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This month the topic was: May Day! - Your entry should either be calling for help or responding to such a call. Alternatively, celebrating spring. Maybe part of a military parade? Je ne c’est pas. M’aidez! There are a number of ways this theme can be interpreted, pick one and run with it.

As always, you're free to hand out as many votes as you like, and for any entry you feel deserves recognition, based on anything from technical proficiency or model choice, a neat conversion or a cool take on the theme, or anything else! You're also very welcome to leave some feedback here for the entrants, and many of the images click through to the Dakka gallery if you'd like to give out a vote or two there as well.

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Daia T'Nara - Hospitallers chapter Inceptors


Captain Brown - Eldar Landing Pad and Control Tower


Mr Nobody – Maid Day


Jadenim - Tallarn Cavalrymen


JoshInJapan - Kids To The Rescue!


Geifer - Gnoll Cleric and Captives


Gulgog TufToof - Ork Kommando Comms Boy


inmygravenimage - The House of Virtue: Ladies of The Night


Nevelon – Apothecary Biologis


Turaxa - Working Stiffs


Pariah Press - Imperial Guard Command Squad


PouterHiro - Knight Lancer


Pursuit Of Happiness -Villager


Vejut - Mobile HQ and MASH


Midget Gems - Ork Deffkopta Plane


Maharg - Boar Boyz


ZergSmasher - USS Kongo & Planet Killer


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As always, if you notice I’ve missed something, let me know. Poll will run for 5 days

Some good entries there, but the standout for me has to be Pursuit of Happiness and those glorious tartan trousers!

Managed to get some votes in at the last minute, my internet has been acting up last few days.

Cheers Jadenim...did you freehand that scorpion on the flag? Looks great regardless. Always liked the old school Imperial guard regiments, Tallarn/Mordian/Vostroyan etc

I noticed there are paint pens out now, I was thinking of trying those at some point for freehand flags/shoulders pads etc

Lots of nice entries again this month and wide range of different mini's.

Great to see old/metal mini's getting some love and attention.

Good job all

I’ve not done a full write up before, but it’s a short list this month, so here is a little something over my Saturday coffee.

Daia T’Nara - Love all the little checks and details. Great work!
Captain Brown - Nice job taking found objects and bringing them together to form a coherent piece.
Mr Nobody - Fabulously heretical! I think you did a great job on painting the bows especially.
Jadenim - From the mottled grey horse to the freehand banner, just amazing attention to detail.
JoshInJapan - My only problem is how they are cropped. Your picture has so much of the background it makes it hard to see the minis. Clicking though to the gallery shows you work.
Geifer - It’s hard to see all the detail as it’s all muted shades of brown. That’s one issue with “natural” subjects, where everything is bone, fur, and leather. Great work.
Gulgog TufToof - Love all the colors. He and his friends are going to be a riot of fun together on the table. I’ll reiterate what I said about JoshInJapan’s entry: Cropping. If I click to the full pic, I see so much detail lacking in the thumbnail.
inmygravenimage - Great work on the hair and dresses.
Nevelon - You forgot to drill the gun barrel.
Turaxa - They need help with their work/unlife balance You doing anything more with the bases?
Pariah Press - Did you paint over the template for the banner? Or complete freehand? I remember painting over a xeroxed copy on my squad back in the day.
PouterHiro - Vibrant use of color. Have you considered adding some transfers to add some detail/contrast to the armor plates?
Pursuit Of Happiness - Those pants! whole model really, amazing work.
Vejut - You need a lightbox. Or at least a neutral backdrop. Love your work, but the cluttered workbench detracts from the final pics.
Midget Gems - Needs more Dakka! Your builds are always fun, and well painted.
Maharg From base to bannertop, great work!
ZergSmasher - The glow in the planet killer is very well done. I have a micra pen I’ve used to squiggles on banners before. Getting actual text on something as small as a mini is not an easy thing to do. Good work on getting it legible.

