidentally getting a small dot of errant paint on a grand portrait. Nobody who looks at it hanging in a gallery would notice unless they were looking for it, but to the artist, it's the most obvious part of the painting.

We are our own worst critics.

One approach that can help -- when you say to yourself "just a little more"...STOP.

Just had one on my current model I'm painting.
Spent ages getting a nice greenish tint to Poison Ivy. Then go onto doing a second layer of her. First off, I pick a colour that's dried WAY too light. And secondly, it wiped out that green tint entirely.

Happened twice in my egyptian-themed Dark/Wood Elves for AoS: first on the Cauldron of Blood. Decided to paint the stairs a nice light grey to give a marble-stone feeling. Then it felt TOO white. Decided to add some blood for the blood god on the steps to make it more bloody.
It is TOO bloody now. Still nice though...
Second happened with my Dryads... Painted them a nice light brown to give them a drywood feel, then did the leaves a vibrant green.
Just for laught I gave a try by using metallic colors on the leaves of the last 5 of them, to fit my bronze theme...
They look so much better than the green ones, but I really...really don't want to redo the 11 green-leaves ones...

This is the reason I no longer use spray varnish on my models.

Had several issues with it from dragging the base coat through to misting.
Killed tons of models with it and hate the stuff.

Rather stick with my brush on varnish :p

You don't know painter's regret till you grab a can of black spray rather than varnish. There's a reason I airbrush my primer and varnish coats exclusively beyond economy...

winterdyne wrote:
You don't know painter's regret till you grab a can of black spray rather than varnish. There's a reason I airbrush my primer and varnish coats exclusively beyond economy...

Oh no, that would be my nightmare.

Cheers, guys. I was able to semi-salvage him by drybrushing the base coat back on him, redoing the fine details, and rewashing him brown. He looks okay, but not to the level he originally was.

The good/bad thing about metal models is if I ever pitched him against a wall, he'd go through it

If you're as compulsive as me, you've painted the same metal terminator librarian 4 times because of painters regret. More like painters anxiety. I had to learn the hard way:

"Never let perfection be the enemy of good enough."

Painters regret is definitely a thing. Something I've suffered through fairly often trying to hone down a color scheme. Or hey this paint will make things so much smoother and uniform... nope..

Yeah pretty much stripped everything at least 5 times so far.

still not done with a single army yet.

almost done with one thing

winterdyne wrote:
You don't know painter's regret till you grab a can of black spray rather than varnish. There's a reason I airbrush my primer and varnish coats exclusively beyond economy...

Yup. I did this once to my beautifully yellow painted Bretonian General complete with basing and transfers which I never do. It was a quick spray which gave it speckled black mist over one side. I just didn't have the heart to redo him so I just fielded him that way. Only one person ever asked what was going on with his paint job.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not sure why the hell I changed my color scheme on my Space Marines half way through from a light blue with white shoulder pads to an slightly darker blue and no white. I think I was tired of messing with the white, I can never get it right and I was tired of GW paints drying out so I just switched to Reaper and couldn't quite match up the blue. I am such a slow painter as it is.

I also can't decide if I want to go with pink for my Eldar as I originally decided. Of course I only have done 1 guardian and a wave serpent so far so no big deal if I switch it up. But one moment I am like, their Eldar they would be pink and my daughters would love it. The next I am like, it's pink.