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I really dislike faces

lare2

Entry posted by lare2 in For Sigmar!

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Finished off the Rakarth flesh - areas covered were cream fabrics, rope, bone and flesh. Really happy with how they're coming on now. They're really starting to take shape and to begin to look actually painted. Next up I'll be painting all parchment using Zandri Dust but soon I'll be on the metals. This will be pretty much the final step in the base colours and I'm super excited to see how they'll all look with everything coloured in. I'm taking forever and a day to do this though so I got a little inpatient with them and I've started ripping some models off their perches to actually get games in between painting sessions. The Longstrike are just oppressive. I really hope they don't get hit with a nerf bat before the army's complete! On that note, I've had a number of games now with the new book and I really don't think this army will be fantastic... you can be sure that I'll still be running it though at tournies when it is done! I do love a good tourney. At one in Scotland this weekend. I'll be the one running a 1st edition SCE army - feel free to say hello if you're there! 

The worst step about this phase was definitely the faces on the few models I've left without a helmet. I really struggle with faces, like most. You can see below the technique I've kinda settled on. Essentially, I just smack on a blob of white over the eyes and then I get out my 000 Winsor and Newton and carefully colour around the actual eye. A note on brushes, this is pretty much one of the few jobs I use my Winsor and Newton for... most of the time I just use Hornby brushes, which I think are a pretty decent medium ground between quality and expense. I've used expensive brushes and I've used cheap brushes. I've bought Winsor and Newton which die on me after a couple of sessions and cheapo ones which have been work-horses. I really do find that the Hornby brushes are pretty good though and they're cheap enough that I'm really not too bothered about replacing them every 6 months or so. Anyway, back to faces. Once this is done, I then just wash and layer the flesh as normal. You can't really see in the 2nd pic of the face below but the eye is left pretty white and if I'm feeling confident, I'll then get out my fine tipped black pen to carefully place a pupil. It's been a long old while since I've attempted to paint on a pupil and I honestly swear by a fine tipped pen for jobs like this. Once the model's varnished and whatnot, you really can't tell the difference. 

Anywho, I hope you're all well and I wish you the very best for the rest of the week! 

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Edited by lare2

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Neil Arthur Hotep

Your Stormcast are really starting to take shape! It's always nice to see your progress.

But yeah, faces, how do you deal with them? They are definitely one of the few places on a miniature that you can't cheat on. Or if you can, I have not found out how. Two things have helped me get better at faces, particularly eyes:

Number one is to just bite the bullet and paint the eyes on every miniature. You never get better at stuff you don't practice. It was a pain at first, but I definitely started to notice some improvement with time. Number two was to get the order of operations right. I had always tried to do the eyes last, but that's hard because at that point you are likely ruining the skin you have already painted. Now, I usually do the basic skin colour first, then a dark wash, and then I start with the eyes. That makes it way easier in my opinion, because you don't have to worry about messing anything up. I also use the method of putting down a thin off-white line in the eye area, then putting in the pupil and finally cleaning everything up with skin colour, so there is usually a good bit of white/black outside the lines.

Another secret pro tip is to put the pupils into the corners of the eyes instead of the center. It's way easier to get right and your models won't end up cross eyed. Oryou can just, you know, learn to love the mysterious shadow over the eye area you get from a good dark wash and stop worrying about it. It's not like you can tell from a few feet away anyway.

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lare2
18 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Your Stormcast are really starting to take shape! It's always nice to see your progress.

Thanks - it's much appreciated. Worked on them a bit more last night as well so getting a good layer of Zandri down on the parchment. 

18 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Number one is to just bite the bullet and paint the eyes on every miniature. You never get better at stuff you don't practice. It was a pain at first, but I definitely started to notice some improvement with time. Number two was to get the order of operations right. I had always tried to do the eyes last, but that's hard because at that point you are likely ruining the skin you have already painted. Now, I usually do the basic skin colour first, then a dark wash, and then I start with the eyes. That makes it way easier in my opinion, because you don't have to worry about messing anything up. I also use the method of putting down a thin off-white line in the eye area, then putting in the pupil and finally cleaning everything up with skin colour, so there is usually a good bit of white/black outside the lines.

Thanks for the pointers. I really wanted to start giving more focus to faces when I started but with doing everything at once, I don't think I could face (no pun intended) it. I also think I'd prefer to keep the head separate from the bodies to do them. I'm pretty certain that following this I'm just going to go back to a unit at a time and at that point I'm gonna keep the heads separate. You're right though - practise makes perfect and the only way to improve is by actually doing them. 

 

18 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's way easier to get right and your models won't end up cross eyed. Oryou can just, you know, learn to love the mysterious shadow over the eye area you get from a good dark wash and stop worrying about it. It's not like you can tell from a few feet away anyway.

And it looks awesome! This is one of the (many!) problems I have painting though - I'd know about it! I watch tutorials and whatnot and I'm always envious of their speed painting and how they skip corners (not painting underneath, for example) but then it comes to me sitting at my table... and I just can't do it for some reason!

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lare2

Just a quick update, managed to do all hair and the bases on animals last night. I don't quite believe it but I'm actually on the metals now. Once the metals are done, that't it for bases - whoop whoop! I've spent the better part of this year uhming and ahing what the armour metal would be: gold or steel. I'm gonna go gold as the weapons and chain mail-esque armour will be steel. Just gonna go for basic SCE colours for this, i.e. Retributor Armour and Liberator Gold.  

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