What Minis Are You Painting?

Finally finished my current (small-ish) Ork warband, with the Warboss and an ammo runt completed last. A mate asked where's the checker pattern, aren't they Goffs? I'm too lazy for those pattern (painted or decal), and these are the Koffs, the coughing orks.





I want to add more boyz and may be a truck or killa kans, but not until next year.

well its good to see I'm not far off from joining the painting masters at FAT hahaha. awesome


for my trouble, I did the skeleton on the Reaper learn to play kit. I was very happy with the result and now am even more certain that my goal is really just to "potter" paint as a way to relax and have a bit of fun and get boardgame level minis on the table looking decent enough.
This kit is OK but as Michael Barnes said, the GW minis somewhat spoil you, these reaper minis are way less clear and quite badly molded in places. Also the paint does not stick that well to them, like it beads up a bit (I read about this later). I've seen the plusses and minusses of the eye dropper bottles as well. Its good to learn the basics but these models are a bit fiddly in terms of them not being really worth an undercoat, a base layer, a wash, a base drybrush, a highlight drybrush and perhaps some details added. I did like being able to easily mix colours and washes. I do lean towards wanting to get the base colours and wash down at one sitting, I'm not going to be leaving each area to dry as they recommend, and it taking several sessions to paint a single or few minis.

I'm not as happy with the in progress ork but I think after a wash and tidy up it will be more than adequate, I'm kind of itching to get my Ashardalon minis out now though. I did go ahead and do the reaper minis as they suggest, ie no primer layer. ALso I forgot to wash them before painting though they say thats not necessary. I actually thought Reaper minis were supposed to be great, but maybe its just these bones ones which are a bit crappy. Maybe its just that the GW ones are very HQ. The reaper ones are closer to the kinds of stuff in the D&D games though so I'm happy to see how that kind of mini turns out, and learn about what is or isnt worth faffing with in terms of noticeable differrence once you get them in your hands and on the table.

Well here is the orc, what I'm most happy about is that I literally just did this a few minutes at a time this morning, so super quick, I wanted to add some blood to the blade, but didnt have a proper red so its a bit pinkish but oh well, I am really liking that you can kind of ignore mistakes and not try to do too much, just be happy yourself how it looks and enjoy the bits that look particularly nice. I am probably not quite getting the washes spot on, and I struggle with the drybrushing on such small areas when they're next to different colour areas as well.

I also did NOT get the teeth properly, but honestly I struggle to actually see them - even before painting. My poor wash/shading means his bottom lip chin looks a bit weird, like its not obvious the mouth is in the right place, but anyway, I detailed a thin green lip line to try and hide my first botched teeth attempt, also the eyes didnt turn out good, I did not even attempt the white stripe and pupil, that is just too small for to me to see (or care about)

I *might* dot the red paint into the eye just to make him look a bit more manic, but otherwise here he is

The third and final mini from the set is in the bag, and once again managed to knock that out pretty quickly. Definitely the worst one in terms of general slapdashery but the large amount of metal meant that to be honest, you get a pretty great looking mini for minimal effort. I didnt bother with all the details, but I did try adding some lighter highlights on the back of the cloak for a laugh.

I will definitely try to prime the rest of my reaper bones, I hate this weird water avoiding feature of the bones as is, and the minis have some small detail thats more of a pain than a pleasure considering the mould quality. I'll definitely be selective about the small detail color areas I pick out next time.

I have a box of vallejo colours en route, I cant decide whether I should get out some more of the reaper bones I picked up (I also have the layer learn to paint kit), or get scrubbing the D&D:AS minis and start to paint stuff thats actually going to get on the table in short order.

I knew I should have taken the advice not to look at the golden demon level mini painting because it just makes you feel like whats the point.

I let my soon to be 4 year and old and soon to be 7 year old have a reaper bone since they have been watching daddys efforts with interest, and look at the vibrant colour schemes they put together. I'll never hope to achieve this kind of blending

Finished the cyclists for Flamme Rouge.

