Quintus Peltrasius' WIP

Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Got on here finally after my friend Guawol encouraged me to do so. I painted these minis as a prototype for a board game that I'm designing. The first one with the cloak is my first ever attempt at wet blending. The second mini with the lantern is my first attempt at shading around shapes from light on top to dark on bottom. I felt that I had already made progress on the second mini. One thing I got stuck on was how to get better shading on the yellow and I also felt the lantern was too monotone with the "all copper" look (though I did highlight some of the edges with a shiny gold). Any feedback or tips are greatly appreciated.

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A

AJ Tudor

New member
Hi Quintus Peltrasius! Yeah sorry dude it's going to be QP from now on, welcome! I'm reasonably new here myself but I've had some invaluable feedback from the members here. How about some more details on your boardgame?
Also to address your issues with yellow (I also find this a pain in the rear colour to paint), trying a brown wash then follow that with a line highlight of the base colour of yellow, should give you a nice effect
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Thanks AJ. And you can call me "Q". I tried not to add too much about the board game as I felt this might not be the proper forum for such things (tried to add a short description at the end of this message for you, but the forum flagged it as spam). As for the yellow- I painted a base coat of yellow ochre, then did some spot shading with some reikland flesh under the arms and the little fold on his right belly just above the belt. The shading came out subtle, but I wondered if I should attempt more contrast and if so, what direction to go. On the tops of the shoulders and his upper right pectoral, I tried a lighter yellow to give contrasting highlights. But the colors were too much of a contrast and looked terrible. I tried to water down the original yellow ochre to a really translucent glaze and paint over the highlights to hopefully tone down some of the lighter color and bring it into a smoother blend on the harsh edges of contrast. Unfortunately it didn't work and what ended up happening is that each layer just built it back up to the original base color. Added a tiny bit of highlight in a much less contrasting color but this time thinned out into that translucent stage as well. Seems ok at this point I think. hmmmm.... And thank you so much for the feedback AJ- and now a short description of my game (and perhaps I'll add some photos at some point here if people actually want to see how it looks).
 
Guawol

Guawol

New member
Glad you made it to the forum Q! I'll leave the advice to others on here as I can see you in person and work with you. Gotta say your doing the right first steps which is to push yourself, try new techniques, and experiment!
 
Graishak

Graishak

New member
Welcome to the club "Q" :)
Getting a nice shading effect can be done with several techniques, but for all of those there is one rule- you start with dark and go lighter and lighter until you've reached the highest tone you wanna use.
In terms of yellow you could either start coming from an orange or an brown starting colour.
You could do it layer by layer and always keep a thin line of the darkest tone left. This will develop the shading effect.
If you wanna try something more fast for the beginning - you could go for a wash. As I'm working with GW colors I drop an example for that: Spray the mini in black, do the "ground layer" with Averland Sunset, wash it with Seraphim Sepia, and drybrush the thing with Flash Gitz yellow.
Same would apply to the lantern... you could start with a dark metal, put bronze on top... and highlight afterwards with Mithril Silver or gold.
Have fun :)
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Here are a few updates on the minis I've been painting (each time I'm attempting to up my skill and try new techniques):

~ First one with the lantern and pick axe: Tried doing different shading based on light source from above (darker colors below with lighter colors up top). Can be most easily seen under the arm and under his pick axe. For the base, I wanted him to look like he was exploring a cave, so I used sculpey clay to make stalagmites. Shaped them, hardened them in the oven, glued them onto the base, paint (studied pics of real stalagmites online), then high gloss varnish to give them the wet look.

~ Second one- cleric in blue: Tried my hand at wet blending again. Issue seems to be too thick of paint as well as colors just not blending smoothly (tried using the technique that "Miniac" uses in his Youtube tutorial on wet blending). Again attempted to utilize the idea of lighter highlights on top of surfaces with darker on the undersides/in folds.

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BloodASmedium

BloodASmedium

[img]http://pnp
What to say bout your work-firstly welcome Q. 2ndly your doing great and these look as good as ide expect models to be given you being here not long. As you mature on the forums you’ll take in all sorts of welcomed feedback . Your not obliged to use everything but what I advocate is to try it all. Maybe some on one model someone on another. Yellow for instance AJ Tudor suggested brown washes. I might suggest a red brown like gw dark flesh. You may try AJs on one model and the red brown on another and let’s say whichever your happy with that is what you will use and keep practicing each and every time yellow comes along. We’re all here to help. Each of us has different interests and likes. In the end of it makes you happy and increases your skill set than the forum have done their job!!!
BaM
 
ekipage

ekipage

New member
Hey welcome to the forums. As for the size of the photos, you can transfer them to something like MSpaint or some other graphic processing program (corel draw, photoshop, etc.) and reduce the size there. Also you could just go into your camera settings and adjust the size of the pictures you take
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Thank you so much guys. Here is my latest model I am painting.

