the good, the bad, and probably downright ugly(updated again, need opinions!)

I know the pictures aren't all that...but you get a general idea.
















^^^streetbike style liscense plate^^^


I am far from what I consider to be a good painter. i need to work on highlighting(i suck at it) and general building of definition in a model. But for a novice, what does everybody think? Critisize, and tear them apart!

EDIT: regular Pk nob, dakkajet (lots o' extra dakka), and a deffkopter turned nob biker(my first attempt at some custom work).

Not bad so far!

if you 'urty up dat Niice P'aint j0b it'd Ook mor' orky

for humans if you put a nice brown or black wash over everything i think it would sufficiently dirty it up a bit and make it look more ork like.


Remember the key to layering is to go in steps.
you look at the area you are painting as if it is a bunch of flat planes.
you apply a dark undertone with wash.
you find the ones that would be getting more light and put a mid-tone on that area.
Next you find the highest point of that and take your mid-tone and highlight color and mix them 1/2 and 1/2 and that is your high tone.
Then at the very top you add a small highlight if it's metallic or shiny.

If you master that you are better than most who paint to tabletop quality.

Nice conversion work on the biker - great use of lego wheels! Orks are perfect for conversion and kitbashing.

I like the blue colour scheme on the fighta-bomba too.

Laney

Thanks guys! I like that thought process for layering paints. I'm going to have to work on that. And part of the reason I chose to go with a clan, and the deffskulls in particular is because of the blues. I'm overly fond of that teclis(ice) blue.

Laney, you spotted those Lego wheels from a mile! They were perfect though. Height and width. Those were from an old set, I need to find more like it. Glad a have a massive box of random Lego bits laying around!

The blue is really vibrant. I like it. I like the warpaint that you did on the bikers face too. Looks really good. I'll looking forward to seeing some more.

This forum is great for pushing you to constantly improve. Everyone is really encouraging but also helps to push you to improve your painting. Thanks for sharing.

Its true man, so far, everybody has been cool and helpful. Its not full of a bunch of people bashing others' work. Seems people here will find the good in your model, and tell you where you could improve. I'm working on a 8 man(damn GW only giving 4 deffguns in a box) loot squad, maybe I'll knock some out tomorrow

I was playing around with a background, that I "borrowed" from narcissus' blog. I need to build the light box around it, and get a proper print of it. But before I worry about all of that, im going to learn to paint better.

To the naked eye, my washes look substantially better than they do in a picture. no flash or anything, but it takes away from the depth and shadow that I have built into the model.

I was just going to ask, whether and what kind of washes do you use. For the level I paint at, washes usually make my models look better by a factor of 10. I tend to think my painting is pretty basic, but I think your models look pretty good. I'd be happy to play against them

I've never done any large scale models, like the flyer, so that in particular is very impressive to me.

I don't know if it's an issue of my lack of knowledge or the photos, but I can't tell how much layering you do. If that's something you're still working on understanding, I still maintain that this blog post over on Tom's boring mordheim blog literally taught me how to paint miniatures. No offense intended if it's too basic for you, but when I got back into painting, that post blew my mind. Before I was just plopping paint onto models, paint by number style. After reading it, i was painting models that I'd get intimidated by halfway through, worried that I'd 'mess them up'.

Keep up the good work! Play games and post pictures!
-rhuntar

Oh, I'm still very very basic. I need to do a lot of work on my layering. The models here have zero layering. That's my next endeavor.

I see you printed out a nice background! I posted a short tutorial on building a cheap photobooth on my blog if you want to see how I built a quick and cheap photobooth. It will help to make the light a bit more balanced.

The lootas look good. Some nice basing will really make the colourful paintjob pop out.

I like the areas of weathering you did.

For a start for layering, try using the base colour to create some highlights over the areas you have washed. So, for example, you basecoat the skin in the green colour, wash it with Devlan Mud (or whatever the new one is called), and then highlight the raised areas with the colour you used to basecoat it. This is a pretty simple place to start for some highlights. It will give a little more definition, but won't kill the look if you have too heavy handed with the highlights. I would go for about 30-50% coverage of an area with this single highlight (so if you paint the whole arm, highlight the muscley areas with the base colour, the wash will darken the base colour of the first coat giving you a fairly subtle highlight).

I'm enjoying seeing your models and I will look forward to seeing more.

I saw the photo box, and my fiancee is a photographer, so I will be enlisting her help on it. I actually did that this morning. I used my same base (warboss green) and mixed a little white in to brighten it up some. I'm actually pretty satisfied with the outcome. I need to get some pictures of them and see what the jury thinks

Well for starters your taste in backdrops is impeccable .

