Sergeant Castus WIP

[ste022]

Thanks you so much. I really appreciate the positive comments I've received, all I see myself are the flaws. I'm not sure how I've managed this really, if you take a look at my gallery the figures I painting before my hiatus were no where near this standard. I guess I can thank Youtube painters like Angel Giraldez, Trovarion, Kujo and Jose Davinci for uploading their great content. Their were a lot of firsts on this model: first time airbrushing armour and the face, first time painting a plasma pistol etc... So I'm sure I could accomplish it much faster next time, although the battle damage is very time consuming.

Thanks again to yourself and everybody else for their positive feedback, although I'm also happy to receive constructive criticism.

 

[CyAniDe]

Really a great job you can be proud of! The plamsa gun looks amazing. It was really worth it to put the extra time into it. The head looks great to. Love the hair shadows.

I'm not sure how I've managed this really, if you take a look at my gallery the figures I painting before my hiatus were no where near this standard.

You make progress by trying new things. If it fails the first couple of times you learn from the "mistakes" but at some point you make a leap forward. Tutorials of course are great too. Usually when you try to replicate the shown you usually try a lot of new things but you have a guide so you loose some "fear" in the first steps. Things can look quite messy in the first stages and in the beginning you might think you're messing up already. So it's good to see that it looks messy at the beginning in the tutorial too so you know you're still on track. It's also a great source to learn new techniques. When I started painting in the mid 2.000nds, glazing was the number one technique to go. Everyone (at least I knew) used and teached it. I painted whole minis with just glazes. It took ages and I started to hate it. Gamechanger for me was loaded brush shown by BenKomets in the Painting Bhudda tutorials on youtube.
But don't underestimate painting itself. Every hour you put in you train your brush control, muscle memory and "techniques" you tried to learn become natural to the point you stop thinking about them and just do it.
Most important though is fun. When you try to push yourself too hard you might burn out (at least I do quite fast). To get inspiration I look at art, watch tutorials or sometimes it just comes and goes by itself.

 

[ste022]

I agree with the fun aspect, I quit painting after GD2009. I had put about 500hrs into my 4 entries which earned me 3 finalist pins, but I was completely sick of painting because I was painting for others and not myself I was picking subjects and using techniques which I thought others wanted to see. This led me to taking a 12 year break, which I hugely regret now.