Hey baby! It's September, and that means....

[frans]

I am not happy with the brown on the howdah and it took me around 18h to finish the model so I need to paint a little bit faster.

[me_in_japan]

blimey charlie, but that's looking nice! 18hrs for a mini that size is fine, I reckon (yeah, yeah, everyone make jokes about me being a slow painter, go on...) The white colour on the bulk of the sphinxosaurus (or whatever it's called) is lovely, and the details are all nice and crisp and contrast very well. The picture itself lets it down more than anything else - is there any way you can take a shot where the whole thing is side-on and in focus? It'd be much easier to get an overall impression then.

[me_in_japan]

PS - I'm keeping a daily painting log over here. Yes, the crazy man is entering a CMoN competition. Laugh if you must, but then leave a constructive comment, please (here or on CMoN if youre so inclined)

http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/sho ... -his-minis

[job]

@ Frans: That monster is awesome! Well, done, sir. I won't mind at all if it manages to crush some of my dwarves. I love how the white is so uniform and smooth-looking. And the blues and yellows are superbly uniform and well laid on. (Now I'm fawning over your mini. )

@ MiJ: Get something new done to post! (Says the man behind on his painting schedule.) We want to see your finished models, because they are very nice.

[Primarch]

yeah, yeah, everyone make jokes about me being a slow painter, go on...

You'd probably paint faster if you didnt follow your usual method.
1. Paint 1 colour onto the mini.
2. Stop painting and take a photograph.
3. Repeat.

[job]

yeah, yeah, everyone make jokes about me being a slow painter, go on...

You'd probably paint faster if you didnt follow your usual method.
1. Paint 1 colour onto the mini.
2. Stop painting and take a photograph.
3. Repeat.

What about step 2.5. Post pictures on the web and wait eons for people to comment on them?

MiJ, aren't some of those posts on CoMn the same ones you posted a few months back on this site? (Although the Orks bolter hand looks like new progress.)

[me_in_japan]

same parts of the model, new paint job (e.g. ork's upper lip)

CMoN are running a competition at the mo. Best ork, best CSM, best marine as submitted from now to sep 24th and as voted on sep 24th to oct 3rd, wins a copy of that new Space Marine game. Fancy collectors ed, no less. I've been procrastinating with orky chops for a while, so I'm using this as motivation to give it a shotty. Glad I'm not painting a marine, mind you - there are already marines in the running that whizz all over anything I could do.

@prim - well, showing people the progress of your work is kinda the point of a work in progress log, after all. The photos dont take much time, as the cam is set up permanently at the mo.
@job - actually, teh folks on CMON are very prompt with replies. Very nice folks over there.

[frans]

20 archers ready

Maybe a better picture of the sphinx

[me_in_japan]

Frans - that is bloody lovely. Everything is nice and clean and clear. The individual models are nice, but en masse I'm sure they look fantastic. I'm coming around more and more to having different criteria for what constitutes a good gaming mini paintjob and what constitutes a good display mini paint job. The former has to be bright and clear, the latter muted and subtle. They dont work in each other's roles, and those skellies and the sphinxosaurus are clear as a bell. It's the yellow and blue that make em, I think. The white needs to be there as a base, but the use and placing of the blue and yellow make all the difference. Good show old bean

Taking a second look- i have one teeny suggestion. It would be worth your while to go around the edges of the bases (currently black) and paint them brown. Not the same brown as the base itself - a slightly darker one, probably. The black draws the eye and breaks up the visual coherency of the army. (Black is a might strong colour and tends to dominate, especially in an army with so much white.)

[frans]

Hmm I always use black from old habit. The best thing with the black is that it break the model away from the table, a desert base will look descent on a forest table. I will try it out.

I think that tabletop models in an army needs to be over the top combined with as few colors as possible. The rational for over the top is that an army is looked at from 3 dm, as an example I got 1 more painting score on a tournament than a friend he is a better painter and he brought an all metal cadian IG army. All models in his army would is better than any of my Grey knights. But when viewed from 2dm his subtly highlight and shading never stood out.

As for minimizing the amount of colors used I think that you should always do that, a unit with a lot of different colors and especially different nuances of the same color look like it has attracted the measles. My oldest friend (28 years!) is a great painter, with awesome models but his armies never look good together. I claimed that I forced him to paint his infinity models with a limited amount of colors and this is the result: http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/23535 ... 0shot.html