Ggom

Took a break for a week with work being busy. Spent some time today finishing some odds and ends on the most recent 2 models, these are probably ready for sealing pending a look with fresh eyes. Noticing I need to smooth the blend on one boot now.

I’m curious what are some lower point lists that folks would recommend for noobs learning the game. Right now I have: 10 witch elves 10 sisters of slaughter 5 choppy snakes 5 choppy harpies 1 Morgwaeth and friends 1 cauldron magnetized for either slaughter queen or hag queen (can run the other on foot) 1 cauldron unbuilt I’ve played the game once, a few years ago. I’d rather not spam too much, since painting gets tiring, and I mostly paint, but I recognize that some spam is necessary because of how points cheap everything we have is. I’m never going to play competitively but am interested in having good games and being able to dial it up if the other guy is playing something scary. What would folks advise adding?

I wish DoK unit costs went up. They went down and now I have to buy more models 😭 I don’t get why people are salty about slaanesh getting points increases. Save money!

My god I love the direction they just went with kurnothi. The Beastgrave warband was nice but this is everything I wanted for a wood elf reboot. Take my money!! Take it!!!!

Ahh I hope we're not going to get limited to sects encouraging spam of 1 or 2 units. For individual gamers it makes our collections much more vulnerable to rules changes and meta shifts, unless we purchase alot of everything. (Which is good for GW but less desirable for casual players)

Hmm, it’s late and I’m lazy to paint so I’ll share some thoughts here. I do really like my Winsor and Newton Series 7 brushes, and mostly use the size 1. The size 0 is useful for painting pupils, but even then is superfluous if I have a new size 1. I typically paint for about 7 - 9 hours a week, and a size 1 brush kasts about 3 months. After that, I can still use it for tasks needing less precision, like glazing and blending, but it loses it’s point. Here is what I do: Don’t get paint into the ferrule. When picking up paint, it should never come close to the metal cylinder. I like to avoid loading alot into the body as well, since that inevitably ends up in the ferrule. By extension - I never use washes with my good brushes. (I generally don’t do washes much, but when I do, I use my old brushes.) The reason your brush comes to a point is because the hairs are tightly bound in the ferrule. If you get paint build up in there, it can’t be cleaned, and it will mess up your point. Get a good brush soap. I got a cap of Master’s and it has lasted me for years. After painting, I wet the brush with clean water and then stroke the tip in the soap to work up a lather. I massage this into the hairs gently and then rinse it out with water. I think hot water is not so good here because it can mess with the glue in the ferrule, which, again, mucks with the point. Condition the brush! Two ways to do this. First approach, only suitable if you paint with acrylics, is, once you wash and rinse the brush, place it in your mouth like a lollipop and suck on it. I errr.... draw it out against the inside of my my cheek, which helps it form a point. There’s some tongue action involved. 😄Then I place the little plastic cylinder back on and put the brush back in it’s little pipe. The second approach, if you don’t want to put the brush in your mouth, is to spit into your palm and use your palm to shape it instead. Specifically,, there is a fold below your pinky finger - if you make a fist, that fold will form a little triangle with a little hollow. You can use that hollow to shape the brush gently as well. The above might sound like much but it only takes 30s at the end of a painting session, and has worked well for me to keep my sable brushes spiffy. Eventually they lose their point anyway, but that is inevitable as friction wears away the tips of the hairs. I generally accept that my brushes don’t last forever. Certain painting tehniques and paints wear out brushes faster (drybrushing, washes, thick paints, metallic paints, mixing colors aggressively on a palette) so I avoid using my new brushes for those. Old brushes are useful for those tasks!

Slaanesh is gorgeous!!! Also, some of the blissbarb sculpts look like fantastic conversion material for Daughters

For the white revenants, I think it will be tricky to achieve high contrast. Straight up white, yellow and red will be bright on bright on bright. hmm... you may not need white as a main color - starting with something closer to black can still read as white if your midtones are grey and you have white where the light would catch. The brain will still infer that the “true” color is white, depending on the context. Painting black will be interesting too. Mixing purple or blue or green into the black gives you room to modulate (going from black to a blue gray or lilac for the parts that catch light.) You can still use cooler colors without them being very conspicuous, and they will make your warm colors warmer. Sounds like a fun project you got there! I love the revenant models. ❤️❤️❤️

