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Please be honest and tell me if this is looking good for some one who started painting for the first time last year, im getting a bit worried that im wasting my time and im very bad at this.

I put all my troops in natural light yesterday and realised they look pretty bad... so ill show what i think looks better and see what people say. Please be honest because i really neeed to know.

Also is there any thing wrong with me leaving the black areas of wings black? or does that break the rule of not having flat black etc.

Its NOT FINISHED, but almost.


Please give me honest criticism of all types.


EDIT - The black was done with paint brush. and all the rest of it also.

2nd edit - Also i stuffed priming up a bit on this guy so hes frosty on some areas.

3rd fething edit - Also all highlights for gold and steel were done. Mabey hard to tell.


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If you have harsh critism and don't want to type it out here. Feel free to pm me what you think. ( i promise i wont get offended )

I would not say you are very bad at this. Honestly, it's looking good. I can see that looking just great on the tabletop. If mine turns out the same when I finally get round to finishing it off I'll be perfectly happy.

Black looks fine. Yeah, you could maybe put in a bit of dark grey to highlight it if you wanted to.

Crispy78 wrote:
I would not say you are very bad at this. Honestly, it's looking good. I can see that looking just great on the tabletop. If mine turns out the same when I finally get round to finishing it off I'll be perfectly happy.

Black looks fine. Yeah, you could maybe put in a bit of dark grey to highlight it if you wanted to.

Thanks dude, i have been having a meltdown after i exposed all my army in to natural light, and i could see soo many errors and god... I dont know any one in real life that i can get feed back, so i have to ask here.

Thanks for that. I mean i think it looks good, but yeah i dont know i just need to know this.

You can go over it from 6 inches away with a magnifying glass and find error after error, and it'll drive you nuts. Unless you're entering a painting competition, it's just not worth it.

If you're happy with the work you've done, and it looks good if you put it in the middle of your table and look at it from a few feet away, call it done, be happy, and start work on the next thing.

 Stormatious wrote:
I put all my troops in natural light yesterday and realised they look pretty bad...

Here's something that most people don't realize about their painting, especially when they're being critical of themselves:

A cohesive, fully-painted army looks good on the tabletop. Period. Hard stop. It's REALLY easy to be tough on yourself (I'm guilty of the same thing), but I've seen an IR army that was roughly painted, was bright orange with tiger stripes, and made little effort at shading, washes, highlights, staying in the lines, etc. On the table, it was great to play against and looked good all together.

If want to keep improving your painting, that's great news. Do it! But don't get discouraged by your work, and keep at it. Still looks immensely better than Plastic Grey or Primer Black.

To make the highlights on the gold pop a bit more, what I like to do is take a photo of the model with a single light source then identify the areas that naturally catch the light. I then go ahead and exaggerate the highlights in those areas with a mix of (dont have the pots in front of me I forget which is the really gold-y gold) mixed with a dash of white or the light silver (again, forgot the color name).

 skchsan wrote:
To make the highlights on the gold pop a bit more, what I like to do is take a photo of the model with a single light source then identify the areas that naturally catch the light. I then go ahead and exaggerate the highlights in those areas with a mix of (dont have the pots in front of me I forget which is the really gold-y gold) mixed with a dash of white or the light silver (again, forgot the color name).

Oh yeah, i actually wasn't sure about that. I thought mabye i should do exaggerated highlights in all areas the highest areas so you sort of get the highlight effect no matter what angle you are looking at it from, but yeah i guess that doesn't make much sense.

Thank you.


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 Lorek wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I put all my troops in natural light yesterday and realised they look pretty bad...

Here's something that most people don't realize about their painting, especially when they're being critical of themselves:

A cohesive, fully-painted army looks good on the tabletop. Period. Hard stop. It's REALLY easy to be tough on yourself (I'm guilty of the same thing), but I've seen an IR army that was roughly painted, was bright orange with tiger stripes, and made little effort at shading, washes, highlights, staying in the lines, etc. On the table, it was great to play against and looked good all together.

If want to keep improving your painting, that's great news. Do it! But don't get discouraged by your work, and keep at it. Still looks immensely better than Plastic Grey or Primer Black.

Thank you very much.


Have a lovely day.

I fall into the same trap sometimes, "Perfect is the enemy of good".
Helldrake looks great to me. You know the only person on this planet that's going to notice that tiny flaw under the wing? You.
That's it. Every one else just sees a Black Legion Helldrake. All painted up and looking bad azz.
Keep cracking through em. Make each dude a touch better from the lessons learned from the last and enjoy.
I know I'd rather see a fully painted " table-top" army than one Golden Daemon piece and an ocean of grey plastic.
Good luck

My main complaint would be that you need to clean up around some of the rivets and your highlights are a bit thick.

