Scherdy's Happy Place - WIP/paintlog

[Scherdy]

I\'m liking the flow improver used in little bits... not totally comfortable with it yet but trying different things.

Here\'s where I am now. Still some trinkets and things to finish picking out and then attention to the bases.

Still feeling a little unfinished to me when I look at them (besides the obvious stuff I haven\'t touched) but maybe that will change when I pick at the rest of the bits. Anything you see that I might rework or try something different for improved results..feel free to chime in. All the help has been great.

side note: apparently eldar are evolving to have no eyes eventually in the future as the paintable area seems to get smaller and smaller as I compare older models.

 

[CreganTur]

That\'s solid table-top standard. You\'ve improved a lot in a short time!

 

[mattsterbenz]

That\'s a very well painted squad. You should be proud. The edge highlighted armor and the red areas are really nice.

Keep it up,

-Matt

 

[Scherdy]

a little brighter highlight on the very sharp and topmost edges (tried to only do a small amount but it\'s so easy to get carried away!) and a little brighter highlight on the catapults as well as pure menoth white on the helmets...Ah well. Going to call it done except for cleaning them up a bit around the bases, the helmetless face to finish and whatever else and move on before I end up making them worse.

The single is me trying to start with a not quite black basecoat so i can have the shadow be darker between the plates. Also trying to get the transition from dark to light a little smoother and cleaner.

 

[Aliengod3]

I like the tear drops. That is not something you see everyday. Great work!

 

[ArsLoqui]

These minis look excellent, and I am tres jealous of your Spirit Stones.

For the record, re: sanding down gritty primer, I had a can of GW spray primer cak while I was priming the bottom of a Wave Serpent leaving me with a nice, gritty finish. A few passes with some fine-grain sandpaper and it looks a-okay now!

You seem to have hit your stride with painting wraithbone, but I thought I\'d throw this in anyway, as I\'ve had it bookmarked since forever ago when I too was thinking about doing Ulthwe:

\"1. White spray undercoat. This stage try and get the white as even and as smooth as possible for the next step.
2. Snakebite leather wash.
3. Two thin layers Bleached bone overbrush.
4. Gryphon Sepia wash
5. Light Bleached Bone drybrush
6. Bleached Bone and Skull White mix in 3:1 ratio for highlighting and very light drybrush.\"

You can see his results here: http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21934&highlight=Ulthwe+Wraithlord

and here: http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?p=239066#post239066

Your work looks great though! The highlights show a ton of improvement. More Guardians next?

 

[Scherdy]

Thanks guys.

Ars: thanks for that wraithbone bookmark. I definitely am going to be giving that a try. I think I may even rework one of those fiddly little backpack posts or two on them that are painted as wraithbone as I\'m not happy with how most of them look.

Definitely at least 2 more guardian crew and weapon platform. Then onto something a little more fun...warlock or aspect warriors maybe. I think I\'ll go pick up some ultra fine sandpaper today as seeing the basecoat on some of them up close compared to what I sprayed the other day is really easy to notice for me now. I hadn\'t realized it was such a huge difference.

 

[Scherdy]

Frustrations with one little piece.

This one little piece on the back of one guardian is driving me crazy. I probably sat and reworked twice over tonight and it still looked like crap. I\'m just not sure how to begin and move through it.

I tried basecoating a darker color, but then to highlight I had to paint in between all those knobs, as well as end up treating the knobs like little gems...and it just looked messy.

I tried basecoating menoth white, washing it all with a mid orange/brown, drybrushing a few times, re-washing in select areas, then final highlight... the drybrushing didn\'t seem to be putting the paint on the highlights (the bumps yes, but the spaces in between not really.

This may be super OCD of me but the shape of it, the tilt of it on the backpack, then all the knobs and little spaces inbetween have got me stumped as to what to do.

Just looking for some suggestions as to how others would do it? I mean, besides break it off and put something else there

On the other hand, I did do the face on my helmetless guardian and I like how it turned out.

This is how it looks now whenI left it last night saying \"screw it\". Whatever I do, I\'m going start it over again I\'m pretty sure but where CMoN-kenobi? and how? I think I\'m going to try glazes again and see if I can get them to work unless there are better suggestions.

 

[Scherdy]

quick pic of the non-conformist eldar who says, \"Helmet law be damned!\" Of course, totally understandable if I only still had hair like that. He\'s the Zac Efron of the space elves I assume. Singing and dancing ensue everywhere he goes I\'m certain.

Also, still looking for help on that weird little piece in the above post if anyone has ideas. It\'s probably just my lack of skill though.

 

[cleen X]

Wow your improving!
What color and technique did you use on the gems, the face and the bone color on the helmet and the shuriken catapults ?

 

[Scherdy]

Originally posted by cleen X

What color and technique did you use on the gems, the face and the bone color on the helmet and the shuriken catapults ?

Oh gosh, I tried to do the same thing on each one but there\'s some variation mostly due to me not writing down what I had tried....something I need to do more.

Gems: pretty much just the article for Precious Stones here on CMoN. I started with sanguine base, then 50/50 sanguine/blood red, straight blood red and it wasn\'t bright enough so I tried to do a slim line of blazing orange. Went back to darken the top corner with thinned black.