In this one: Previous minis were painted with craft paints and the paint was too thick. Switched over to Vallejo paints for this little hunter. Paint went on much smoother and the pigment difference was extremely obvious. Tried my hand at "glazing" for the first time to really work with highlighting from a light source above. Focused on the shading aspect and trying to get relatively smooth transitions. I feel that I need to learn how to work with accentuating the contrast more on my figures. Used washes on the pants, shirt, helm/shoulder armor, and horns.

Current progress: Feel I'd like to glaze on the horns with an ivory going up toward the tips and softening closer to an off white while keeping the base with the darker brown wash. After that, looking to work on the base by adding some green polyfiber or clump foliage type stuff to give the look of moss for the mushrooms to peak through and then adding some fall color fallen leaves to finish it out. Main figure to be matte varnish with the mushroom caps super high gloss to give a "wet" look.

Question: Do you feel I'm taking the right approach with how I'm looking to do the horns? And secondly, once I do the moss and leaves, is it ok to varnish those as well or do most people just glue those bits on and leave them as is? These figures will see a decent amount of handling as they will be used in my board game.

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ekipage

ekipage

New member
You can varnish the leaves and moss. I would actually recommend it if you use real leaves (from the stamps) as they will continue to decay if you don't seal them.
 
KruleBear

KruleBear

New member
Craft paints are ok to start with, but the ones you used were way to glossy for my taste and the more matted Vallejo colors already make your results look better. So from this perspective if you are going to varnish the minis when you are done, follow it up with a light spray of Testors Dullcote. This mat finish gemeraly ,akes the mini look better at the scale we deal in (well, unless it is covered in snot or fresh blood! :))
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
So, mini #4 in my series. Here is the update on this one (and a couple of pics to show where he started): Kept the highlighting as I was relatively satisfied with the progression from this model and the one prior. I didn't want to overdo it and mess things up, so I held back a little. Next up was working on the base to really give the mini some character. I felt that the mushrooms popping through the moss would be a really nice look. So, moss at his feet and a good amount of pushing it down so it wasn't too fluffy (and you could actually see the mushrooms poking through).

Beginning of model:
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After attempting zenithal priming:
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Moss added to ground cover:
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Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Next step on this model was adding in some leaves to the ground to make it more interesting:

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I'll be painting the leaves some more bright yellows, sunset oranges, and such to really make the miniature pop and have all the colors come together and stand out. More pics later. ^_^
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Ok.... Finally figured out how to fix the image size issue in my previous posts. Once again, sorry everyone for that.

Here are the final pics of mini #4. I decided to paint the leaves to make them pop a bit more and really bring everything together. I'm really happy with the way these turned out and the finished product. I feel that I'm already improving by little steps each time I tackle a new figure.

Hope you guys enjoy and of course, any feedback or critiques are always welcome. I know my skill is still not very good, so no hard feelings on any critiques and I feel that there is so much more to learn from those of you who have been around much longer than me. Without further ado, I present the finished look of Skraag, the Hunter

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And a pic of the group so far:

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SaintToad

SaintToad

New member
Skraag the Hunter looks great. The effort on the base was worth it and the techniques you’re applying are showing your improvement.
My best tip would be to paint mini number five!
 
Q

QuintusPeltrasius

New member
Mini #5 in progress:

Believe my priming is still having issues with looking dusty. Hmmm... perhaps holding the can too far from the mini?

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This time around, working with glazing to do my transitions between the different colors. I feel this came out way better than my previous attempts. I believe his skin shades look way better and more natural.

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Started filling in his clothing and armor. The glazing can be seen most on his cloak where I used black to really contrast the low lying areas and give it a dark leather type look. Trying to figure out if I want to do highlighting on the armor and his pants a bit more.

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That's what I have for now... looking to do a snow themed base for him to include a fallen log with some shelf mushrooms on it and perhaps a fern nearby (I'm struggling with how to make the fern plant though... I'll see if I can figure that out. If not, I'll probably opt for the standard grass tuft sticking out, but was hoping to try something a little more unique).
 
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