Chest of Colors forum

Hey Guys -

Back about 12 years ago I started to get into mini painting. But, I really only just got started before a newborn came along and priorities shifted a bit.

Anyway, trying to get back at it now. I have a couple minis I started way back then that I'm trying to finish up (will post those up after I've got them completed). But, It's been so long that I've forgotten a lot, so I've been trying to "relearn" a few techniques.

But this one will be my first "from scratch" work since picking up the brush again. I thought I'd chronicle this a bit for y'all.

Now, I'm not going for any awards here. Mainly, my goal is something along the lines of "high quality tabletop" and not really a display piece. I'll be experimenting with some NMM (never tried that before!) and various techniques, so this piece is really just a "warm up" piece I guess. Not planning on doing anything extraordinary with the base (keeping the integral one).

Here it is, an old Ral Partha (iirc! ) sculpt. Primed in black. (Upon reflection, I think I'd rather have gone with a gray primer for this one, but ah well, lets see how it turns out.)


Note: I'm still working out some photo taking techniques for these... so, apologies for the mediocre photo quality...

Ok, here we go!

I opted to start with the eyes, then the face, then the hair. In what order do you all typically paint?

I don't *dislike* the results, but I think the skintone shading could be better. Seems too brown in the shadows. I'm thinking about a bluish wash to cool down the tones a bit. Thoughts on that?

For the hair I'm thinking a little more highlights...

(Btw, I'm using mainly 12 year old GW paint which I had to "revive"... consistency of the paint is a bit of a struggle).

Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image
Click to see full-sized image

First of all since you want it to be TT+, then it is very good. And I like the contrast on the skin, it really catches the eye.
Hair on the back isn't that nice and looks a bit bulky. White highlights might help here.

Yeah, the hair in back isn't right. I started with basecoat of a blend of Snakebite Leather and Scorched Brown, then worked up about 6-8 shades thru Golden yellow to golden yellow/Ivory blend. Each shade was semi transparent and went on in multiple layers, so the transitions seem like they should've been smoother....

I think i focused too much on the highlight areas and left too much basecoat, so my transitions kinda clumped on top of each other. The hair in front has a lot better transition going on.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll revisit that area for sure.

So far so good.
Nice big eyes effect

Been a while since I made any progress on this mini...

Being my very first time doing NMM, plus fiddling with some ink glaze recipes (which I'll talk about a little further on), I've been studying up on tutorials, researching, and, well, procrastinating just a bit.

For the armor on this guy, I had wanted to go for a kind of "blued steel" look. (I'd seen a documentary on the Discovery channel lately that was talking about it.) Here's (kind of) an example:
Click to see full-sized image

I wasn't sure the best way to go about this, so I got it in my head to try a "pre-shading" technique, where I'd start off with a completely "grayscale" NMM effect - using ONLY white/black/gray - then overcoating that with a layer or two of a transparent glaze meant to TINT this NMM basecoat to an appropriate blue hue.

Keep in mind I'd never done NMM before much less tried to "tint" it with an ink glaze, so I didn't really know what to expect, but figured I'd give it a try and see what happened.

Here's the mini after the laying down the grayscale NMM "basecoat":

Click to see full-sized image

All in all, I was rather pleased with the outcome of this step. Not perfect, there's some errors and whatnot, and I got the gradient on the visor going in the wrong direction now that I think of it, but I'm fairly happy with it.

So that was about ten days ago. This next part I was pretty nervous about, so I took some extra time trying to nail down a good recipe for a "glaze", which I fiddled with trying to get it just right... Not just the hue, but the consistency, the level of transparency, and the "flow" properties. (I didn't want to it be like a wash that instantly spread down into every crack and crevice.)

What I ended up with is a blend of Liquitex Matte Medium, Liquitex Glaze Medium, water and Vallejo Game Color Ink.

And here it is after 2 thin layers of "Glaze Tint":

Click to see full-sized image

You can see I picked up a lot of shine... I guess I had maybe too much glaze medium in the mix, or not enough matte medium. Hopefully though a spray of dullcote will knock that down...

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about the "final" results here.

Thoughts, feedback, suggestions?

My next steps will be the trim on the armor, which I'll try for a more typical "silver" NMM effect, the chainmail, and the scabbard. (Going for a black leather look on that, so need to see if I can find a good tut... I already tried a black->gray gradient on it, but it's not doing it for me.)