Novice painter's first effort

Ok, some background. Having ditched my shadow elves in awe of their raw awesomeness quotient, I turned my hand to middenheimers. I painted a warband (to army quality) of them two days ago. I played two battles last night. I won both, largely due to the heroics of my swordman, who twice managed to slay the Orc Boss. So naturally, I rolled "the lads got talent" .

So, to reward the efforts of my brave swordsmen, I decided to try my hand at mordheim-level painting and conversion, to somewhat comical results. The conversion, I think turned out well. Everything is from the empire Militia box, except the head, which is from Knightly Orders. First, I had to make matching swords. I found a right handed one and its double. Then I took a knife wielding arm and chopped off the knife blade and pommel, gluing on the appropriate pieces from the other arm.

Then came the painting. I painted it with as much detail as I could, and even managed to sorta highlight the beard, but I've hit a wall. I've taken it about as far as my abilities can. Just to give you a sense on how much I worked on this guy, this amount of work was about six hours.

But anyways, I'm looking for critiques and advice on how to improve my painting and modeling.

The second model is my next effort. It's a 40k inquisitor I've converted and squeezed onto a 20mm base. I want to know if he looks like he's from the right century .

thanks for your time







[edit] I forgot to mention what I was going for. The top model is supposed to be a sorta ninja. I'm going for weapons expert and knife fighter. I don't know if that's a smart choice but I like the fluffy. I figure when I get tired of this warband, he could easily turn into an Imperial assassin Hired Sword.

[edit2] errrrgh! ok, I forgot to mention that I had to carve the hip away a bit to get him to lean forward and be more dynamic, Also, I had to carve his head so it could fit on sideways. I hope I remembered everything.

I thought I'd zoom out a bit and give you a profile shot so you could see the posing

cool looking dudes

i really like the pose of your ninja model!

Can't wait to see that witch hunter model to be painted

Yep, the minis are good (perhaps you'll have to work a lil' more on the left hand of the witch hunter ), now I'm not a good painter, but I suggest you to try some light effects on the black clothes, it's quite easy to do and will give it more realism

Great idea. How would I do such a thing? should I just paint the recessed areas darker and lighten the raised areas? If so, what color should I use? I guess I could use a darker bluish-gray to highlight the black.

I trimmed the pistol a bit after that shot, but I wasn't sure if you meant I should get rid of the powerfist. I can replace it pretty easily, but I kinda liked the way it looked.

Depending on the shade you want your clothes to be in, use a mix of chaos black and grey, blue, brown, whatever. However, you have to pay attention to make a really dark mix, else the black will start looking like a dark grey, for example.

I have done my black areas with a chaos black/codex grey mix and it looks alright. For the final highlights, I used pure codex grey (only on the very top areas) - I'm not sure if that's the best thing to do, but it looks alright

thanks a lot! I'll try it out tonight and try and post pics some time.

I got that turned around quicker than I thought I would. here are some shots
@Eliazar and Lanyssa Ryssyll thanks for the advice. I'm very pleased how such a little detail seems to have helped the model. I really appreciate it.



with flash - seems to make the figure look gray now.



No flash, which unfortunately means a little less quality of picture



[edit] it looks great to the naked eye; it's just that the flash really seems to light it up. maybe too much grey?

Looking good, and I'm sure as you improve your skills, your minis will look each time better and they will take less time to complete.

I'll advice to apply a wash to all the skin areas.

Or alternatively, you can use tinted varnish. There is a very good tuturial in this forum on how to do that, and in that way your minis will have an instant uplift.

Black can be highligted any colour you like, but grey is by far the most common.

I have successfully used red, brown, purple, green, etc. And one of the easiest ways to achieve this is by "drybrushing".

Of course there are lots of techniques, but for a beginner, that'll be enough.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll have to find some tinted varnish. I'm going to go find that tutorial.

Well done on the ninja! He looks instantly much better. And the miniature does still look black and not grey Keep up the good work.

Actually with a Macro shot you shouldn't use a flash at all. A bit of indirect light on the mini is all that should be needed...or so I'm told.