BUT I had to zoom in on the image to see that. If I was playing against your army I would never have noticed. This is IMHO better than tabletop standard and I'd be happy if every opponent I played painted to this level.

 John Prins wrote:
My main complaint would be that you need to clean up around some of the rivets and your highlights are a bit thick.

BUT I had to zoom in on the image to see that. If I was playing against your army I would never have noticed. This is IMHO better than tabletop standard and I'd be happy if every opponent I played painted to this level.

Thank you every one. Im glad you noticed those rivets etc...I used nuln wash on them and i used that wash for every thing i have ever washed thinking the darker sort of wash goes well with every thing, but yeah mabye i should have used other washes. And yes you are prbably more then correct about the highlights, i have gone over them a bit too much. Thank you all for every thing.

Edit - i only washed the rivets etc and just certain areas where its necessary, i didn't just wash all over the gold completely etc, but maybe i should have but with a different colored wash.


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PourSpelur wrote:
I fall into the same trap sometimes, "Perfect is the enemy of good".
Helldrake looks great to me. You know the only person on this planet that's going to notice that tiny flaw under the wing? You.
That's it. Every one else just sees a Black Legion Helldrake. All painted up and looking bad azz.
Keep cracking through em. Make each dude a touch better from the lessons learned from the last and enjoy.
I know I'd rather see a fully painted " table-top" army than one Golden Daemon piece and an ocean of grey plastic.
Good luck

Thank you

From a glance you're doing tabletop+ (so above the average). It's not going to win you any awards, but it's well above I'd say....70% of what I see put on tables that people state is Warhammer 40K.

Gosh man this is overwhelming, so much praise. Thank you all.

I started this model quite a while ago, so when i start my next model ( the great unclean one ), i will be starting fresh with all the experience i have gained thus far, so hopefully there's a noticeable improvement when i show that.

Thank you have a great day.

.

Thanks JBSchroeds, will keep that in memory for next time.

If a younger me had painted this after only a year in the hobby, he would have been delighted. So no , you are not wasting your time on these, you already have a better than basic table top standard and a whole army done like this would look great. Don't get down that your models aren't competition standard, most of those guys have been painting for many years.
In more detail, parts of the model that I really like are the edge highlights on the metal (good contrast and neatly done) and the colours shading in the mouth.
Areas for improvement (as already said, looks fine as is but if you want to push it further)
More contrast on the gold. Bit more shading in recesses (not necessarily black wash. Black gives good dark shading but can look dirty/dull. Dark flesh/red/purple washes can give shading and a more vibrant colour. Experiment to see what works for you). You could push the edge highlights further mixing in some silver, maybe even pure silver at the tips of the pointers bits.
For the Black, as others have said, go with an off black base coat (again, play with colours. I think adding grey to black would not work well in this example, could start to look a little pasty. Mixing in some dark blue, green or red to your black could work. One of my favourites for this is gw incubi darkness)

You can keep the black on the wings if you just do a pseudo edge highlight in some areas.

Take a look at the GW pained chaos marines from Blackstone Fortress to see what I mean. They did a light outline on some of the recessed black armor bits to make them pop and add some depth.

Also maybe hit some of your gold sharp edges with just a teeny bit of silver so they simulate light glinting off the edges?

Honestly that paint job looks really good so definitely keep doing what you’re doing.

 Stormatious wrote:

Thank you every one. Im glad you noticed those rivets etc...I used nuln wash on them and i used that wash for every thing i have ever washed thinking the darker sort of wash goes well with every thing, but yeah mabye i should have used other washes. And yes you are prbably more then correct about the highlights, i have gone over them a bit too much. Thank you all for every thing.

Edit - i only washed the rivets etc and just certain areas where its necessary, i didn't just wash all over the gold completely etc, but maybe i should have but with a different colored wash.

Nuln Oil is actually a pretty strong wash. Good for steel and cool colors, but tends to leave really dark splodges over warm colors.

Agrax Earthshade is a better multi-purpose wash. But washes can get out of control easily because they flow so well. Point washing the rivets is probably the better option, as washing large flat areas generally just makes them mottled.

Everything gets easier as you get a feel for which paints work well with what washes and the various transparencies of these paints. It just takes some practice and experience, you'll get there.