My first ever fully painted miniature that didn’t come free in a box with paints.

Paints used:

  1. 2:2:1 Black Templar:Lahmian Medium:Ultramarine Contrast (Citadel)

  2. Pure Red (Warpaints)

  3. Skeleton Bone (Warpaints)

  4. Greedy Gold (Warpaints)

  5. Cobalt Metal (Warpaints)

  6. Skeleton Horde (Citadel)

  7. Nuln Oil (Citadel)

I’ve got some places I definitely want to touch up. Places where my brush control was lacking for sure and I’m not happy with the tone on the belt. I find it mixes too much with the gold. I’ll be adding some more layers to that as well as touching up any spots I missed with paint.

Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I’ll be continuing to edge highlight with the cobalt Metal on any exposed armour and will attempt my first OSL from the eyes.

Funny thing is, this isn’t even from my main army. I have 2500 points of Nids I need to prime and paint. I’ve just been having a bit of the winter blues so I forced myself to paint something to try and kickstart my engines. Building has been really therapeutic though and painting was even moreso.

  • @antaymonkeyEnglish
    4•7 days ago

    Honestly it looks pretty good. Maybe some added shading here and there but my main question is why the texture appears so gritty? Did you spray prime it outside in the cold?

    • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
      2•7 days ago

      Thanks boss!

      Honestly I wish I could tell you. My primer layer looked pretty good to start. I think I probably haven’t mixed my paints well enough. I don’t have a vortex or mixing beads in my pots so I have to give them the ol’ shake-a shake-a.

      Could also be a side effect of my paints being too thinned down. Definitely something I want to figure out as I proceed.

      EDIT: Okay, so I’ve actually gone to take a look at the model and then looked through my camera roll. My phone does some weird scaling that causes a fuzzy artifact on all my pictures when I look closely. That may be what we’re seeing.

      In person I don’t seem to have any of the grit we see here.

      • @LePoissonEnglish
        3•7 days ago

        A cheap vortex mixer is a good investment if you like painting.

        Plus the mixing balls are pretty cheap too if you wanted to get those. Anyways certainly one less $35 space marine is worth sacrificing for the paint mixer is all I’m saying.

        I got this one and it works great for me, I like that it has a rechargeable battery inside and it has a more powerful motor than most of the others. Took awhile sifting through Amazon for a decent one. Only issue I’ve found is it can be finicky to get the switch triggered right to start it but that’s not a big deal. Only had mine since Nov so can’t speak on longevity of it.

        https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0D4B17LPS

        • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
          1•7 days ago

          A vortex mixer is definitely on my list. Probably going to be a while as I need a new wet palette. My homemade palette just isn’t cutting it anymore. It’s been great to learn with and practice with but I can feel its limitations now. The vortex is the next stop after that because I can see issues arising with badly mixed paints on a few of my test paints.

          I’ll have to see if I can find a non-amazon version or a suitable alternative. I try to mostly shop domestic manufacture and if not possible I avoid American or Chinese manufacture. Which is frustrating as a Canadian.

      • TwotoneEnglish
        2•7 days ago

        I almost wonder if it is a camera artifact and not necessarily just gritty looking. My cellphone makes stuff look worse with all the junk ‘ai enhancing’ it tries to do.

        • Edit * lol, yeah, just read the other half of that. Maybe I shouldn’t rush reading. My google pixel gums up all the photos I take of my minis
        • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
          2•7 days ago

          I think there’s definitely some camera fuckery going on. In person there’s some texture but like, nowhere near as drastic as the photo shows. As supporting evidence I present to you a photo of a deer I took recently. It has the very same weird “fuzz” to it. The camera wasn’t zoomed in, no filters applied either. But when you look closely it all has a grain to it.

          • TwotoneEnglish
            1•5 days ago

            Yeah, same thing on my camera. It likes to blend similar colors together and try to make up it’s own ‘texture’ for detail. Tired of ‘ai enhanced’ garbage camera phones. They used to be good.

            • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
              2•4 days ago

              It’s very annoying. I’ve looked through every setting I possibly could and I just don’t have the option to turn it off.

              That face looks really great btw. I haven’t dove into painting faces yet. I hope I can do it half as well as you.

      • CruxifuxEnglish
        2•7 days ago

        My models do that too. I’m guessing it’s from your dry brushing. I have a bad habit of using old paint and not switching out my brushes enough when I do it. That’s why I think mine do that anyway. It still looks cool though so I don’t worry too much.

        • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
          1•7 days ago

          Hmm it could be. Though there’s a lot of that “grit” in places I didn’t dry brush. As a matter of fact the only place that got dry brushing was his grieve sticking out from under the cloak.

          • CruxifuxEnglish
            2•7 days ago

            Well whatever you’re doing looks good. Honestly I like it.

            • @Adm_DrummerOPEnglish
              2•7 days ago

              I really appreciate it, man. I’ve had a hard time putting brush to plastic. I’ve invested so much money into the armies and I’m worried about ruining the models.

              This post has really helped my confidence. I think I can do this. :) I’m really proud of this being my first full piece.