I\'m not sure if the shadows/highlights should follow a slight \"U\" shape on the gems like that (slightly curvy if you get what I mean) or just be fairly horizontal if the light is coming from above as it\'s shown in the article on the first (blue) gem.

Bone color on helmets I think I started with khemri brown and added more VMC pale sand, or bleached bone and finally added menoth white at the end. I believe I did some shading with devlan mud too in spots.

Shuriken cats I tried a lot of things...I think I ended basecoating with VMC green-brown, adding bleached bone to highlight and tried to use thin coats to build it up. I think I\'m waay too impatient though and need to learn to use less paint on the brush because at the end of my strokes there would be a fairly concentrated wet drop of paint in spots I was fighting.

Still looking for a better recipe for those though.

The face was based with p3 khardic flesh and shaded with khardic with a bit of scorched brown and coal black (like a dark teal-black?) No idea why, just went for it. the highlights were midlund flesh with a little bleached bone in it.

I\'m just trying to learn to paint with glazes like I read and see in some of the videos but either I wipe my brush and STILL it deposits wet spots instead of just leaving a uniformly wet stroke of paint, or I am not patient enough to see it change and make the color change too quick or don\'t dilute enough.

So yeah, that probably gives you some insight into me having no idea what I\"m doing!

:beer:

 

[Scherdy]

So it has been forever (I need to pick up a brush more) but between being intimidated to start something, trying to start with an idea of what I want something to look like, and just being tired when getting home from work I haven\'t done a lot.

This was what I did for an in store painting contest (I didn\'t enter since I only got this far) but it motivated me to just jump in and start something.

Would love any help you can give. It\'s always hard to look at my work this closely.

Still lots to do and hopefully neaten up. I still think I have too much paint on the brush, especially on little details like the bags where the end of my stroke will leave a tiny, wet pool that isn\'t very controlled. It\'s hard to tell I\'m putting paint on the model sometimes with that little paint.

Hopefully will try some runes/freehand on the robes to make them less drab too.

The sword I\'d like to do something like this: except in a dark red to bright red fade instead. (Stolen from the gallery. Done by Elly3438)

In this case would I start with a basecoat of a middle-ish red and then glaze darker layers in the appropriate areas, and the brighter where they should go?

Thanks peoples.

 

[Scherdy]

First try at some sort of NMMish thing...help!

So here is what I tried tonight on the sword. Wanted a dark/black red to bright red/orange. I need to do the edging I think to bring it out but it just looks sort of wrong to me right now.

Do you think the edges where the different angles/faces of the sword meet will clean it up and it seems awfully purple in this picture...more blackish/red layers in the dark parts??

Should I go brighter in spots to make the hot spots brighter? Yellowish orange?

I\'m more amazed by the painters here each time I try one of these techniques. It\'s easy to lose the scale when you see some of these minis done so perfectly with the super up close pics until you hold the same one in your hand and try to figure how could I ever get that amount of detail in this tiny space???!?

I also realize how far I have to go not only with the brush but picking colors. I just guessed at it and I used Sanguine base for the deepest color as a basecoat, then highlighted with a little mix of that and skorne red, and then bright orange to the skorne red and even straight bright orange.

I tried to darken with shadow of badab black and sanguine base.

Should I shrink or expand some of the highlight or shadowed areas? Totally miss something?

Ideas on color choice to go deeper with the shadow? Just add black? Blue even?? Anyway, it\'s late.
Any and all critique welcome.

 

[Scherdy]

Well here\'s what has turned out so far. Got lots of suggestions in colors to highlight and since SW grey was suggested and I had no idea how that might look I gave it a try.

Not sure if I did it right. I just used it straight and didn\'t mix it into the red/orange. I did mix it to see how it the color would look and it was a pinkish-orange that I wasn\'t sure of.

Not happy with the metallic sword hilt and areas of that. Obviously need to work on that portion but I think I learned some good stuff with the help here!

Suggestions/critique please.

 

[Scherdy]

Updated

Just an update. First where my warlock has stopped for now.

I painted some more guardians.

And now am working on trying to get a well painted scorpion with some colors I like. Would really like any thoughts on where I need to focus more shadows and highlighting if possible.

 

[cheelfy]

Very nice minis. The sword is cool. For the scorpion, highlight it a lot more, especially the green areas.

 

[Hendarion]

What the heck? I've never seen someone improving paint THAT fast. That is awsome. Born to paint?

 

[Scherdy]

What the heck? I've never seen someone improving paint THAT fast. That is awsome. Born to paint?

Heh, thanks. But total illusion thanks to the magic of the interwebs. Lots of time passes between posts

For the additional highlights on the scorpion? add white or yellow? When I first tried highlighting I added SW grey and it got very ghostly/pale looking.

 

[Scherdy]

Quick update after some more work and before I take off to hurt myself playing soccer with other old people.

 

[cheelfy]

I would highlight with a yellowish colour, Space wolves grey can be good if you want your mini to be cold and pale, yellow is if you want to have a warm mini.