array
New Member
Posts: 33
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Post by array on Mar 7, 2016 14:18:29 GMT
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Post by misterc on Mar 7, 2016 14:22:36 GMT
Nice, if that's the first time you have painted a miniature, even nicer. Keep up the good work and share it with us.
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Post by zombiespider on Mar 8, 2016 0:13:05 GMT
Curses, I can't view the image since the xbox says the file is to large, any chance of reduscing the file size a bit?
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Post by sonick44 on Mar 16, 2016 3:21:10 GMT
My first painted mini! Took me a while, also messed up the highlights which I knew going into this that I was going to be horrible at them... Let me know if you have any advice on highlighting or just the mini in general. Let me know what looks off and what I should work on! thanks guys and gals.
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Post by Troy (Admin) on Mar 16, 2016 11:15:00 GMT
That's not bad for your first mini! The t-shirt and skin tone are particularly nice. With regards' to your highlighting, a simple technique for now would be to try to only apply the highlight to the raised edges on the miniature, (like those around crotch area of its pants)and try thin highlight lines, if the lines are a little to thick just use the base color to make them smaller (sort of like erasing lol). Also, you can go for a little less contrast by using a highlight that is only a shade or two above the base color.
Nice start and I can't wait to see a few more zombies from you!!
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Post by zombiespider on Mar 16, 2016 12:13:13 GMT
You already paint better than a lot of people I see painting minis! That looks great! My advice is to keep practicing and try mixing colours. If you think a highlight will be to light, mix some of the original colour into it and thin it a little (a little Lahmian Medium from Games Workshop is excellent for this and you only need a little bit to thin your paint), then paint it on over a couple of thin coats. If you do this it can also give the illusion of blending when you get good enough. People think I blend for most of my minis when it is just very carecul layering with thin coats Another trick to use is to apply glazes. These are a heavily thinned down wash (shade) that is applied as a thin layer over and entire area. This also helps dull down highlights and smooth transitions between them and the base colours. Typically you'll find 1 part shade to 3 or 4 parts Lahmain Medium is perfect for this, just donJt let the glaze pool in the recesses or it will become another shade, you want it to have a even coverage over the entire area. Brown shades like Army Painter Mid Tone and Games Workshops Seraphim Sepia are your BFF for painting zombies! You can use it over the entire mini and dirty it up a little, you can even do this after painting the entire thing . Just remember to thin it a little (1 part shade to 1 part medium) and apply a thin coat. Just remember, practice makes perfect! Your first mini looks much better than my first mini did and I think you'll be producing some jaw dropping stuff in no time! . Don't worry about not getting it right the first time, no one does. Heck, almost all of us get it wrong the first 10 or so times, lol. Just keep at it, watch lots of tutorial videos (Rob Oren on youtube does lots of videos aimed at beginners) and try out new things. We all do it and even the best of us who've been painting for decades make mistakes, hell I know I do, I just work hard at hiding them with more painting, lol.
