The GRcade Tabletop Gaming & Miniature Painting Thread (Warhammer etc)

Wow! That's great painting, Gem and Trelliz; the models look well smart.

Trelliz wrote:I painted a chaos knight for my lurid 80s neon Emperor's Children army (that I don't actually plan to use for modern 40k but that's another story) and I definitely don't want to paint anything that big for a while:

instagram.com/p/CRgSeoUHd0Z/

However saying that I have gotten heavily into Mobile Suit Gundam recently and have found some indie wargame rules for actually using the 1/144 scale model kits, but as they come on pre-coloured sprues it would just be a case of applying a transparent layer of varnish or something and just weathering/highlighting from there rather than starting from bare grey plastic, so it should be a lot easier.

Your metallics 'pop' more than mine. Any tips?

Gemini73 wrote:Your metallics 'pop' more than mine. Any tips?

An amazing paint I was told about, probably on youtube, is Vallejo metal air chrome. it's technically an airbrush paint but it goes on with a brush well, is very bright, covers easily and is very thin. the only thing is it dries on the palette extremely quickly so don't pour out a lot at once. For gold I put that down first then gold over the top as gold paint doesn't cover as well by itself for some reason, then citadel contrast guilliman flesh over it, which gives it a bit more definition but you could use agrax earthshade or any other kind of brown wash to get the same effect. For things like the guitar strings/frets I just used the chrome, but for the axe I used a normal silver and then the chrome on the edges as a highlight.

I barely did anything to the entire back of the model because nobody is really going to look at it, just a heavy drybrush of Iron Warriors, which is a great dark metallic colour I use a lot. I haven't got a picture of it yet, but I painted an ork trukk almost entirely with drybrushing different silver colours, which was super easy and looks good enough.

Trelliz wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:Your metallics 'pop' more than mine. Any tips?

An amazing paint I was told about, probably on youtube, is Vallejo metal air chrome. it's technically an airbrush paint but it goes on with a brush well, is very bright, covers easily and is very thin. the only thing is it dries on the palette extremely quickly so don't pour out a lot at once. For gold I put that down first then gold over the top as gold paint doesn't cover as well by itself for some reason, then citadel contrast guilliman flesh over it, which gives it a bit more definition but you could use agrax earthshade or any other kind of brown wash to get the same effect. For things like the guitar strings/frets I just used the chrome, but for the axe I used a normal silver and then the chrome on the edges as a highlight.

Cheers.

I have invested in some Vallejo paints and am very impressed with them. Cheaper than Citadel and the pots are better, as in they're not prone to drying out as with Citadel paints. I do have some Vallejo metallics but have not opened them as yet. I'll definitely pick up a separate metal air chrome

Once I've finished my Wraith I'm going to have a crack at this Skink Starpriest.

very cool models

gandalf is a hard one to pull off with definition and youve done a really nice job with it

Thanks. Gandalf I painted for my father to put in his study next to a Bilbo Baggins I painted some time back.

Was in town doing a last bit of Christmas shopping and decided to treat myself.

Finished the Wraith. Some of these older GW figures aren't sculpted as well. Got a bit of a sausage finger going on!

The lack of detail compared to the newer stuff makes them harder to paint. Not my best work.

I kind of like that challenge though, it also leaves more room for artistic interpretation. Very good job though.

I like some of my older minis, I tended to add a lot more texture to them.

The lead also couldn't be as finely cast but, despite that there are some ridiculously detailed ones for the time.

Some of the older figures are great true, but with my eyesight not being what it once was it is difficult picking out the details.

This evening I'm going to start the Skink Priest and unbox the troll set I bought

Yeah I think the newer casts lend themselves a hell of a lot better to speed techniques like dry brushing or contrast paints and much easier to highlight because details tend to "jut out" a lot better.

Found one of my old GR miniature painting threads (2012) while looking for my Deviant Art/Blogspot pages. Thought I'd post some of the pics here being as I still have all these figures on display.

