Beginner seeking feedback (first ever minis!)

[Vishuss]

Just started painting about a month ago (only a few hours per week) and feel this mini is finally complete. I tried to keep it pretty simple starting out, only a few colors and a couple washes. Looking for any comments and (constructive) criticisms! Apologies for the poor picture quality, still learning how best to photo minis with my camera.
View attachment 17068

There are a couple more photos in my gallery of minis painted more or less simultaneously with this one that are awaiting moderator review as of this posting.

Thanks for checking me out!

 

[Einion]

Looking for any comments and (constructive) criticisms! Apologies for the poor picture quality, still learning how best to photo minis with my camera.

Not likely to get any of that here, nossir!

You don't mention what you're painting for, play or display? Knowing this people will respond accordingly.

For future reference, the best place to post work for feedback is actually the Discuss Submissions forum. Painting & Conversions is better if you have specific how-to questions.

Apologies for the poor picture quality, still learning how best to photo minis with my camera.

Plenty of tips available here on that too, not just in the Photography so well worth trying a few searches once you have an idea of what you want to look up.

Einion

 

[me_in_japan]

Assuming you're painting for tabletop level, what you've got at the mo is perfectly acceptable. I have definitely seen far worse plonked down across the table from me. Basically
good points:
colour choice is pretty good. Not too flashy, but the eyes stand out nicely.
highlights are in pretty much the right places.
the base is actually based. I hates me plain black bases, yes I does...
generally neat and tidy painting.

things to work on:
the brown loincloth needs more contrast. I find loincloths like this work quite well if you shade towards the top and highlight towards the bottom. Mix a bit of dark brown or dark red into your base brown for shading, and a bit of bone (+base brown) for your highlight.

Smoothing out colours. It's a bit fiddly to describe, but if you thin the paint (about 50/50 with water), and make sure your brush is not too full (press it gently against a paper towel after you load it with paint, to draw most of it off) you can start to control where the paint lies on the mini. Watch where the paint is strongest and weakest on each brush stroke (ie is there more paint deposited where the stroke starts or where it finishes?) This kind o thing takes a fair bit of practice, and expect to end up with a blotchy mess quite a lot at first, but eventually you should be able to, in one brush stroke, start to produce a kinda-blend. Enough of these make a proper blend. This is all much easier said than done, but if you persevere (and get better advice than mine) things will start to come together. Armed with this, you can apply the technique to the color choices you already used on the mini

So, aye, anyway - it's a nicely done mini. Really the most important thing is just to keep painting. You'll get better with practice. Do a wee bit every day and in a week or two compare your first mini with your current one. You'll almost certainly see a difference. Good luck, and welcome to the forums

 

[secretpaintgeek]

As always MiJ has hit it bang on and so there isnt too much to say
Maybe consider posting a few WIP shots as that way people can offer advice as you go and it helps give others a idea of the process you go through (which can vary wildly from painter to painter). As a fellow noob to the forums i have found the WIP thread a inspiration in general. Having even a little bit of good feedback really helps drive you to push yourself and try more and more advanced techniques and also its nice to see what others are doing and the process they go through.
Keep at it and hope to see your next mini soon

 

[Paintforfun]

most has already been said but for practice if you don't know where to start,
grab yourself some marines or metal figures and some dettol or some other paint remover
practice blending to the point where you can nolonger see any brush strokes..

like try blend blue up to light turqoise to the point you can really see it pop, try not to make the strokes only in one direction, make crosses, dots and u name it in the transitions to get rid of those nasty brush strokes (with very very thin paint)
Get a good lamp, not a yellow lamp but a really strong one, it makes life easier and when you paint in very thinn layers, the paint dries right on spot which will speed up your work too.
Get a good book on colour theory and learn everything about it, the more you know your colours, the better your minis will turn out.. painting in itself is just a technique
it's like driving, you gotta know both skills,

for the mini, it looks good, needs a bit of highlighting though! make some edge highlights on it (if you go for tabletop)..

this is a great place you can get critique from some of the best painters in the world. Compare your work with others and see what techniques they use

other then that paint paint paint, I've been painting for about 3 months now and I have learned so much since I joined this place

 

[Einion]

Get a good lamp, not a yellow lamp but a really strong one, it makes life easier and when you paint in very thinn layers, the paint dries right on spot which will speed up your work too.

Besides the quality of the light output being the primary reason one should pick one light over another, a hairdryer is a far better idea for helping paint to dry faster.

Get a good book on colour theory and learn everything about it, the more you know your colours, the better your minis will turn out..

This is good advice in principle but it's easier said than done - most books on colour mixing and worse, colour theory, have some fundamental flaws and some are just downright bad and really don't help but in the long run hinder progress.

Broadly speaking I advise that it's better to learn colour theory online, not just because you can get the information for free.

Einion

 

[Vishuss]

Thank you all for the comments!

Einion, regarding the Discuss Submissions forum, duly noted. And yes I'm aiming for table top quality although I do want to push myself as far as possible and perhaps achieve display quality eventually. Having not held a paintbrush since high school art class though, I realize I have some way to go still. I did poke around for some photography tutorials and got some good info, I'll probably hold off posting more pics until I'm happier with how they come out.

me_in_japan, lots of great info there, exactly what I was hoping for! I will definitely work on the smoothing more, regarding the loin cloth, I think I get what you are saying but if you by chance have a photo of the finished technique I could reference it would really help me out.

Secretpaintgeek, great idea, think I'll do a WIP with my next set of models, assuming I get my camera work up to par!

Paintforfun, I like the idea of having a handful of "practice" minis, I'll definitely look into that. I did just replace the cheap bulb I was using with something closer to white (according to the box) but now it just looks blue instead of yellow! If anyone could suggest a couple specific bulbs that are actually white I'd very much appreciate it! Regarding color theory, I did watch a couple youtube videos covering the most basic things. I know I've got a lot to learn still!

Once again, thank you all for the comments!

 

[Einion]

I did just replace the cheap bulb I was using with something closer to white (according to the box) but now it just looks blue instead of yellow!

Yep, that can be a problem. Some of that may be you needing to become adjusted to the light but there are some lights that are definitely more blueish than anything you could truly describe as white. You can get around this a bit by mixing lights, but frankly loads of modellers paint under so-so lighting and it isn't a huge problem much of the time.

If anyone could suggest a couple specific bulbs that are actually white I'd very much appreciate it!

Try a search, there are a good few prior threads on lighting and lights. There are a lot of options and many of them are country- or region-specific.

Einion

 

[me_in_japan]

sorry - these pics arent the best examples, as all my DE have blood all over their tabards, but if you look past the blood you might see what I'm talking about:

This one is a WIP, and much lighter than I would do a tabard nowadays. I'd take the highlights to the same brightness, but the dark bits near the waist would be much, much darker.