What Minis Are You Painting?

Goliath (finally finished it), Sector Imperialis objectives, one of those Pegasus buildings:

www.flickr.com/photos/54116966@N03/shares/94tu6Y

Necrons and a homemade toxic slag heap. In the background, floating in simple green, is my hulk of a Chimera destined for another repaint.

flic.kr/p/Vfbkhy

I really like this guy. I'm glad you're dabbling in shading&layering. Your previous guys looked very good, by the way, and actually made me question whether the whole shading and layering thing was really necessary or just a fashion, but it really makes a difference (although, I still think that for tabletop quality, you can definitely skip layering and nobody will notice).

san il defanso wrote: I finished the heroes for Silver Tower, so now it's on to the monsters. First up is the Pink Horrors...

I like the look of this guy a lot. This is my first attempt at doing that GW method of basing in one color, then using a lighter one to highlight the raised areas, rather than just messing with a wash. Some of the highlighting here is a little imprecise, but overall I'm quite pleased with the effect. It does normally require a wider variety of paints than I have onhand, but this was a case where I happened to have both Screamer Pink and Pink Horror in my arsenal.

Definitely feel like I leveled up with him. Up until now I've just been basing and using a wash to provide more contrast with details.

Barnes, I have the same Pegasus ruins and they're pretty great. My son put them on top of the magnavent and the structure passes for a castle. We played some AoS skirmish on it.
The other Pegasus stuff is not that good and has no flooring for the second level (bummer).

Hadik- I especially like the vat of Simple Green!

I found a place that has the Pegasus stuff SUPER cheap. Scale Hobbyist. They do the ruins set for $15.99, the large sets for $22. That is like $7-$10 cheaper than anywhere else. I bought a few sets from them last week, the plan is to mix and match..,you have to do that for the floors, since only the ruin set has them (x4). I was thinking about the Shrine of the Aquila and a Basillica Administratum, but I think I actually like the Pegasus stuff better. It paints up so easily and it looks awesome...and it's sufficiently gothic enough for 40k, but it is also not so grimdark specific that it can't flex for AOS terrain. It is by far the best value for terrain IMO. Their industrial sets kind of blow though.

On layering/shading- it is very much a trend, to have those extreme highlights and multiple layers. It is the current GW style, and that is what sets the pace for everyone else. What I have found though is that the best approach is to learn from that style and then do what you like the best. I rarely highlight metals, for example. I don't think it really adds much to the look, not enough to warrant the work. But like on armor plates, doing those fine line highlights makes a huge difference. So you shouldn't feel like you HAVE to do it all, just do what satisfies you. I've got some figures where they had a coat or a cape or something and I thought it looked just fine with a a base and a shade so I left it that way.

One thing that irks me is the GW thing of painting a color and then another color over it. The layer paints are not translucent to the point where a color underneath really matters. I've gone straight to the layer and just did an extra coat and it looks just fine. So funny when Duncan explains why you are painting something you've already painted.

Painted about 20% of the terrain for our Ruins of Shadespire skirmish campaign. This 20% is a proof of concept using zenithal priming and no more than three shade colors per piece. I wanted to see how fast I could crank this out. About 2hrs total for all of this. Looks great so will proceed with the rest.

I finished the cleaning and basing about 30 new miniatures to start using for my fantasy RPG playing. Hopefully by showing them here I will be more motivated to work/finish them. Gonna prime them tonight.




Also have started to convert up some 15mm Kung Fu miniatures because couldn't find any to purchase. Here is the leader and what the figure looked like before I green stuffed and primed him. Not the best photo but can anyone guess what character he is based on? Will hopefully look better when painted.




I'm also converting my street tiles from a handmade cork set up to a smaller, more sci fi looking street tile made of hardboard and cardstock. There is elevation on the sidewalk sections, which you can't really see despite my photo attempting to show it...






Bonus: A shot of the workbench is always fun.

I went into my local Games Workshop store at the weekend to buy a brush, and bumped in to one of my 11-year old's school classmates. Nothing like it to make you feel old.

The brush cost £4 and was awful. Will not hold a tip at all: as soon as it's dipped in paint it just splays everywhere. Never again. I'm sticking to art shops in future which are, ironically, cheaper.

I may have to go back there though to buy some white paint. I mostly use Vallejo nowadays but I bought a white and an ivory recently and they're just too thin. Not only do they not cover, they flow everywhere like a wash. Might as well bin them. Buying decent white is real trial and error.

I'm still trying to paint 1st edition Genestealers but I think I might have to stop because I don't enjoy painting that much anyway and it's really souring me on the experience. They're shit models, with poor definition and painting them is fiddly and stressful and the end results are shit. Or maybe I've just become shit at painting. Going to have to try some Silver Tower figures to see, I think.

I use a lot of citadel brushes, but they have been mostly quite reliable. The only exception is the Medium Base brush. That's the one that came with the little Space Marine set I started with, and it's kind of garbage. It behaves exactly how you describe. I still use it for basing, but it's definitely a blunt instrument.