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Post by ratsta on Mar 16, 2016 12:36:35 GMT
Great first attempt there as Zombiespider sad layers is key to great highlights figure out what you want your baseand high light colours to be and then mix as many steps as you think it will take to achieve the result you want. 3 is usually the minimum I go for and I often paint a layer and see how I feel about it when I look at it before rushing to the next if I'm not happy with it I will either lighten or darken to taste and repaint (this is where you need to make sure you are using thin layers or detail will vanish). At the end of the day as you get better you can easily strip almost all acrylic mini paints in dettol and repaint them. Also as Spider rightly says mistakes happen and are part of the learning curve, I have a friend who paints at golden demon standards and he still makes mistakes and believe me his work is jaw dropping. So just keep going and you will be painting some stunning results soon
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Post by zombiespider on Mar 16, 2016 14:41:08 GMT
Rasta, I used to enter Golden Demon myself and did pretty well, no trophies or slayer swords to my name, but I did earn a few certificates and commendations over the years. I won a few smaller painting contests though at other shows over the years, but I quit painting to win prizes, it took some of the fun out of it for me. If I am working to a basic tabletop standards I will work in 2 or 3 levels of highlights depending on the model or if it's on commission then how much the person wants done or how fast they need it. But a lot of my stuff that I work on for special models like HQs in 40k or monsters in Blood Rage get closer to a display standard since I like them to stand out among the other models on the board/table
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Post by sonick44 on Mar 16, 2016 15:14:21 GMT
Thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words! I plan on doing some more today or this weekend. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what you mean when talking about mixing mediums with washes haha I did get the huge mega set from army painter and the zombicide zombie and surviver paint sets. I did a little mixing to get the highlights but yea I should have used less of the beige to the original colors. And do what you guys said about 3 different layers of highlights. I'm also having a hard time and still trying to figure out what consistency and the amount of watering down I should do. I've already noticed some paints are thicker or thinner. My first attempt I added too much water and it wouldn't stick. I was also trying to conserve paint so I only added a tiny drop to work with per paint. I think I have to try and get over that mentality and eventually move onto using a wet pallet.
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Post by Troy (Admin) on Mar 16, 2016 16:02:42 GMT
a dropper bottle of paint can last a very long time, I wouldn't worry about it to much. A glaze or matt medium is just a type of paint additive that, basically, allows you to thin your paints without loosing as much of its pigmentation as water does. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I just use water, depends on the texture of the paint and the kind of mood I'm in lol. The medium keeps the paint from drying as quickly as it does when mixed with water though.
Right now, you have gotten off to a great start! To try and not get overwhelmed with the amount of minis you have to paint, I would work on techniques that are both fast and effective.
While blending and laying paints over 2 or 3 tones will achieve superior highlighting, it also exponentially increases the time it takes to paint a model. For now, I would suggest a base coat of color, one step up of that color for a highlight on raised edges/surfaces, followed by a light wash/shade of similar color to provide both a shading and a glaze effect, which will also help to blend your highlights in a little further.
Personally, in the last year I have been trying to move away from spending excess time painting my miniatures to the best possible standard that I can, and more toward something that I am happy with and can achieve quickly, so I don't get buried in unpainted miniatures.
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Post by zombiespider on Mar 16, 2016 20:14:44 GMT
Mediums can be tricky to work with if you are a beginner, but if you can get some of Citadel's Lhamian Medium it is brilliant and can be used straight out of the pot. It is more expensive than a large bottle you can mix/dilute yourself, but it saves a lot of hassle. Always go for a matte medium (lhamian medium is matte) if you can too. Medium for acrylic paints is actually a acrylic paint without any pigment added and are often condentrated, hence why many need diluting. I am forveer having to keep a steady supply of dropper bottles and distilled water for all the medium I go through, lol!
When making a lighter shade of a colour try adding mixing it with a lighter shade of the same colour (i.e. - mixing a dark blue with a medium blue instead of dark blue with biege/white), it gives a more natural progression.
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Post by Troy (Admin) on Mar 17, 2016 11:12:24 GMT
When making a lighter shade of a colour try adding mixing it with a lighter shade of the same colour (i.e. - mixing a dark blue with a medium blue instead of dark blue with biege/white), it gives a more natural progression. This is a great tip here, this is how I always mix paints to get the right shade for my highlights.
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array
New Member
Posts: 33
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Post by array on Mar 18, 2016 13:47:50 GMT
How about white? Which color should I use for highlighting?
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Post by synicbast on Mar 18, 2016 13:54:11 GMT
How about white? Which color should I use for highlighting? For White, the principle is that you use off-whites or very pale beige as the base colour instead of white itself and use pure white as the final highlight. This creates an illusion of depth of colour that would not be apparent if you use plain white.
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Post by zombiespider on Mar 18, 2016 14:12:59 GMT
How about white? Which color should I use for highlighting? For dirty whites I use light browns light up to alight beige for dirty whites, for a clean white I build up in greys to a very pale grey. In either case I then finish with using a pure white as a final small highlight
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