A small update this evening, as I’ve continued to paint the banner elf. I ended up painting over the abysmal freehand and just adding a false shadow to create more interest. The rest of the elf was a pleasure to paint, and I took my time with the nmm and leather. Now just to lay down some reds and browns for the base, and she’ll be ready to seal. Maybe another day for revisiting freehand. I think what is holding me back there is manual dexterity with the brush, and drawing lines of consistent thickness. I normally draw with pencil and it’s a very different feel, since the tip is sturdy. Drawing with a brush feels harder because the brush gives, and I just end up with fatter lines. More practice needed, no doubt. I also cheated and started painting another member of the blade coven, this time a Sister with a gold mask! Pretty fun to paint the mask, I think I might put masks on a few more of the elves now that I’ve enjoyed this one. The Sister’s masks are smaller but also simpler in shape than the Melusai ones, so it’s easier to imagine where the reflections go. Definitely a bonus for noobs like yours truly.

We wouldnt be a glass cannon; we’d be a... ... glass knife... Which would probably be fine in real life if you had excellent reflexes and precision. Upvote for more elite Khinerai. The models are my favorite in the range, and I’d love an excuse to get more. I mean, I might get more anyway, but this way it’s even better if I get to use my favorite sculpts AND they counted for a useful backbone of the army.

All I can see are terminators dual wielding lightning claws. Ride the lightning! Anyone notice that the teeth in his mouth look identical to the ardboy's teeth from season 1 of underworlds? Not just similar, but an exact copy paste? Edit - nevermind, the top 4 are the same, but the bottom has a different number. They just look similar.

My 5 yo is turning 6 and he picked a seraphon start collecting for his birthday and yesterday we spent 2 hours building a spinosaurus who is now named SPINEY and we don't know what color to paint him yet but we are already battling dad's bird guy (tzeentch greater demon) and now we need magic so we're putting a little lizard magic guy on top of SPINEY and hey we should make some more little guys to help! *Pause for breath* *This is how we talk in real life too 🤣*

Eh, the proxy thing is questionable when DoK warband base sizes don’t even match their main units...

Isn't the 9th Age like this? A living ruleset that is maintained by the player base? There's little incentive for GW to move to this, but it's certainly a neat approach with a different set of advantages and pitfalls. Really curious if there are folks with more experience with that who would weigh in.

I got super excited recently to do the freehand banner I had prepared previously. I decided to pick a khainite rune and paint it on the banner since this is my first attempt to freehand. I spent a few hours and now I think it looks like garbage 🙃 I am not sure what to do next. Maybe repaint it to the base red and try a transfer? Maybe keep this as a memento and try painting other banners? Might set this aside for abit and come back with fresh eyes in a few weeks. I think a black rune transfer with some weathering will look better, but isn't really a chance to learn. Looking for any advice people have!

I think it would be useful for those of us sharing these types of statements to clarify the extent of their knowledge, as @yukishiro1 did. For instance, is this a statement coming from someone who is educated in the matter or has related working experience, is this the opinion of a layperson, etc. Otherwise it's hard for those of us without professional insight into the matter to form an opinion in this area of much myth and rumor.

So... The way to force GW to change their current book model is to write summaries of the 2 pages of rules and share them? Sounds like a good plan, for those of us who disliked the current model.

Yeap. I was referring to the witch elves in the background. The mulusai has a six pack and muscle definition, the witch elves look abit soft, which, combined with the pale skin makes me think of - drowned, dead, hungry things. Especially with the stringy hair and the pose. In my mind the witch elf models convey dancing, leaping, and with thick hair and slender limbs. Not so much the ones on this cover. Obligatory disclaimer - this is not a comment on female form in general, or expectations of what women look like. Also, I like the cover in general.

Lol. I do really like the new cover art though, aside from that minor aside. The witches in the background look slightly ghoulish though - it may be a combination of the pale skin and the excess body fat, but I get a bit of flesheater courts cannibalist vibe there.

