My First Mini

[TrystanGST]

More water in the wet palette. That should stop the leeching. All paints will dry eventually, but even in my low humidity house, if I cover my wet palette with foil, paint will stay wet for a week or more.

 

[KruleBear]

The cloak is smashing. It really has a well worn look due to the shading. I also like the red tint on jis nose

Good painting!

 

[boubi]

More water in the wet palette. That should stop the leeching. All paints will dry eventually, but even in my low humidity house, if I cover my wet palette with foil, paint will stay wet for a week or more.

But after a week the wet palette starts to be alive and starts to crawl by itself! Actually I have left it for a while, left for holidays for 10 days, came back, paint was still fresh (especially GW), Vallejo got a bit bad small pieces of cumulated pigments which separated from the thinner, except the smell, the rest was OK.

*edit*
I think the base paints are a bit better at coverage than layer paints, but once you thin them it's all academic. So pick the color you like and go with it.

But be careful some Old range GW base paints have difficulty to get mixed with layer paints, i.e. Tallarn flesh + Dark flesh, give it a try, it worked well for 5min after thinned down, then the dark flesh came to the top with Tallarn to the bottom. You can mixed it again, but (there is always one) if you wash the mini and have aome paint accumulated in your recesses parts, you will have the same effect than on the palette (really ugly and frustrating) dark flesh will let a dark ring on top with Tallarn flesh in the recesses, argghhh... If people have solution please tell me! I tried with Isopropyl Alcohol and other thinner, all without success.
The two paints separate after a while, need to use moist brush without almost any paint on it.

 

[Alowan]

@KruleBear Thank you, I also think the nose turned out really well. The cloak ended up great too, but I might highlight it a bit more - it is almost a so subtle that you don't see it in real life. (ofc it looks better than just a black cloak).

@TrystanGST Thanks for the reply. Is leaching the creation of small pigment clumps in the paint? As seen on my image (especially the black to the far right and the paint in the middle of the darkest blue and the big black blob)

I will try to add more water - but I don't think there can be much more in it (but maybe I will be surprised)


p.s the image of the palette was taken after about 2 hours of use - and the clumping forms rather quickly as I use the paint. (I can add water to thin the pigment clumps up - giving me a really really thin paint - which is great for some stuff).

 

[TrystanGST]

I don't think I've seen the pigment separate out - maybe shake/stir the paint more?

As for colors unmixing, I have seen that with the P3 paints, and I usually just mix them back together.

 

[Alowan]

I don't know if that is what is happening - it just looks weird. I will try some other setups and see if that gives another result. I have also posted in the wet palette post in the painting section.


EDIT: might be the parchment so I just went and bought another brand/type and will do a test.

 

[KruleBear]

I don't know if that is what is happening - it just looks weird. I will try some other setups and see if that gives another result. I have also posted in the wet palette post in the painting section.


EDIT: might be the parchment so I just went and bought another brand/type and will do a test.

As Trystan mentioned i have seen P3 paints separate, but they mix back up fine. I tried a wet pallet using baking parchment paper. I noticed after a couple weeks it appeared the paper started degrading a bit and and put some chunky residue in the paint. I stopped using the wet pallet as i moved from my " normal " painting station to painting off a support in my easy chair, so i could spend time with the wife while painting. The new setup was causing the paints to all run together on the pallet.

 

[Alowan]

I found it that it was the paper that smoldered when i brushed on it - the fibers were simply to short. Got some baking paper instead - and it seems to work great. It might have a wax finish witch can be a problem according to the wet palette thread. (but I think it solved my problem and gave me an awesome wet palette).


I tried the new palette as said and took a few images as seen below:

View attachment 14329




I also tried to do some blending/gradients with it just to try it out:
And I took some images of the graininess I talked about (the graininess is mainly so you can see the scale of the zoomed images):

View attachment 14330

View attachment 14331



Hope you can give me some input about if that is normal or something I should talk to GW about again?

 

[TrystanGST]

At that scale, I wouldn't worry about it too much. There's not much that can be done to get it smoother than that, and you're going to quickly hit diminishing returns.

 

[Alowan]

For now I will try to live with it while I practice but Einion gave me some great pointers in a thread I created about primers so will also try those.

And maybe get my hands on some primer from a DIY store just to see if it is better..

I just bothers me that the figure already have flaws before I start (not that I won't add to that, just bothers me a bit.. )

As you might expect, best to take what some staffer says with a pinch of salt when it concerns a product where they have a vested interest. Despite that, this might be normal for GW primer... but you can expect a lot better!

Anyway, depending a bit on where you are you should easily be able to find an alternative product (automotive primer or another type of spraycan primer from the DIY centre or hardware store) that's at least as good, but for less money, but more likely one that's better for less money.

Since you don't want to waste the rest of what you already have, there are a few things you can do to improve the way the primer goes down.

The first issue might be that you're spraying from a little too far away, which allows the droplets of primer to partly dry on the way to the model's surface; so try spraying with the can a little closer. Second thing is one of those things you'll hear everywhere when it comes to using stuff in a spraycan - make sure you shake it enough. That means shaking the heck out of of it for at least a minute or two, not 'a minute or two' (we've all done this believe me).

