Buceph, you’ve got a good use of colors, from what I can see through the photograph and you’ve clearly defined what you are painting.
Is that a Malifeux model Buceph?
About drybrushing, that is a technique generally more useful for a surface with lots of texture with plenty of upraised surface, think more along the lines of animal pelts, maybe scales, chainmail armor. I really don’t see anything on this lady that I would use that on, you could try it on the hair, just be sure to move the brush perpendicular to the direction the hair lines so that the lighter colors you are drybrushing don’t get into the recessed areas.
Now washing can be used just about everything. General order of practice, do your base coat, then do your darker wash so those colors will run into the recessed areas and darken the base coat in that area giving you some shading. After that I might use the basecoat again to clean up areas where the wash got that I didn’t want, but I wouldn’t worry about that so much when you’re just getting started, and just move onto a highlight layer instead and put a lighter color on the upraised surfaces!
Now on her pink petticoat, underthings? I would suggest not doing a complete wash, I might use a red ink or a red wash, and just get enough on the brush to put the brush in the recessed areas and let it flow off the brush, that’s a great way to control the wash and keep it from covering everything, in this case it would keep your pink bloomers? from getting dark all over.
Yeah, Corey, it’s Malifaux, one of “The Stolen” models.
The one on the right.
I see I’ve pictured the girl’s right hand being a glove, and they have her with a bracelet worn bandana/rag thing.
Edit: And to flesh this post out a bit, I’ve played a few demo games of Warhammer and some of Battletech but I’ve never really clicked with a wargame. I think Malifaux clicked for me the other day. I’ve played maybe three or four games of it now, small games, maybe five or six models with a friend of mine (who happens to be the player rep for my city.) I’ve mostly been playing with his models while I dawdle around painting my own. We were playing a game and we went outside so I could smoke, and my friend who is really trying to work on his game demo-ing ability went through a couple of options for my next turn. Malifaux is heavily based on special abilities, pretty much every model has a “special ability” (with themes running through different armies.) I spotted an interaction of abilities that would almost guarantee me killing his “Master.”
The idea behind Malifaux is that you flip a card from a deck instead of rolling dice, and if you have a “roll/flip” that you particularly need to win from, you can put a card from your hand into play after you flip (if that flip didn’t go your way.) I had an ability that meant my opponent would have to sacrifice two cards from his hand, or the model would die (if I met some other requirements.) I feigned a big attack that would kill one of my opponents models, and he substituted in his hand for all my attacks, then I switched to the guy attacking his master, met the requirements and he didn’t have any cards left to sacrifice, so he lost his model. And that’s when Malifaux clicked for me.
Malifaux to me allows for interactions between models, and their abilities and powers that creates for a somewhat unknown situation. You can know that there is something that will work X times against an average of Y. But really that’s only a heuristic for getting to know your “Crew” and their role. Combine the interaction of abilities with the Cold-War of the opposing hands of cards, and it means that you have to take a general knowledge and create something different with it in every game. And that goes against my previous experience when playing another wargame and I lost horrifically and asked where I went wrong, and I was told, “Sometimes it just goes that way.”
Second Edit: Suppose I wanted to try shading and highlighting: would I mix up another “pot” of paint to do that, considering I put some on the pallette by putting a match stick in the pot and dropping it on the pallette. Or should I be mixing it by taking some on the brush and mixing the shades on a clear part of the pallette? I’d use far less that way. I’m just wondering how to make shades a little lighter or darker, without wasting so much as I’ve been putting out already.
Mix your paints on the palette. Generally I pull paint from the pot with an old brush, mix it and thin it on the palette and then apply it to the model with a different brush. It shouldn’t take long to get a feel for the amount of paint you need for a given area, the trick is to put the lighter paint down first and mix the darker paint into it a little at a time. If you try and lighten a dark colour, you’ll use a lot more of the lighter paint than if you try and darken the light colour. Generally I keep a small pool of each and mix them in the middle so that I can adjust the shade on the fly by mixing in a little from either pool. That’s very handy for blended highlights.
Whatever has happened over these first few models I’ve done, I seem to be less nervous about slapping the paint down. Which is good for me. Now I need to figure out how to do this highlighting and shading business.
Good work Buceph and as Ian said, mix your paint on the palette. Looking at your newest painting, I can see uneven coloring on the dress, which I am certain is from you starting with a black primer. Is that correct?
I rarely prime black for that reason and use white primer instead, but I tend towards bold bright colors, black works very well for darker model colors.
Something new I have started trying is actually priming black, then doing white primer from the top angles to help define shadows. Seems to work well, Ian mentioned it earlier as Zenithal painting, or maybe Zenithal refers to the actual painting from the top I’m not certain.
Anyway, to help with light colors on dark undercoat, if you feel you have the time, do thinner coats of the lighter paint and do more of them to help even it out and cover that dark color!
I’ve also heard many good things about Malifeax, but I have yet to play it, maybe one of these days, I play warhammer 40K which I love for the setting itself, and I really like playing Warmachine and I’ll paint all kinds of stuff, I’ve got some infinity models recently to have fun with.
Yeah, it’s a black primer. Which I’m sort of regretting now. Black seemed to be the default for all my 40k/WHFB brosefs who were telling me what I’d need. And with Malifaux, I figured the darkness of it would be needed. But I’ve had a lot of trouble, even with colours like red, so I’m thinking of at the least moving to a lightish grey primer. Although I will try putting a few layers on top of that and finishing it off.
And Malifaux is definitely worth a go. I’ve talked to a fair few people about it, and we’ve all come to the conclusion that for a wargamer, it’s a great second game to have in your case. If you’re playing Warmachine, to move to 40k will be a huge investment in models and the like, and vice versa. But you can be fully set up with a reasonable soulstone size crew in Malifaux for €50, including the rulebook. A lot of the 40k guys I know, who were thinking of giving Warmachine a go have instead gone with Malifaux because of the ease of entry into the game, at least financially.
Finished this beastie recently and just got around to photographing it. I painted myself into a bit of a corner and ended up using it as a test-bed for the new Citadel paints. The glazes are incredible, most of the shading on the armour and the power fist effect is done with layers of Gulliman Blue straight out of the pot. Jury is still out on the silver, I need to do some more figures from primer to really get a grip on those.
I have some alternate arms as well which aren’t painted yet as I’ve been using it in this configuration for most of my games so far.
That’s a damn good looking dreadnought, on a damn lovely base. I’ve always been most fond of the multi-melta and heavy flamer/powerfist combination myself, though I could never paint a decent “fire” themed style onto the one I owned.
Yes, it’s the Forgeworld Mk IV GK Dread. Is yours the one below: If so that’s a beautiful model and one I was sorely tempted to use instead of this one.
I’ve bookmarked some guys’ miniatures blogs/sites just to enjoy their work now and then. Here’s a British dude whose stuff I think is just the bomb — several interesting settings, but start with his Conan and Greek myth stuff. He also has his own Conan rules.
Thanks for the compliments. Here’s a closeup of the Choir leader.
I just got into Painting and this one is my best so far. I’m still having a trouble with the white, but I’m having a lot of fun trying different stuff to figure it out.
