So haven’t made an update for a little while because life has been waaaaay too hectic!
As a result of the above, I have also made very little progress doing much of anything else.
But! My Rotten Harvest competition entry is coming along. Just hope I have it finished in time! I wish I could take photos of it to post up and ask for advice and help, but unfortunately one of the rules is that it cannot have been published/shown off anywhere *sigh*.
I have however been keeping up to date with Mako’s ‘free-hand-along’ thread on the Wyrd forums. So far, not good.
My outlining skills are BOLLOCKS. Just seriously all types of fail was going on here.
What have you painted on the back of me? Yellow splodge I think!
And then in week 2 we filled the outline in.
Oooooh, it’s meant to be a bird. Who’da thunk it?
The filled in version looks a little better, but I’m struggling to keep it non-chalky and defined.
I also noticed that the wings are horribly uneven. And now that I’ve seen it – I can’t un-see it 😦
And I was a little careless where I put her and have ended up with a few sizable chips out of her paint. At least they’re areas I probably should re-do anyways!
Tried to get a nice photo of all of my little Infinity guys – but alas, as the Painting Sage has warned me before “Direct sunlight is not your friend”. It’s very true.
Well, I might leave it there for the moment. Going to start painting up one of my Malifaux Gunsmiths – but it will probably be slow going while I get my Rotten Harvest done!!
Love you all,
Sincerely El.
Cappuccino Gaming 
It looks basically fine to me. True that it has some wee problems with symmetry, there is no denying it, but having said that the creator of any work is always much more critical than anybody else. It’s never as bad to other peoples eyes as you see it. Don’t get hung up on perfection with these things as they can be time sinks where it may be better to get the figure done and then you can carry the experience to the next freehand project.
I try to use masking tape, stencils or transfers as shape guides when I do this kind of thing. Here is an example in which I used masking tape for the yellow, green and red bits:
The white circle in the center has a circular military vehicle transfer underneath used to guide where I put the white paint. The black and white borders are transfers from Space Orks and the letters and numbers more transfers. The face and laurel wreaths are freehanded on once the layout has been established from the earlier stages. Note that varnish is vital to disguise transfer shininess and masking tape used with too thick paint can lead to a tiny “seam” of paint which you can see on my model.
So in summary the more planning up front the better with freehand work. Perfect circles and straight lines are really, really hard to to – and your project has both! Any shortcuts you can come up with to avoid entirely freehanding these shapes are to be embraced.
Your infinity troops look fantastic. I was a portrait/wedding photographer in another life. I agree with the Sage that sun is definitely not your friend…but shade and a tripod are good friends to have. Use both and your photos will almost always turn out great especially for still life shots. Use a remote shutter or the shutter timer on your camera and you can’t go wrong.
Actually I use my mobile! So shutter speed is a non-factor. However I do have access to a dslr woth a macro lens. Maybe I shall borrow to try to get some nice shots 😀
El, Aleph team all together look great! Personally think the Cygnar style swan looks cool. Definitely looks better than the one on my war jack and that’s moulded onto the model 😉 . Know what you mean about life getting in the way of hobby time , have done virtually no painting in the last week or so. Think it’s looking great. Also really liked your and Wurmwoods printed Infinity board, have you taken a look at the Warboard Kickstarter? I’ve got some city tiles coming from the Secret Weapon one in Dec hopefully but thinking of getting one for my son.
Another tip for free-hand design (and one that I use personally) is to use a propelling pencil to draw on the design first – you can refine the design as you go and any mistakes can be erased with an eraser/cleaned off with water. All of my Saim Hann Eldar use this technique. 🙂
Don’t be too hard on yourself – your freehand looks great – as another commenter said, everyone is their own harshest critic!
Your Aleph are looking great too, keep it up!
Thankyou thankyou!!
Yea, I actually had thought free handing it on with a standard writing utensil first would be easier, but when I went to do it all I had was a thick nosed sharpie and quickly quit that idea. I never even thought of using a mechanical pencil! That makes so much more sense! Will definitely test that next time! 🙂
And thankyou for the encouragement! I really appreciate it!
Hey,
Personally I think the Cygnar swan looks great! Free handing will always be a bit tricky and you can always see something that could be better, but my experience is that when I want to fix something so minor, I end up making it worse :p
Haha thankyou! I think I have managed to fall into this trap. I tried to fix the left wing and I think I made it worse hahaha. Aaaah well, live and learn I suppose!
There’s no real problem with the swan/phoenix, particularly the final/second version. The difficulty in the first photo looks like it might be your choice of paint, or even overly-thinned paint. I’d recommend one of the Citadel Base colours for that sort of thing. (formerly foundation paints) Averland Sunset in this case. Then you can add highlights, etc with other yellows over the top. Warning though – the Vallejo Opaque paints (created to be an analogue to the original GW foundations) aren’t nearly as good/effective to work with.
Aaah I hadn’t realised that. Yes, the paint I was using was a Vallejo Opaque!
I have been trying out free-handing various patterns on some ‘dummy’ miniatures with different paints and even though easier with most of my GW stil comes out with that very broken choppy sort of look.
I might have to watch some tutorial videos to see what other people are doing to get clean lines.
the ”bird” in the first mini is very good! and the Aleph look nice!
Thankyou so much!! 🙂 I appreciate that 🙂
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Those ALEPH look really nice. I really like the way the black and the white turned out, and they look . . . solid. A lot of people seem to paint Infinity models in pale/pastelly shades for some reason but yours actually look like anime come to life.
You inspired me to finish the Nomad I’ve been working on for weeks (by which I mean I half painted him and then put him on the shelf to sulk).
Thankyou very very much!! I was actually dreading painting them because there are 3 colours I hate to paint, Red, Black and White. And they’re all mostly black and white. So it was a lot of holding miniatures under the nose of the Painting Sage and flailing around not knowing what I was doing.
Cant wait to see your Nomads!! I love the design of the Nomads.
I think the freehand on Madelyn looks nice. I also like your Aleph, too. I should paint mine …and maybe have some actual games… ^^
Oh thankyou so much! I really appreciate that! ooh can’t wait to see your Aleph! 😀