New to painting miniatures - looking for brutally honest feedback

[Slaphead]

Hi all,


I started painting miniatures only a year or so ago after discovering the joy of the Warhammer 40k tabletop game. After doing some research I found that coolminiornot seems to be where the best painters gather and upload their beautifully painted miniatures.


At the moment I am not particularly good, so would appreciate any brutally honest feedback on some of my stuff as I really want to improve. I don't take offence to anyone saying it sucks or is poor, but if you do, please give some useful tips on things for me to try to make it better next time.


Here is a tactical marine I did recently. I tried to do a bit of blending of different shades with a few highlights, but it's just not that great. I did the shoulder pad by free hand as I'm not a fan of decals.


Many thanks in advance!

 

[MAXXxxx]

After doing some research I found that coolminiornot seems to be where the best painters gather and upload their beautifully painted miniatures.

sadly not anymore, or as an afterthought to have it here too.

Here is a tactical marine I did recently. I tried to do a bit of blending of different shades with a few highlights, but it's just not that great. I did the shoulder pad by free hand as I'm not a fan of decals.

in general looks good. The blending is not visible though, it looks mostly drybrushed. So if you want to imporove I'd say look up layering and blending. For fast and still good results it's worth learning the "loaded brush" from Ben Komets (Painting buddha videos on youtube, they are free) and practicing that a lot.

As for the freehand: looks pretty good, much better than the rest of the marine. Based on this you have talent, but you need to learn the tools to get better (to be honest this is true for everyone).

 

[Slaphead]

Cool, thanks for that, much appreciated. I shall check those Ben Komets videos out. Yeah, I also need to take better pictures so will be reading through the photography section of this forum.

 

[Maenas]

If you are just "one year old" into this hobby I think you are doing pretty good! You seem to have a good precision with the brush depicted at the freehand (thinking the same as Maxx here) and at the eye's lenses shine. (that white dot is nicely placed!)
Keep on reading and practising and you will improve for sure!

Will share a link with you of what I think is the best work on a company of blood angels, hope you like it and found inspiration in it
http://www.coolminiornot.com/381496

 

[ArchArad]

I'm also rather new to this whole painting hobby (which is dangerously addictive as far as my bank account is concerned!). But if you don't mind some feedback from a fellow apprentice I'd be happy to offer it.

I agree with MaXXxxx that your blending on the armour is not very evident. YouTube has some amazingly useful tutorials. Do a search for layering, blending or glazing and you should come up with some really good options.

The key seems to be to practice as much as possible. I'm sure you've noticed, as I have, that your painting gets better with each mini completed.

The freehand work on the shoulders is really good and indicates that you have good brush control which is also an essential skill.

I hopersonally that some of this helps. Your other option would be to set up a thread in the WIP forum - apparently it's the best place to get feedback on your work here.

Keep painting and hopefully we'll bump into each other again.

 

[Bailey03]

For just a year in you're off to a very good start. I was going to suggest checking out the painting buddha videos, but I see MAXXxxx beat me to it.

What are you looking to get out of your painting? Do you want nice looking models to game with? Is your end goal to do display and competition level work?

Your freehand work is very nice. That's how I started to learn freehand too, doing shoulder pads on tactical and assault squads. As you keep painting, focus on increasing the shadow to highlight contrast and getting smooth blends. Those painting buddha tutorials should definitely help with that. You can also do some reading on zenithal highlighting. That will help with your highlight and shadow placement.

You may want to play around with colors for your highlights and shadows. For a crimson fist color scheme, I would use a dark purple for both the red and blue the shadows. Not necessarily pure dark purple, mix it into the reds to create a darker red and mix it into the blues to create a darker blue. It will add more interest than just shading blue with dark blue or red with dark red. It will also provide some continuity between the different colors. And this would be just in those darkest spots, the midtone would still be regular blue or red. For the highlights you can experiment with different colors too. You can highlight blue by just using a lighter blue or by mixing in a light green with the blue or by mixing in a light skin tone with the blue. Each will create a slightly different look. I'm not sure green would be the right choice here, but a bit of skin tone mixed in with the blue could give you a nice result.

 

[WintersKnight]

That's a good, solid paint job. It's difficult to give you any advice because everyone's at their own level. And once you ask for advice, you'll get 50 different responses that all seem to contradict each other, at the same time, most work. I highly recommend the Darksword tutorials on the DVD section of CMON. Pick a technique you haven't tried and try to work with it--whether it's blending, wet blending, glazes & washes, faces, eyes, armor and metal.

Another suggestion: find a painted mini you really like and try to reproduce the paint job. Any money, the quality of your work will increase ten-fold.

It's all a matter of practice.

 

[Slaphead]

Thanks for the feedback

A bit of both really. Nice looking models to game with (squads and vehicles), but to really go to town with individual hero models to make them stand out at display level if I can. I watched the Buddha video on Black power armour last night and it really opened my eyes. I had never even considered using white as a highlight on Black armour (or any armour for that matter!). Seeing that has really made me have a good rethink about my approach. Also, thanks for the tips on the purple mixed with blue and red, that's another thing I wish I had of thought about, especially since they are close together on the colour chart.

 

[Slaphead]

Thank you everyone for the really useful feedback and pointers to help get me on the right track. I'll be sure to post some pics of how I get on in the WIP section of the forum.

Awesome stuff, many thanks!

 

[wedgreen12]

welll thare like em me i got do add lest the ege of the shodor pad in yello and a light color white good