Yeah, I'm woefully slow. Hopefully these lads won't be!

OMG those look fantastic!

Which makes me feel even worse about the horrible regression I've had, starting with the Ashardalon minis.





Aside from the very many fixes/touchups required, overall these have left me quite deflated, the bears actually look better than the photo shows here (I think picked the worst one), but I still struggle with drybrushing getting the different layers down properly, still, with a bit of touching up I think the bears are good enough quality for the game.
The snakes I was most excited to paint but god knows why I picked orange, as it covered black primer like shit, and I think I panicked after at least 3 layers as it still didnt cover cleanly and even started looking blotchy. I had even added thinner medium to the first layer (all this is Vallejo Game Color). I also panicked by whacking on the washes before I was that happy with the coverage, obviously I need to pick a good highlight colour to try to pick out the studs on the body, and while its probably not terrible for what it is, I feel extremely disappointed with it, maybe I got carried away trying to rush too much to get it finished quickly.
The mouther was the worst of all, but actually randomly looked OK somehow, I base coated a blood red, which was still see through but then added flesh on it, thinking a bit of translucent red under pink would be cool but I washed it with reikland, again, probably too soon but the end look was kind of fitting, like a slimey, gooey flesh blob. I looked at the eyes and mouths and am not sure I could get all the smaller ones without it looking shit, so am considering leaving this is a more unicolour washed look.

At this point, any pointers or feedback is welcome, its OK, I know I have properly botched these, if I could be bothered to track down a paint stripper I would probably just do them over. I am seriously thinking that maybe I will get an airbrush for christmas or just go with buying half a dozen coloured primer sprays and relying on those with washes to get most of the job done. I have about half the other minis primed (brush on Valleja black) but am feeling way less excited about cracking on. I dont know if I should fix the ones I did first or just let them sit for a bit and come back to all this later

Any tips about how to make reparations or adjustments to those minis shown here, please share


On a side note, I saw this video

and WOW, mind -> blown. Now I realise that very many of the "pro" painters are really just very skilled technicians (obviously incredibly talented and not saying they dont have ridiculous skills), but this guy is an ARTIST. He is not even poking around with lots of precise brushes either, OK, i get that the model he has lends itself to what he's doing, but holy shit, it must be nice to be an artist who paints rather than just being a painter.

Guillermo del Toro on underpainting

Tron you are way too hard on yourself. Looks great and once you add a second or third color to the fleshy one will be fine. People don't snap photos of your minis and blow them up on a cpu and look at them, they look at them on the table.

I know you're right, I guess as Michael said I got a bit spoiled with the awesome GW minis (and Citadel paint seems a bit easier coverage wise than this vallejo stuff), but then the reaper kit uses unprimed minis and unthinned or specifically detailed water to paint ratios so I was more disappointed in the regressed technique. They'll still look just great on the table when they're all done (and then I need to decide if its worth putting anything on the base other than just black paint)

what extra colors would you recommend adding by the way?

An unexpected side effect here was I had put the Kobolds out of mind because they represent the old fear of painting, like stupidly small how the hell do you do anything with that, but I primed those and then the two large ones, the Otyugh and Drake. I will post photos soon because I am getting the same rough looking effect on the Drake trying to get it red, the Otyugh is covered now in a dark green but I suddenly wonder what the hell I should do with it next.

But heres the thing, turns out I LOVED painting the kobolds, with a good enough brush you can get in some green (skin), gunmetal (armour), red (dragon scale shield) and even have room for some bronzey extras on the arm plates, and gold on the blades. A dab of wash, they look great and were no bother to paint, at that scale you really dont have the space or detail to worry about precision either.

So now I will probably reverse my plan and whack out all the smaller ones and get those going before working out how to best attack the bigger ones. For the big dragon I am really thinking about just going for the red spray primer GW does and seeing if thats a good way to get it going. I would be really sad if this blotchy coverage problem follows me around.