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One reoccurring thing I see is an issue not with paint, but with photos. Dakka resizes the pictures to view in browsers. You can get the full version by clicking through (which I recommend if you want a closer look at something) but for most of the time people are just going to see the resized version. It’s not really a “thumbnail” but it’s not the full thing. Having a lot of whitespace around your mini eats up this real estate and exacerbates the problem. Also consider some people are going to be viewing on their phones, so things are going to be even smaller. Most photo programs should have basic features to help crop.
Another thing I often see is is people taking final pics on cluttered places. It’s another thing that detracts from the mini. A simple sheet of paper curved behind it would help. You can get a folding lightbox for less cost then a box of marines, or kitbash your own out of an old bit of cardboard and some parchment paper.
Following up on that (but none actually looked to have this problem this month) is lighting. More is generally better. A couple of desk lamps positioned to avoid shadows goes a long way.

Over the years there have been so many minis I’d love to see more of and give a vote to, but couldn’t. Because while the painting might have been great, the photos didn’t let that shine. I get that this is a painting competition and not a photography one, but they are connected.

Rant over. Sorry about that. It’s just frustrating to see you guys doing amazing work, and getting better over time, but your shine is dulled by not being able to clearly present your finished works. I know you put your hearts into everything you do, and want to see that!

Amazing work from everyone. I think the poll has the rest of the day to run, but I can never be sure when it closes. Enjoy the weekend!

Yeah, but the further away my model is from the camera the better it looks. If I could also ask everyone to squint their eyes while viewing my photos, that would be appreciated.

Sorry to disappoint, but the banner is not freehand! My first attempt at home printed decals; end result turned out good, but I picked up a few lessons along the way.

I keep wondering whether I should add a few additional details (regiment number, etc.) or just leave it plain?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am, however, incredibly pleased with how the dappled grey horse came out. It was one of those paint jobs that looked absolutely rubbish as a work in progress and only really came together with the final dry brush. I hate those ones, it’s always a challenge to keep the faith that it will turn out good at the end!

However, MY banner is indeed freehand! I decided that faffing around with gluing the template onto a foil banner was too much work and decided to just paint it myself. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

@Nevelon: Thanks for the feedback. I still struggle to get good photos of my models. I've been playing around with my phone camera settings, and while it has helped, I can never seem to get clear, close up photos. They look alright on the phone, but end up blurry when I upload them. I'll try cropping the next set of entries.

A lot of great work this month.

Daia T'Nara: That's a remarkably clean white. I also like the checks.

Captain Brown: Great use of stuff to make some really interesting terrain. One doesn't see a lot of round scratch-built terrain-- it's so much easier to cut straight lines.

Mr Nobody: I don't think I have ever imagined a Hello Kitty/40K mashup like this. The grey-to-pink-to-white highlighting really drew my eye, as did the gold trim.

Jadenim: The dappled horse is, indeed, really cool. I also like you're dark leather on the holsters and reins.

me: These are probably the most colorful models I've painted in years. The NMM on the pots is a little off, but I'm pleased with the axe.

Geifer: There is a lot going on with that Gnoll-- good job not making the paintjob too busy. I also like the worn, dirty clothes on the captives. Did you sculpt those bases, or did you use a roller?

Gulgog TufToof: The desert yellow shirt is an interesting choice. It really draws the eye against the green skin.

inmygravenimage: You did a lot with a very limited palette. I especially admire how cleanly you picked out all the frills and accents.

Nevelon: Congrats on the top spot! FWIW, I didn't notice the undrilled barrel until you mentioned it.

Turaxa: I like your color choices for the clothes-- they look like civilians who got caught up in the outbreak.

Pariah Press: These models could have come straight out of WD! I have always been partial to this generation of Imperial Guard.

PouterHiro : Very vibrant colors on this model. Are you planning to go back and add some weathering?

Pursuit Of Happiness: Those pants! I have done two-color tartans, with mixed success, but this is insane. Also, I love how expressive you made his face.