Your brushwork is clean and crisp and the quality of your pictures is good and gives a nice window into the work that you are doing. The blues are really vibrant and if I ever painted orks I'd want mine to be Deathskulls too.

Good brush control is probably the hardest part and you seem to have a good grasp of it. The next steps in upping your game are experimenting with layering and washes to increase your contrasts.

Use whites to mix highlights with caution. If you have a light cream or a beige try cutting your base colour with that instead. Whites are are nasty (I'm such a racist ) and often leave an unsightly chalky effect where the other suggested colours won't.

My only concern is what are you going to do about those bases?

I have no idea as of basing yet. I got the texture paint, and to my disappointment, it sucked, bad. I might as well have mixed dirt in and saved 4 bucks. I can't decide on a theme is my first problem. I want to try winter bases, but have never seen anything they would match with. I think I'm going to go for it anyway. I'm looking for awesome models, not playability right now.

I'm sorry you bought texture paint; I bought a pot of that crap on release to trial and you aren't lying. The only people who ever said anything good about that are;

A) black shirts or some other retailer who have to say it's awesome or
B) slatterns who's, "favourite colour is done"

a liberal brush with glue and a dip into a pail with a couple grades of sand is a reason catch-all for most basing. The colour choices you make in painting it will dictate the environment. Red Browns:Martian, Tans: Desert, Greys: Urban Ruin.

It's set pieces and props that will make the sell with an accent. A tuft of grass/ clumped foilage and the brown base might be more woodland. A couple red plastic "bricks" in the sand or smashed plaster and the urban start to look urban. Little flourishes like a skull or discarded enemy kit might say warzone.

I always look at the little ring around the base as a frame for my picture. When I do it right I'm telling a story or setting a mood. Sometimes I get it right sometimes I miss the mark but if you have a squad of 10 models you don't want every figure to look like an epic rockstar anyway so it's no big deal.

A couple years ago I started cutting my basing material (sand) with liquitex modelling pastes or heavy gels. I'd read about old school military modellers using celluclay to as a basis for their groundwork. It is a neat effect that works best on large bases becuse you can sculpt variable depths and heights into your earth. It makes a big rock look like it belongs in the terrain rather than sitting on top of a an otherwise flat base.

I'm rambling about this because I used a gloss heavy gel mixed with some white acrylic and snow scatter to make snow. It looks decent and has depth so it looks like there are drifts of snow rather than whatever type of terrain with a see through thin layer of snow scatter on top. Because the gel is a gloss it has a shine that sells as melt which can be cool. If I can find a sample of the effect it has on terrain I'll take up a pic or two to see if you like the effect (Providing nobody laughs at the poor sculpts I did on those wretched upscaled marines I did).

I definitely want to see what the gels did to the snow. I was going to buy some bases, but I really want to try to make my own. In the end, I would be 100% more satisfied.

So, thats my first attempt at layering paints. I am actually plesantly surprised at how they came out, so let me hear it. Do they look as good as I think they do?

The layering looks pretty great! Those muscles start to 'pop' pretty quickly.

I've got no experience with gels, but did do some homemade-ish snow basing (and plan to do more if I actually start finishing models.)

Not sure if this helps, but mine are just sand, with brown paint, some static grass, bark chips painted to be rocks, and baking soda mixed with glue for the snow. I thought I got pretty decent results with just a little bit of playing...


Just a quick pic snapped on the phone of models that I will hopefully repaint someday.. Not great quality, but hopefully give you some context

I would go with more white than what's on the smaller model. But I really like the height and amount of snow on the rocky one. That "rock" is tree bark?

Yeah. You can buy bags of 'tree bark' or tree chips for a potting or mulching purpose in most garden stores, etc. I'll see if I can find some unpainted ones. Some kind of mulch though.

I'm just surprised that they hold paint that well. They're usually porous and whatnot, I guess you need to clean them really well and then prime them?

I think I primed them and used bulk, acrylic craft paint, so I wasn't too worried about it drinking up the paint.

You might also try and seal them first with white glue or something like that... That particular model was like 4 years ago, so I don't know what I did, but don't think it took me more than a couple experiments...

@littleducky: Rather than throw pics into a post I decided to fire together a tutorial for the snow effect I was talking about and post it on the blog. It's the most recent post so if you follow the link it will take you there. I didn't have any tutorials so I figured I might as well have one.
snow tutorial

Thanks horrid!! That's a good tutorial, and I will have to try and acquire all the things I need to do that. I was also considering trying a tutorial I saw on making some forge world bases. Its a link posted here using index cards to raise the base.

the bases arent very orky at all, but I really do like them. I think when they all match like that, it will look nice.