I'm enjoying painting my Skink priest. Popped in a touch of white for the eyes in readiness for the yellow/orange they'll eventually be. Question: Should I do a slit or a dot for the pupil? I've been looking at pics of real lizard eyes and can't decide.

Gemini73 wrote:I'm enjoying painting my Skink priest. Popped in a touch of white for the eyes in readiness for the yellow/orange they'll eventually be. Question: Should I do a slit or a dot for the pupil? I've been looking at pics of real lizard eyes and can't decide.

Fun fact: most reptiles are nocturnal and have the slit pupil, but it does dilate like any other almost to the full circumference of the iris. However, diurnal lizards mostly of the distinct day gecko genus have almost perfectly round pupils, allowing them to see in the actually darker environment of the rainforest (cast in shadow by the canopy compared to, for example, basking in broad daylight in a desert). These dilate almost to a solid black eye in the dark.

Most mythical monsters are based on the common lizard (basically a skink, a smaller type of thin, flat lizard with tiny digits, almost insect like and extremely fast), or those evocative of a more prehistoric period, such as komodo dragons (largest land lizard in the world) and crocodiles (largest reptile).

In myth, reptiles especially bad ones have nearly always been represented with the slit pupils because as humans never have that we inherently distrust them, and it's for this simple reason that a lot of people still fear reptiles owing to ridiculous depictions in for example the Bible. So if you want your character to go with a more menacing flair, and it would indicate a skirmish during the day (bearing in mind a reptile would in principle have an advantage at night), you can use that justification as well.

So anatomically the correct reference would be something like that.

That said, that sculpts head resembles something more frog like as well, where frogs have round eyes and most toads have slit ones. The nostrils look like that too, but it's probably an exaggerated scale interpretation of dinosaurs, that had obviously much more pronounced features. Geckos, being a much fuller build with distinctly thiker legs, neck and jaw, of the Madagascar distribution also of the colouration you're using also have features a bit more like that. So maybe use a Gecko as reference? I'm very biased!

The variation in images you see online has largely nothing to do with the anatomy and almost everything to do with the photography conditions - in particular, flash. In more natural conditions, the pupil is actually ovular, so somewhere in the middle a dab of a cowliked brush or coming at it from a 30 degree angle, or if you can handle drawing a diamond-like oval with a 000 brush or similar will get you most of the way there.

Personally, I find that round eyes depicted in lizards are not only probably wrong, they end up cartoonish. Because as the scale goes down we find those more exaggerated body features, the scale needs to go in the other direction for the eye. So I'd err on the side of a slightly dilated slit eye rather than a round one, because at a small scale, whatever you do is going to give the impression of being bigger than it actually is.

Hope this helps!

Looks great so tar.

Edit: I just registered that they literally called it a skink lol, so look them up. The colour you have used reminds me more of a Green Common Lizard, which is a larger and chunkier skink essentially, with a mixture of green and greeny blue colouring (especially around the tails).

You could maybe experiment with dark speckles and stripes common in those species but take care not to get lost in the details and end up with coverage that essentially turns the body black, resembling something more like a snake.

Thanks for the info, GG! Very interesting.

This figure has large, platemail-like scales on its back so I intend to paint them a differrnt colour. With all the feathers and other gubbings I'm not going to pattern the skin as it'll be too cluttered I feel.

As for the eyes, yes I think a slit rather than a dot would be more suitable.

Green Gecko wrote:Skink

I went with your sage advice and painted a slit for the eyes. These new reading glasses I bought (2.50) have helped a great deal. Almost finished now.

And fin

Lovely work on the skink! Love the transitions on the feathers.

So last few months I've painted two AoS armies, however the new edition of Age of Sigmar has made me fall out of love of the game. Played 3 tournaments and not enjoyed enjoyed a single one. Got one more next weekend and then that's me done from competitive play unfortunately.

Gone all in on Marvel Crisis Protocol though, absolutely LOVE the game and the models. Ended up buying every box thats been released so far. Painting them is a joy too as they're all different with different schemes so it doesn't become a slog painting 10,20,30 of the same model to fill out one unit.

Here's some recent pics of some of painting;

Stunning stuff. Great work everyone!