Vejut: As always, I am astonished at how much detail you get onto these teeny-tiny models.

Midget Gems: I have a few of these Deffcoptas, and while I like them, they are a little 2D. Your addition of the wings adds a lot to an otherwise very flat model.

Maharg: You gave these guys a very classic GW paintjob: Paint It Red! I would like to see a whole unit like this.

ZergSmasher: The internal glow of the Planer Killer is really nice, and despite your misgivings, the Kongo looks great as well.

Great work all around, and I look forward to seeing what you all come up with in June!

 Nevelon wrote:
Geifer - It’s hard to see all the detail as it’s all muted shades of brown. That’s one issue with “natural” subjects, where everything is bone, fur, and leather. Great work.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Geifer: There is a lot going on with that Gnoll-- good job not making the paintjob too busy. I also like the worn, dirty clothes on the captives. Did you sculpt those bases, or did you use a roller?

Thanks, guys. It's kind of funny, just like I underestimated how long it would take to paint the gnoll, going in I had no idea I'd be painting fifty shades of brown. If I hadn't painted the captives first, I would have thrown a bit of color on them.

As for the bases, these are Dungeons and Lasers plastic miniatures from Archon. The box comes with textured plastic bases. No extra work needed on my part.

Another close month (there was also a 3 way tie for 4th place one vote behind the tie for 3rd) but time for some winners!

3 people share the bronze with 14 votes each.

Starting with JoshInJapan - Kids To The Rescue! These scrappy kids are here to save the day...





...from whatever is pursuing Pursuit Of Happiness's Villager.




Could it be Maharg's Boar Boyz?






Riding to the rescue and 2nd, with 15 votes, are Jadenim's Tallarn Cavalrymen:











And arriving to patch everyone up (and take some samples) is my Apothecary Biologis, with 18 votes.




--

As they say, "if at first you don’t succeed, try, try 122 times again” Thank you all for the votes, and for all participating in these challenges. Amazing work from everyone! Grats to the winners and everyone who participated.

@JoshInJapan - One thing about cameras is field of focus. It’s something that you can mess with via F-stop, exposure time, etc. But when putting your camera close the the subject, you end up in situations where not all of it can be in focus. It’s a lot easier to take a picture from farther back and crop, so the whole subject is in focus. Other things you can do to help is brace/use a tripod to make sure it’s stable. Or if there is a delay timer to snap the picture, so there is no jiggle from you pressing the button.

Thanks everyone, great to be on the podium!

Thanks as always to Nevelon for stepping up and keeping this monthly adventure going, glad to see you finally take the top spot. For my part, the thing that took your entry up a notch is that really cool glowy green effect in the sample container and on the wrist panel, it really makes the model pop.

Hey, congratulations Nevelon! Well done!

Rigged! Oh, er, I mean, good job Nevelon! (I kid, I kid, don't hunt me down!) And congrats to the other top finishers as well, some really good stuff from all of you.

And thanks for the encouragement on my own entry. I was really down about it, but at least others here were willing to be encouraging. For the future, I should probably invest in a micron pen or something to pick out lettering and stuff. Might make it look a lot cleaner. I just bit off more than I could chew with the tools at hand, and got discouraged and therefore didn't even really try. Rookie mistake.

Congratulations to the winners and as always good job getting something painted, everyone!

 ZergSmasher wrote:
And thanks for the encouragement on my own entry. I was really down about it, but at least others here were willing to be encouraging. For the future, I should probably invest in a micron pen or something to pick out lettering and stuff. Might make it look a lot cleaner. I just bit off more than I could chew with the tools at hand, and got discouraged and therefore didn't even really try. Rookie mistake.

