I’ve decided to start posting on an old hobby I’ve just revived, and am really enjoying. After discovering Hero Forge and chatting with some pals, I decided to dust off my old paintbrushes and pots and have a try at miniature painting, something I did in my teens, which is quite some time ago now!
I’m happy to take on any and all criticism (hopefully constructive!) as I get back into this hobby. Bear in mind its been a long time, and my hands are a bit shakier than they were back in the day – and I wasn’t all that good even back then!
So, first off, I’ve been working on a mini I designed on Hero Forge. Here are some photos of the work in progress:
The face. Quite happy with this, and it seems my hands haven’t gotten quite as shaky as I feared!The shield in progress. I’m watching a lot of YouTube videos on technique, and trying new stuff all the time. This was my first attempt at blending with glazes, and I got a chalkier finish than I was hoping for. I think this was from applying the next glaze before the old one had dried properly. Lesson learned for next time!I tried a true metallic paint for the armour, but for fantasy and sci-fi minis, I tend to prefer non metallic metallic techniques. I washed this with a watered blue glaze a couple of times, but didn’t like the finish, so it’ll be repainted in NMM.Overpainted the armour in preparation for NMM. Also painted the sword, which is the second part of the mini I’m really happy with. The NMM blade worked out way better than I’d expected, and the hilt looks pretty good too, although needs a little more work.Painted the boots and fur, and started highlighting the armour in NMM style. Really struggling to work out the approach to highlights, despite all the videos I’ve watched on it, and articles I’ve read! Also playing around with a coloured background for the photos – sheets of plasticard I had lying around. Struggling with my exposure settings here, so sorry for the darker photo, but will continue to experiment. If anyone has any suggestions in this regard, let me know. I’ve a faithful old Canon Eos 400D (Digital Rebel). I know how to use all the settings, just not how to get them to work well for miniature photography!Shield and floor finished. I think the NMM worked well on the shield corners, but I continue to play around with it on the armour. Photo has better brightness, but I cheated a little by using the exposure adjustment to bump it up 1 f-stop. I’d rather work out how to get it right using shutter speed/aperture while retaining as low an ISO as I can. I’ve also noticed I need a little more depth of field than I’m getting on f5.6, so will try 8 after the next batch of photos, which I’ve already taken!
So, now to the finished effort. I’m happy with some parts, learned quite a bit, and know I still need a lot of work on painting NMM armour. Also need to improve my photos, but I’m playing around with that too, so will hopefully have a better grasp of that soon!
Need to use a smaller aperture for more depth of field to get the whole model in focus…I need to be a little more careful with model prep. I thought that seam line on the cloak would be hidden by the primer, but it made it more visible! I’ll sand them off next time.
That was a lot of fun, and remarkably relaxing! Next up is to work my way through a box of Space Marines, which I’m using as a project to practice layering and glazing to shade and highlight in different colours the marine chapters offer. Any tips and tricks for both the photography and painting are much appreciated!
