Yeaaaa…I’m one of those creepers that photographs most of their food. Am I posting it anywhere? Not particularly 90% of the time, but on occasion something pretty shows up like these beautiful McCafe Macarons. In case anyone goes and tries these bad boys – Yellow and Green are both delicious and I will be happy to live off all things lemon and pistachio for the remainder of my existence.
Ok, so I recently started getting interested in the Cygnar faction of Warmachine (this has been an on and off interest for a while) and deciding to have a go at painting my Warmachine Gungirl in small sessions when just bored watching TV or something.
Greeeey, is the colour of my heart? Cloak? Hair? Whatever…
So this is her … er… completed. I question saying ‘completed’ because even though I’ve had a go at building her a little base, she doesn’t feel finished, and I kind of regret not waiting to paint her at my friends.
I used a flash on this image to pick up the finer lines in the paint work, and as you can see – the shading on the cloak is…all over the place and not particularly following any kind of ‘light source’.
In addition her hair is too red (really) and the blue and brown badly used. I would like to say ‘but I only have a couple of colours’ and hide behind that shield of artistic excuse – but it’s really not why they ended up this way; merely a contribution to why I chose Red, Green and Blue schemes.
I also flash snapped some images of this guy (He’s an easily forgotten $3 Reaper miniature). I was using the coloured areas to practice getting a good colour blended effect going up to the highlight.
1. Looks sliiightly better without the flash on, but I’m not going to hold my breath for the diamond brush award ANY time soon
2. What am I doing wrong that it ends up so distinct like this?
All the arrows indicate which colours were used when I was trying a blending technique.
So what I was trying:
1. lightened the colour by nearly the most unnoticable amount
2. watered it down like AAAALLL hell
3. bunch of really really really thin layers slowly building up to lightest colour
4. finally washed with a watered down version of the 3rd or 2nd lightest colour (but watered down to the point that really it might as well of just been water at this point….)
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Well, finally – I have been learning to play Warmachine (as mentioned previously) with a Cygnar team my painting mentor did up when the game first came out on the shelves.
So far, I’m thoroughly enjoying learning all about the campaigns/fluff/mechanics.
Final, last note, was just to cap off my nerd filled weekend, got given a couple of Magic the Gathering ‘learn to play’ decks a co-worked had (as I’m the only person they know that plays MTG) and used them to teach my younger cousin how to play. Seems like she enjoyed it!
Haha, hopefully she might be interested in playing some other things with me in the future too?~ Love Always,
Ellie.
Cappuccino Gaming 
Is Warmachine/Hordes pretty popular in Australia?
Yea, I tend to find most people I encounter that enjoy any miniatures games of any kind, also play Warmachine.
I think your Taryn looks pretty good. The red hair is probably fine unless you’re going for a painting competition (and leaving aside your personal preferences of course) since it’s such a small part of the miniature. SImple things will help make this look complete: 1) paint the rim of base black again to neaten it up (if you’re playing WarmaHordes, you might as well put the arc markings on too at this point) and 2) put something else on the base, either a highlight, a few differently coloured rocks or some grass. Currently the good work on the miniature itself is ‘swamped’ by the huge lump of monochromatic mud it’s standing on.
I can’t really help with the Reaper miniature as I don’t really blend anything myself, but I suspect that part of the problem is that you’re looking at the miniature at an extreme close up. Photographs are particularly unforgiving as they blow up a 1″ miniature to A4 size. If you actually play games, don’t forget that most of the time miniatures will be 3 to 4 feet away from you. In addition, blending on 28mm scale miniatures will always tend to be highly emphasised because the effect needs to translate up well enough to be seen by the naked eye. Otherwise, no-one would ever paint on shadows and highlights, and simply let real light do the work.
You’re doing really well for a starting painter; the more you practice the better you’ll get. The best advise I ever heard about painting was to keep some of your old miniatures, and whenever you’re getting frustrated with some new technique, get them out and remind yourself how far you’ve already come. I regularly play with and against miniatures much less well done than these ones you post on your blog, and I’ve been playing for a good long while.
Thankyou so much for the encouragement – I do really appreciate it 🙂 Makes me feel a lot better about my failed attempts hehe.
Yea I kind of wish I hadn’t already stuck her to the base so that I could have more of a go at making the base look…fancier haha. I’d love to learn how to make all the really nice ones. Might go for a stroll and see what random things I can find to use!
I have an idea in my head of what the blending should look like, but I cannot seem to work out how people are doing it. But I’m going to take this model around to my professional painter friends house and see if they can come up with a solution to where I’m going wrong – or if this is even the technique I’m looking for.
And thankyou again 🙂 It means a lot coming from someone with your painting skills!