I'm relying on a few things to help with unsteady hands. I try to mark the boundaries of my freehands first as best as I can to help homogenize text size. For instance with your ship I would have painted a curved, light grey strip (that later gets filled in with white where necessary) along the part of the hull where the ship number is supposed to go. I'd also start as close to the middle as possible for the sake of symmetry. Get the dash and one centered and then work my way outward in both directions. Finally I use the tip of a knife to remove excess paint, which makes it easier to keep paint on the brush from drying if you don't need to rely on making your brushstroke as fine as possible.

They're little things that I found to make a good bit of a difference to the quality of my freehands.

 Geifer wrote:
Finally I use the tip of a knife to remove excess paint, which makes it easier to keep paint on the brush from drying if you don't need to rely on making your brushstroke as fine as possible..

I am intrigued and a little frightened by this. It sounds like your slicing up your brushes. Would you mind elaborating?

I think they mean that they use the knife to remove paint from the model, not the brush?

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Finally I use the tip of a knife to remove excess paint, which makes it easier to keep paint on the brush from drying if you don't need to rely on making your brushstroke as fine as possible..

I am intrigued and a little frightened by this. It sounds like your slicing up your brushes. Would you mind elaborating?

Oh yeah, don't slice up your brushes. That's definitely not what I do.

I have an old scalpel with a blunted edge I use for removing mold lines and excess paint on the actual model. It's still okay for cutting, but not so sharp that you need a really light touch to avoid cutting into the surface. A happy middle ground, if you will.

The way acrylic paint works, if you give it twenty four hours or more to dry, it hardens fairly reasonably as long as you applied a solid layer. Watered down paint dries more brittle than that. This is something to keep in mind.

So when you have a properly hardened base layer, you can paint the next layer of your freehand on it and remove any excess of the fresh paint with the tip of the blade without damaging the paint layer underneath. It still takes a bit of practice and you can't apply too much force, but it makes it possible to make corrections on your work right as you paint by gently scraping away parts that have come out too thick, ended up in the wrong place and so on.

This method works well for me because it gives me a second tool to work with. A brush is soft and I find my hands to shake too much to consistently produce straight lines. The knife adds a rigid tool that I can set down on and run over the surface I'm painting, which adds stability and makes it easier to get straight lines or keep paint in the desired shape.

Thank you to Nevelon for hosting and doing the extra heavy lifting, all the winners, everyone who finished painting something, Midget Gems who does the tables, and finally an extra hurrah for Nevelon. I know you have been on the podium before, but this is the one where they raise your Ultra Marines flag to the ceiling. Not sure what music they play...found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06TwseiYiFQ

Cheers,

CB

 Geifer wrote:

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Finally I use the tip of a knife to remove excess paint, which makes it easier to keep paint on the brush from drying if you don't need to rely on making your brushstroke as fine as possible..

I am intrigued and a little frightened by this. It sounds like your slicing up your brushes. Would you mind elaborating?

Oh yeah, don't slice up your brushes. That's definitely not what I do.

I have an old scalpel with a blunted edge I use for removing mold lines and excess paint on the actual model. It's still okay for cutting, but not so sharp that you need a really light touch to avoid cutting into the surface. A happy middle ground, if you will.

The way acrylic paint works, if you give it twenty four hours or more to dry, it hardens fairly reasonably as long as you applied a solid layer. Watered down paint dries more brittle than that. This is something to keep in mind.

So when you have a properly hardened base layer, you can paint the next layer of your freehand on it and remove any excess of the fresh paint with the tip of the blade without damaging the paint layer underneath. It still takes a bit of practice and you can't apply too much force, but it makes it possible to make corrections on your work right as you paint by gently scraping away parts that have come out too thick, ended up in the wrong place and so on.

This method works well for me because it gives me a second tool to work with. A brush is soft and I find my hands to shake too much to consistently produce straight lines. The knife adds a rigid tool that I can set down on and run over the surface I'm painting, which adds stability and makes it easier to get straight lines or keep paint in the desired shape.

Do you scrape down the freehand layer while it is still wet? Or do you do it after it has dried but before it's fully cured?

This technique sounds really interesting. I have some Frostgrave soldiers in the queue-- I'll give one of them a shield and try this out.

