Salamander Librarian

[freakytah]

Here's some pics of my first go at painting a metal model. He's getting closer, but still have some touch-ups and some more painting to go. I'm pretty happy with how he's turned out so far with just a few gripes. I haven't been able to get his eyes to look nice and the paint looks a little thick. I'm not sure why, I always thin my paints out and haven't had that problem yet, but maybe it was because I didn't prepare it well enough before I painted?

 

C&C welcome, I'm still trying to get better after all!!

 

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/freakythaii/DSC02187.jpg

 

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/freakythaii/DSC02186.jpg

 

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/freakythaii/DSC02185.jpg

[rolloverbeethoven]

As this is your first metal model I'd guess you haven't been painting that long? Fine job though, very neat, and all the seperate details/colours are well defined.

 

My only recommendation would be that you altar the lip colour slightly. Maybe tone it down to a kinda creamy brown, because at the moment I think it looks a little too harsh, and being red it draws your eye to it and makes it stick out a bit to much.

 

Great job though! Particularly love the look of the robes. Very well-worn and smooth looking.

[freakytah]

Yeah I'm pretty new to painting minis....So far I've only painted one squad of marines and a dreadnought. Good call on dulling down the lip, I'm not done working on the face yet and I'll try and think of a good color to brush over the lips to get rid of the lipstick effect. I remember now too that the armor prolly looks a little thick because I started painting it a different blue which I thought was too dark, so I ended up putting the lighter blue over it, and that took a while. whoops!

[halfling hopperston]

not bad for someone who has just started out.

 

if you don't mind me offering a few suggestions, a little more shading would improve these minis a lot.

 

there are a few places, (his foot, elbow and around the head) where it looks like you can still see the darker blue showing through and it gives a lot more definition to the mini, you should try to go with this effect all over him if possible.

 

also I'm not sure about this one but it looks like you tried to paint him in 1 coat, and while this seems like a good idea at first 2 - 3 lighter coats might take a little longer but will give a lot better result, my current army pain job has 7 layers on the power amour (3x red gore, 1 Baal red, 1 blood red highlight, 1 Baal red, and then a gloss varnish) I'm sure you have heard that before but it really does make a difference in the quality of the finished mini, even if your only going for table top quality.

 

that aside i love the job you did on the base, and it looks like a fair bit of thought has been put in to painting him (much more then my original mini's anyway)

 

there are many other good bits as well and like i said overall quite a nice mini.

[freakytah]

not bad for someone who has just started out.

 

if you don't mind me offering a few suggestions, a little more shading would improve these minis a lot.

 

there are a few places, (his foot, elbow and around the head) where it looks like you can still see the darker blue showing through and it gives a lot more definition to the mini, you should try to go with this effect all over him if possible.

 

also I'm not sure about this one but it looks like you tried to paint him in 1 coat, and while this seems like a good idea at first 2 - 3 lighter coats might take a little longer but will give a lot better result, my current army pain job has 7 layers on the power amour (3x red gore, 1 Baal red, 1 blood red highlight, 1 Baal red, and then a gloss varnish) I'm sure you have heard that before but it really does make a difference in the quality of the finished mini, even if your only going for table top quality.

 

that aside i love the job you did on the base, and it looks like a fair bit of thought has been put in to painting him (much more then my original mini's anyway)

 

there are many other good bits as well and like i said overall quite a nice mini.

 

 

Thanks for the critiques, I think the whole 1 coat look came from the couple of darker coats that I originally painted on, but I definitely don't have 7 coats of paint on him! Probably 2 or 3 only, so next time I'll try and thin out the paints even more to hopefully get a smoother finish. Practice makes perfect right? B) Eventually I'd like to use him on the tabletop, but I'm in no hurry so I want my army to look as good as possible when it's finally finished! I'm not sure yet what I'm going to paint next, but I'll definitely try more coats. When you use that many coats, what is the ratio of water to paint? Sometimes the paint seems to watery to me and it doesn't cover the model very well, but maybe that's the point?

[CaptainForge]

On thinning paints, I too had a little problem with getting it right. What works best for me is to take some straight paint and place it on a mixing plate or separate paper. Then add a few drops of water....mix that around and then clean your brush, then with the clean brush or another clean brush get just a bit on your brush to paint with.

 

Really your painting looks good for a new painter. Just experiment around with mixing the paints. Mixing them and thinning them with water is the key. Also you will want to use washes to get shading effects in crevasses.

 

Drybrushing is another good technique to use for getting highlighting, just make sure your brush is dry. Basically put the brush in paint...get it covered good, wipe it off on paper...then dab it on paper until you dont see anymore paint marks....then brush it back and forth over the area you want to paint, like real quick swipes back and forth, like you are dusting.

 

Paint up some more models and post photos so we can see how you improved.

[Replica]

Great for a beginner, seriously, much, much better tan my first stuff! The only think i would say that hasn't already is id recommend you undercoat your models, with salamanders you can do either black of white depending on personal taste and painting style.

 

Keep up the good work mate, really impressive!