Black is a difficult shade to properly highlight. Your Guy is looking good. My latest take on doing black is to do a black wash over a charcoal [brownish grey] then highlight with the charcoal; it seems to give a black feel without looking grey.

Your stuff is improving RAPIDLY. GOOD WORK!

Check this out, and see the minis:

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/miniatures-f2/alexbware-s-miniatures-t751.htm#10523

Bet this will inspire you.

There he explains all the technique, but I personally prefer to apply the tinted varnish with a brush.

Hope that helps.

I think it's not that you shouldn't use flash with macro mode, you shouldn't use flash at all when taking a picture of a miniature

Some indirect light would be very good, especially daylight or light from a daylight bulb. Before I had a proper lamp, I used to put the miniatures on the window sill, with a piece of white paper as background.

And with the washes, I just paint them on as they are - they are not to dark (in my opinion) and won't ruin anything - at least that's my experience withthem However, this only apllies to the actual washes, not to inks!

I'm not sure if you employ drybrushing at all, but it's an extremely quick and easy way to add good depth to a model. A basecoat, drybrush, and wash will usually make anything look good. From there I guess you'd learn different highlighting techniques (which I'm currently experimenting/struggling with quite a bit).

alrighty. I poked through my paint collection last night and only found a couple of washes, and I don't think they'd do me much good. I found Asurmen Blue and Ogryn Flesh. If these won't do, what should I use? Though maybe the blue wash over the black clothes would work out.

@magkiron fantastic link, thanks

@deafnala - on the new model I finished up last night, I used the undercoating technique you wrote about recently, and I am very pleased with the results (even though it's on that reaper elf model that Tortiou hates so much)

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/general-discussion-f9/reaper-models-t189.htm?highlight=reaper

ok, here is my elf ranger's cloak. I highlighted, washed, and inked it. It looks much better to me, but I don't know any better . the rest of it is still in the works. My camera is so good that I get a better view of what I missed after taking the picture :/.



[edit] pic didn't come up

VERY NICE! You ARE REALLY improving quite rapidly. The cloak is a fine piece of work; very smooth transition of shades. WELL DONE!

Goosetipher wrote:

My camera is so good that I get a better view of what I missed after taking the picture :/.

By the time you can actually take a picture of you miniature and don't fall shocked from you chair when looking at it, you know you're quite good a painter

The cloak looks very nice! You should try to highlight it a little before washing (eg. with a mix of the blue you used and white). It will give it more depth and the wash will smooth out the transitions.

hmm... I actually did try to highlight it, but I used a mix of ice blue and enchanted blue. not enough, I suppose.

great! i'll try that next time. I actually just started working on the new lizardmen-general dude on a carnosaur for my dad (he's even worse than I am, so he has me paint his heroes), so there's plenty of space to practice.

Perhaps it's just that I have mistaken your highlights as reflection from the flash If you used a mix of ice blue and enchanted blue, you could use pure ice blue for the final highlights at the rim of the cloak and the highest areas (pretty much the place you got the bright spots on the picture).

Oh, and I suppose you can use your Ogryn Flesh wash on the skin - I am not a 100% sure, though, as I don't know exactly what the wash looks like.

I'm not sure about ogrin flesh wash either, but I believe this is an INK, so my advice will be THIN IT DOWN!

i.e. you put a drop of the ink in your palette, and add 1 or 2 drops of water (as needed) and mix.

Then apply it liberally over the area to be shadowed, taking care it don't form puddles. If it begins to do so, you can "clean" the excess with the tip of a paper towel or a dry brush.

Remember, it's easier to add a second (or third) wash, than to fix a very dark wash that alteres the original color too much.

Hope that helps.

Ogryn Flesh is actually a wash, so you need not thin it down.

My advice would be to take a spare miniature or an Orc arm or something similar, paint it the colour you use for your skind and just test how the wash looks like

I'll try that wash out then, before buying a new one. Is there a special technique for using washes on flesh? I also have some brown ink around here somewhere...

No, you just brush it on as you would with a paint.

Be careful with the brown ink, though. This one you should definitely thin down But I bet the wash will give you a nicer result on the skin.