Tron, those look good man! As we've said a few times, the photos you put online will invariably look like crap. Phone cameras pick up EVERY little blemish. What I see there is:

- With the bear- that looks great and it is, realistically, about as good as that figure is going to look given the quality of the sculpt.
- Same with the snake, and I like that you went with an unusual color
- On the Gibbering Mouther, if you do something with those eyes you will be surprised at how much better you will feel about it. It looks nasty and gross, which it should. But you put the eyes in it, and it will come alive. I would also do something with the teeth. It would need to be a color like Flayed One Flesh or Ushabti Bone. What you did there looks like you may have inadvertently stumbled into glazing. If you were to use GW Bloodletter, it has a very similar effect.

On all of the above, painting the base and getting rid of the paint marks will also make a big difference. I would do a color like Mechanicus Standard Gray on them- it's a base paint, it covers in one go, and it will look good on your tiles. Black bases are almost never good. Your eye tends to take in the whole model, and things like that really make a change in the level of quality. It's the saying "Faces and bases make models look aces". This is totally true, because when you have an unfinished part it affects the look of the whole model. It's better to have a crappy looking face than an unpainted one. Because when you see it on the table instead of six inches away, you see the detail in a broad way.

But for now, put these away. Come back to them in a couple of weeks. Inevitably, you will have a higher opinion of them. I promise. I took out a Herald of Tzeentch I painted a while ago and felt like I had completely bungled. But it was actually really good! I'm always surprised when I pull out models I painted and put away...sometimes I'm like damn, I did that?

On the translucency- this is one of the reasons I prefer GW paints. Their system identifies base paints as being highly pigmented and formulated for coverage. Since you want to thin it a little (water on the brush is usually enough for me, but it depends on the color), you can do 2 or even 3 light coats without getting muddy. Again, that depends on the color though. Then you go to the layer paints, which are more translucent and formulated especially to be painted over base colors. I believe that Vallejo paints are ALL about like the GW Layer paints- I had a lot of trouble covering ANYTHING with them consistently.

Vallejo red is AWFUL. You will find that some brands have better colors than others. For example, GW's base Mephiston Red (true red) or Khorne Red (more of a burgundy) are GREAT and they will give you a solid red over black. Vallejo is much thinner and will not. You will see this especially with yellow, orange and white as well. All of which I like with GW the best, because I'm shill for them.

I wouldn't go with the red primer (which is Mephiston Red if you get GW) because it's too expensive for that model. If you really want to try a color primer, go for the Army Painter Dragon Red (which is roughly the same as Mephiston). I don't think it is quite as good quality, but it is half the price. You can, if you want to try it, get just a plain old red spray paint from a hardware shop. My opinion on those is that the nozzles blow (ha ha), the hobby brands have better delivery even though the paint is more or less equivalent.

Of course, here I am offering all this advice and I just blew the Ironskull'z Boyz from Shadespire. That fucking yellow armor...I got the skin just right, I kept the metals/leather/cloth simple...but the yellow, god damn it. I went with the Citadel app (HIGHLY recommended) so it was Averland Sunset (aka "mustard"), Casandora Yellow (only the second time in over a year I have used this wash), Yriel Yellow, and Flash Gitz Yellow. It took like three coats of Averland because I primed black for some stupid reason, I should have gone gray. So that made it look chunky. The Casandora was too orange IMO, I kind of wish I had done pin shading with good ol' Agrax instead. The Yriel looked like crap- I couldn't put too much because there was already like 10mm of paint on it. So I just said screw it and drybrushed the Flash Gitz. Then I dumped some Lamenter's Yellow glaze on it just for the hell of it. Ugh. They look fine for tabletop, but I was hoping to do better with them. Orks always do this to me, I do great with the skin and then blow it somewhere else.

I've also painted the two sets from the starter box, they were pretty fun and not too hard. The Stormcast turned out pretty good, a little better than the ones I was painting last summer. The Reavers are actually way better than the old ones I have.