I am quite interested in this topic as well and am pretty excited to exchange ideas and references here. By and large, I find the best pictorial content on Instagram. I don't know that tutorials themselves are that useful - outside of, like you said, ultra specific things (how to make a base, principles of nmm, etc.) From a learning/growth point of view I find it much more interesting to look at what some of the good painters out there do. There's the basic stuff like figuring out what consistency of paint you prefer for different colors and things, but outside of the mechanical aspect I've found a huge range of things to learn just by looking at the WIPs and finished pictures of others. I'm nowhere good/patient enough to get to the level of those folks, but I feel it still helps me with improving bit by bit. Since you are also interested in painting Daughters of Khaine, here are some of the things I've found inspiring and interesting on those models. Daughters of Khaine inspiration kaha.katarzyna.gorska has a really distinct and vibrant style with many painted light effects. Here she has a stunning and unique interpretation on Morathi: https://www.instagram.com/p/B0y4JdjBFQs/ daemonrich does really nice work as well, you can see some super smooth blends and unique light things on his Medusa here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BzgbSVhBy5E/ georcs_workbench was the first person painting witch elves I found that made me think - wow, need to really get that range of values going and get super smooth. Don't need many colors if executed cleanly and smoothly: https://www.instagram.com/p/BkajG-EHpTU/ https://www.instagram.com/p/Bye1cBRIZ9c/ coderevenge has some insane precision, if you think about how much stuff is getting jampacked into the pupils on a 32 mm model. https://www.instagram.com/p/BxQwLb3nfTE/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CKKXwkDHTfo/ Since you originally asked for painting tutorials There is certainly a lot of stuff out there targeted for folks who are trying to paint fast or get to that subjective thing that is "tabletop standard." Here are some other sources that I've found useful that are more aimed towards "painting well." (Apologies for some of the vague terminology, as I think there is a lot of potential discussion on what that means, but this isn't really the thread.) https://www.youtube.com/user/paintingbuddha - insight on competition level painting https://www.youtube.com/user/SicarioRimini - nice balance between high tabletop standard and speed. He uses alot of oil filters, airbrush, etc to speed things up. I imagine this covers alot of skills needed to be a good commission painter. https://www.instagram.com/p/BzcOMfoojPy/ - sorry, the above is about it for tutorials I know of, the rest are just amazing painters on insta https://www.instagram.com/p/B2AA1csHum4/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BzDHEQ9ISIx/ My opinions on some of your other questions I honestly don't think you need washes at all unless you are going for speed. Thin down other paints and glaze them for more control. The painting buddha tutorials teach a technique called loaded brush, which is also cool to try, although I've personally had difficulty mastering it and stick to wet blending and glazing. When I do use paints labeled as "washes," I use them as glazes. I don't think you ever want to wash the way GW advertises unless you are trying to paint fast. On the related topic of GW's Contrast paints - they are basically glorified washes, so I wouldn't suggest specifically seeking those out unless you are trying to go for speed, or just want to paint normally but spend more money. Zenithal is really good for learning. I think it is sometimes over simplified though. The underlying idea that I learned (taught by this wonderful guy) is that zenithal teaches new painters how light works on most regular surfaces. Without zenithal, you sort of get stuck in a 2D cartoon world where washes end up in recesses and highlights get placed uniformly on edges without respect for the direction of light (an exaggeration of the old GW house style.) I find zenithal mechanically useful for 2 things: Figuring out your light placement. You then layer on top of your zenithal but use it as a guide for placing your shadows. Alternatively, for speed and a very loose water color style, you can just glaze acrylics or lay oil washes on top of a zenithal. This is more of a speed painting approach, and you allow your zenithal underlayer to show through and play a part in the finished model. And (this may be obvious) zenithal does not need to be black and white. Airbrush is almost a requirement for zenithal if you want to have precision I think - spray cans work to an extent but are very hard to control and it's easy to blast away all of the gradient/shadow if you push down too hard. There are also painters out there who don't do zenithal and just place their lights manually. It's a preference thing.

Fantastic work @Milano! sidebar obligatory wish for the new tome - I pray for an option to take a behemoth style model besides Morathi. I know we have the Cauldron/Shrine but the Dark elf Hydra and Kharybdiss are soooooooo cool and thematically linked. It would be little work on GW’s part - just toss it on the list of options! sidebar question - are endless prayers a thing? Without Morathi our spellcasting is pretty limited. I’d love to have some of these invokable by our beloved priestesses.

But... Banners look cool! I hope they don't restrict banners since I think there is a neat visual thing with streaming banners in a block of models. Also, I didn't realize there was a current limit on banners per 10 models. Still haven't played a game yet but looks like I will need to buy more witch elves to make my list legal 🤪

Yaaaaaassssss You joined the best team 😄

10 witch elves Great models. New army. Beat skaven any day of the week. 🤪🤪🤪

If you have oil paints, those work great too, on top of an acrylic undercoat. I personally would not use Citadel if I was starting over because of the way they design their bottles. Other brands like Vallejo and Scale75 are about the same price point but have more ergonomic storage if you intend to thin your paints at all. Citadel’s pots get caked with dry paint easily. If you wish to paint “true metallic metal” - ie paint with metal flakes - I hear Darkstar is amazing.