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Finally I use the tip of a knife to remove excess paint, which makes it easier to keep paint on the brush from drying if you don't need to rely on making your brushstroke as fine as possible..

I am intrigued and a little frightened by this. It sounds like your slicing up your brushes. Would you mind elaborating?

Oh yeah, don't slice up your brushes. That's definitely not what I do.

I have an old scalpel with a blunted edge I use for removing mold lines and excess paint on the actual model. It's still okay for cutting, but not so sharp that you need a really light touch to avoid cutting into the surface. A happy middle ground, if you will.

The way acrylic paint works, if you give it twenty four hours or more to dry, it hardens fairly reasonably as long as you applied a solid layer. Watered down paint dries more brittle than that. This is something to keep in mind.

So when you have a properly hardened base layer, you can paint the next layer of your freehand on it and remove any excess of the fresh paint with the tip of the blade without damaging the paint layer underneath. It still takes a bit of practice and you can't apply too much force, but it makes it possible to make corrections on your work right as you paint by gently scraping away parts that have come out too thick, ended up in the wrong place and so on.

This method works well for me because it gives me a second tool to work with. A brush is soft and I find my hands to shake too much to consistently produce straight lines. The knife adds a rigid tool that I can set down on and run over the surface I'm painting, which adds stability and makes it easier to get straight lines or keep paint in the desired shape.

Do you scrape down the freehand layer while it is still wet? Or do you do it after it has dried but before it's fully cured?

This technique sounds really interesting. I have some Frostgrave soldiers in the queue-- I'll give one of them a shield and try this out.

I try to let the paint dry a few moments, but not too long. You want to avoid smears which still wet paint produces but at the same time not let it dry too much so the pigments separate easy enough so as not to produce chipping. That said, I find smears the far greater problem and would err on the side of giving it more time to dry than less.

I probably make it sound like more of a science than it is. It takes a bit of trial and error, but it should be easy enough to develop a feeling for how to best go about it after a few attempts.

Thanks everyone, and congrats to the winners

 Nevelon wrote:
Love all the little checks and details. Great work!

Thanks. I've done little bits of checks on previous minis - a Lamenters shoulder pad, some of the heraldry on Tycho - which gave me the confidence to try some more substantial patterns on these, and again on the Terminators for June. I think I'm kind of over them now, those old Terminator paintjobs used a lot of checks.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
That's a remarkably clean white. I also like the checks.

Thanks. I really can't take credit for the white, it's just Apothecary White contrast paint - I did a little extra highlighting on the shoulders and knees and collar just where the top edges are really prominent, but 90% of the white is one layer of contrast and no further work. I found these quite awkward to paint, given the flight stands - I don't like to touch a miniature while I'm painting it, besides occasionally the tip of a finger on the end of a sword or gun to keep it very stable against my hand when I'm doing something precise - but with how chunky and dense with plastic these things are, holding them purely by the base felt a bit dicey to me, and I didn't want one to snap off its stand and need reattaching. So while I felt like I needed to actually hold the minis directly - held between the top of their hood and one foot, usually - I decided the white didn't really need the extra effort of edge highlighting, and could just serve as a background for the red and gold details, to minimise the time I'd have to be holding them.

Congratualtions to the winners, and to our benevolent overlord for taking the top spot.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Turaxa: I like your color choices for the clothes-- they look like civilians who got caught up in the outbreak.

Thanks. The colour schemes are inspired by two of the civilian zombie models from the video game these zombies are originally from.

 Nevelon wrote:
Turaxa - They need help with their work/unlife balance You doing anything more with the bases?

My idea for the bases was to keep them a neutral grey, since these zombies can appear indoors or in the streets in the game they're from. But it looks very plain and kind of unfinished, not helped by the bases being smooth so there's no texture to drybrush. I need to have a look at the game environments again and see if I can find any distinctive floor patterns which would translate well to these tiny bases.