In other news, I've started up a Tzeentch 40k daemon army...I figured hell, I have 3/4 of it from Age of Sigmar. So I got Fateweaver (awesome model), a couple of chaos spawns (hilarious and stupid looking), another Start Collecting, more Blue Horrors, and a Daemon Prince I'm thinking about messing around with converting since bat wings aren't a Tzeentch thing.

If it's about color selection, I want to share Kevin Dallimore's painting site. Lots of great miniatures. Very simple technique, but exquisite color selections.

www.werelords.com/pages/Kevins_page.htm

I prefer his style waaay more than all those NMM/smooth gradients etc.

As for Mouther colors I would do a combination of painting the mouth and teeth like this.



And the Eyes like this. Pick any color to as as an outside glow like color and then highlight up quickly.



For fun you can try an iris here or there and if you hate it, just block it in afterward with your off white.

Thanks again for the great feedback, I actually got the Reaper layer kit as well, which should be useful for the acolytes with the robes, I also did get a few citadel paints, but since I got a bunch of Vallejo as a gift, I'll use all that before going full GW.

Anyway, some more pics, and some advice needed.

First the ones I really loved to paint, the stupidly small Kobolds, check these out!


embarrasingly it seems like I put one of the eyes in the wrong place hahaha. But anyway, I didnt even do much after base coats and wash but I think they look great! (got some Mechanicus grey for all my bases, thanks for the tip, I would have done them black otherwise)

If anything, wonder if theres a good way to add something to the gold swords, where the paint got a bit gloopy I think. I dont want to just resort to sticking some dried red on there as blood patches

Then the legion devils

https://postimg.org/image/r4c77hnq3/

I havent even gotten to the wash yet, and will definitely try to add some shading to the ridge on the head, and also wondering about trying to do a glowing eye by making a too big yellow thats been thinned a lot, then adding an unthinned dot of yellow or orange on top as the eyeball.

Main concern with this is I didnt do a different colour for the belt area and now am not sure what to do. I have a GW copper (Hagus?) that might be different enough, I didnt want to do black but maybe it needs a darker colour at least for the cloth going round the waist just to break up the brass - it looks better in person, and as I said, a wash and drybrush/highlights will make it all look better but I'm all ears

Third one is the Otyugh


this is 2 coats on top of black, is that opaque enough or needing more? Also, its darker than it looks there so not sure a wash will work so well yet, should I do another coat with a lighter green? And Im not sure how best to paint this to be honest, just a big drybrush all over like this video?

though the inspiration picture I picked is actually this one

how would i achieve that? drybrushing light green heavily, then over drybrushing the purple bits? the tongue is just painted, but then theres the orangey areas as well.

the fourth one on the go is the Red drake, again, the coverage to my eyes is a lot patchier than it might seem on this photo

maybe it doesnt matter as a leathery creature, but again, I dont really know where to go from here, just overpaint more layers? or drybrush to shit? I dont want to lose those scales on the body, but again this was an inspiration pic (I dont assume to be able to copy experts, but I mean just in general I like how he did the yellowy fringe bits but is that a darker red or brown first and then a yellow or gold on top or?)



Oh and I went with an unusual blue on the Beholder, I'll wash and rebasecoat it, then highlight or drybrush with a lighter blue, I'll add a bit stronger pink/red to gums, make the teeth a bit more interesting (faded yellow with white tips), do I need to worry about going into the mouth with some colour? The eyes I will try to do nicely here, any suggestions for good colour of eye, just a normal white with a color (green?) iris?

the teeth look a bit blobby closeup,a nd you can see the original dark green base coat in the mouth and round the lips a bit, but hopefully it will look decent enough in a bright blue scheme, I really dont want the minis to have too similar colors

again, sorry for spamming the thread!

Gotta say, this looks very useful. Far superior to my current method of taping the model to an old paint pot. I can never think of what people can get me for Christmas anyway, so hopefully I end up with one.