Citadel brushes are VERY hit or miss. Whoever they contract to make their brushes has some pretty poor QC, or it could be that they simply use inconsistent materials. I have some that are a year plus in service, and doing fine. And I have some that splayed out and practically destroyed themselves after a single use. The M base brush is one of the most useful brushes they may, but I can't get one to retain that flat shape to save my life. The L base brushes I've had have been pretty good though. Their layer brushes are decent if you get hold of one of the good ones. Their drybrushes are kind of a crap shoot, but since those are made to be abused it doesn't really matter. The shade brushes are pretty good. The Glaze brush I have (really just a stiff, fine point brush) is garbage.

You just can't beat the Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes though. They are by far better than anything in the Citadel range, even at twice the price. The quality level is remarkably higher, you can see this in how you can use a _1_ to do eyes. It will retain a very fine point. For layering or highlighting, the barrel of these brushes just holds a lot more paint than the Citadel ones so you can get those smooth, fine lines without stopping to reload- and screwing up the line.

I still pick up Citadel brushes because they are convenient, but the W&N brushes are the ones I use when I really want a nice result. They do make me paranoid though because they cost more, so if I leave one in the water too long or something I start to head to Amazon to order a new one...but then they usually go right back to the way they were after some pink soap.

On white...Citadel's Ceramite White is actually great. I hated it at first, but I wasn't using it properly. It will cover anything. However, it is a different consistency than the rest of their range, it is extremely thick and pasty. You have to thin it with some water or Lahmian Medium. And then you have to be extremely careful with it, because if it is too thick you will be able to see brushstrokes and your mini will have that chobby (new word I just made up) overpainted look. But if you apply thin and smooth with a larger brush, it will look fine. White Scar is really good too, but it is thinner and more translucent. What a lot of folks do is to use the Celestra Gray base, then layer with something like Uluthuan Gray, and then White Scar. Which gives a more natural, gray-blue white. Ceramite White is WHITE white.

Michael Barnes wrote: You just can't beat the Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes though.

I just bought some of these. They seem good value. I'll let you know how they get on.

www.proarte.co.uk/acrylixbrushes.html

Michael Barnes wrote: Which gives a more natural, gray-blue white. Ceramite White is WHITE white.

That's what I need in this case. I'm trying to cover up a mistake where I got dark purple all over a 'stealer's claws so I just need to block it out and start over. I always do natural bone and claws with a base coat of very pale brown, then a thin wash of chestnut ink and a white highlight. Never fails. Unless you start out with dark purple by accident.

The thin Vallejo white will probably make a decent basecoat. For years I've used thin white or black paint instead of spray primer. I have no idea if it's actually better - I worry that using a wash-like paint will obscure deep detail - but it's a lot easier on my wallet and my lungs.

Anybody have a spare Dark Eldar Wych? Preferably unbuilt? I need a dark elf for my chaos pact Blood Bowl team. Also looking for bits from the Chaos Spawn set to convert my big guys to be more chaos.

"Do not enter the ring if you are not prepared to die!"






I'm finding it more difficult to photo 15mm over 28mm. Colors much tougher to show up as they actually appear. Will look into photo improvement I guess.

Vlad wrote: Barnes, I have the same Pegasus ruins and they're pretty great. My son put them on top of the magnavent and the structure passes for a castle. We played some AoS skirmish on it.
The other Pegasus stuff is not that good and has no flooring for the second level (bummer).

I've been on vacation so I haven't painted jack for the past two weeks, but I got back and I had my big box of Pegasus stuff here waiting.

I got another set of the ruins (which, for $15.99 at Scale Hobbyist, is one of the very best values in terrain out there), the Large Gothic City Building, and the Small Gothic City Building Set 1 or whatever (the "church"). It is a TON of pieces.

It is not really as modular as it seems, but there is some variability to how you can build it. Like Vlad says, only the ruins have floors which is STUPID. And there is no roof. But it's pretty easy to combine the ruins with the other sets and use the floors there, which is my plan. I'm making one really big building with it and then a couple of smaller ones that won't be playable inside, just as blocking terrain. It's funny, on the back of the package it says "city battles in the far future are about to get grimmer and darker". I love bootleg GW references.

Oh, I also sovled my terrain mat issue...there is an HCD Supplies mat called "Urban Assault" that was exactly what I wanted- broken up asphalt. It's also "mousepad material", so it's a little nicer than the vinyl mats you can get for the same price elsewhere. MM had it for $45 for 4x4.

Picked up a Stormtalon and a Chaos Rhino. First 40k vehicles I've bought in a long time.

We come to AoS through Silver Tower and the AoS Starter set. So, having a bunch of Tzeentch and Stormcast Eternals...it only makes sense to set our skirmish games in Chamon. I don't know too much about it so ordered that Quest For Ghal Maraz book for background. I do know the realm looks to be painted in purples and blues. Map of the realm Chamon on the right in the below image.



This actually works in my favor as I wanted our table to have a simple, uniform look. One problem I've had with the GW AoS terrain is that the mats and pieces are so colorful (_especially_ those mats!) that I feel like the minis sort of get lost. My eye has a hard time parsing everything with all the bold colors everywhere.

So, with that issue and the colors in the map above, I went about finding a darker mat and painted my scenery bits with few colors. The hope is that my board feels like a ruin in Chamon, but more importantly, our models 'pop' out and are easily distinguishable on the battlefield.