The last is to warm the can up a little, in hand-hot water. This might not make much difference if it's quite warm where you are currently but it's a good general tip, especially for colder parts of the year when priming can be more troublesome - when it's cold warming up the can could mean the difference between perfect results and unusably rough.

Einion

 

[Alowan]

Decided to do something I have never done before and paint white! After less than a week I am trying white - never thought I would do that.

I tried but it turned out a bit more grayish - but it might be turn out great anyway. I also tried to paint some scratches etc. which I also haven't tried before

And I play to add glowing green eyes - yet another first

Feels like I am learning a lot even though the painting might not be anything special. Tips, pointers and ideas are more than welcome!

Head painted white and shaded.
View attachment 14390


Head with scratches and touchups:

View attachment 14391

 

[KruleBear]

Decided to do something I have never done before and paint white! After less than a week I am trying white - never thought I would do that.

I tried but it turned out a bit more grayish - but it might be turn out great anyway. I also tried to paint some scratches etc. which I also haven't tried before

And I play to add glowing green eyes - yet another first

Feels like I am learning a lot even though the painting might not be anything special. Tips, pointers and ideas are more than welcome!

I understand the challenge with white and was given a lot of advice in my WIP. Including the follwing from Alexandra, " Maybe it'll help if you think the white scheme as you did the red tones, but instead of using one colour and changing the tones, try to use medium light grey for the base, ice blue for the surfaces with light on it, titanium white for the high lights and a dark blue grey wash for the recesses."

It helped me, but i still have a long way to go. You have a good start, but it looks like you need more contrast to make the white come alive...or it could be the photos as i find white even harder to photograph to appear as irl than my many other camera challenges.

 

[TrystanGST]

I agree with Krule. You should definitely try to get some more contrast on the white. From the photos, it looks like you just left it primed white. I know it's a bummer, but the camera can play tricks on everyone.

 

[Alowan]

Thanks for the pointers and tips.

I only painted the helmet so far I can see what you mean with the highlight. I started with a rather dark grey, then painted a layer with a brighter grey and washed with sepia (really wanted a yellow wash but it didn't work as I wanted it to) and then painted 3 successive layers of highlights in lighter and lighter grey - ending with the really fine highlight in white.

The camera does play a trick on me IRL the highlights are a bit brighter but the lamp I use turns it a bit down. Might have helped if I did what you say KruleBear. I will try that sometimes, would give me a wider range to work with (I--------I instead of I----I).

For this mini I will try to mix a wider range on the rest of it - and maybe touchup the head with a bit a pure white for the finest highlights to give it more contrast as you suggest.


Edit: Took another look at the miniature irl this morning and I can really see what you are saying - looking forward to painting the rest at a wider range..



It is funny how different a mini can look IRL and on camera - I feel as if you can paint for camera of for IRL. Take my goblin for example: IRL his highlights were too bright, but on camera it looked great - when glazed to dull the highlight a bit the mini looked better IRL but worse on camera It is interesting to think about - and sometimes I would love to have a closer look at some of the minis here IRL to see how to look there.

 

[me_in_japan]

It's definitely true that you can paint for real life or for the camera. Lots of folks have that problem all the time. The mini is looking good (well, his head is). Maybe a tad more contrast would be nice, but basically it seems areet to me

 

[Alowan]

Any tips for improving the chips/scratches?

And any good pointers on how to paint scratched/craked gold or metal?

 

[Alowan]

I tried to work on bases and learn more about how to create some good looking bases. I got myself some cork in blocks and made a base for my next mini in it - I think it can be used for so many things so I look forward to trying it out.

View attachment 14511

View attachment 14512

I also tryed to do destert craked soil by baking polyfiller and then cracking it - but it did not turn out well. All it did was stink up my apartment and maybe be a health hazard!

I also started to look at the model that got me back into painting. It is a custom molded car I bought about 4-5 years ago of a favorite vintage car of mine. I had apparently begun to drill fittings and prepare it for painting - but I had done a bad job so have been working to fix the damage I did back then. The model has a huge amount of really small parts, so I hope I can get it all to stick together.

It also has some parts that are "chromed" as show in this image as well as "real" rubber tires:

View attachment 14508

I don't know if I want to use these parts as they are or paint them again - any ideas or tips?

 

[KruleBear]

On the marine if you get more contrast on the rest of the body, the helmt may be good enough as it will be brighter and mke a good focal point. I plan to do an even wider range on my next armored white model as i think my current attempt is still looks too white washed for my tastes...but it does look pretty cool for table top.

I can not help with battle dAmage as mine mostly occurs from dropping the minis lol . I have read some good tips on it, but can not recall if it was in the tutorials or someones wip threads.

Good luck with the tiny prts on the car and the femle mini looks like it could be fun.

 

[Alowan]

Thanks for the input. I will try that.

Really looking forward to painting the female sorceress - the detail is on the model is really great (and way higher than the models I have painted so far).

 

[KruleBear]

Thanks for the input. I will try that.

Really looking forward to painting the female sorceress - the detail is on the model is really great (and way higher than the models I have painted so far).

Alowan, while refering to a snow making reference on my base, i ran across some tutorials on white marines on a blog " from the warp". I am not a big fan of dark lining he uses (at least not anymore ), but the rest is pretty good. In the following link he also discusses battle damage on a bone colored terminator.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-i-paint-deathwing-bone-armour.html