The Long Road, Kalibaouche's Gallery - La route est longue, galerie de Kalibaouche

Bonjour à tous, depuis plusieurs semaines je suis vos galeries d'un oeil intéressé, et le moment est venu pour moi de sauter le pas, et d'oser montrer mon bazar sans avoir (trop) honte.

Hi everyone, I've been followind this topic for several weeks with great interest, and I thought the time had come for me to take a leap and dare to show my stuff without (too much) shame.
I first painted 20 years ago, when I got some Mithril minis for my birhthday, along with one brush and the basic PA colors. I did not know paints were to be thinned back then - I learnt it some months ago by the way -, needless to say the result was quite... raw.

Since then I have been collecting minis that I did not paint nor assemble, just in case I got the time to paint and the money to buy paints and brushes. That did not prevent me from checking handsome masterpieces on the internet and comparing it to my "works". Once though I dedicated myself to painting some goblins, but without mixing paints, just knowing the bases of drybrushing, I got discouraged pretty quick.

Some months ago, my girlfriend asked to see what was in "these boxes upstairs". I opened them and a strange thing happened: some wind left the boxes, releasing the hobbyist spirit that had been trapped in there for so long.

From now on, I would dedicate my free time to progressing in mini painting.

I bought some paints, discovered the wonders of washes, need to buy better brushes (20 years!), and am on my way to buy an airbrush.
I donned my red bandana, and as we say in France, "ça va chier".





Here is the first I dared to paint in a looong time, the one for which I tried some technique I just discovered. Discovered, not mastered. I like it though.
This is some warrior from GW's Lords of the Rings.



And there are my WIPs, monsters from Descent 1st Ed. My brushes are nearly dead by now.

Any comment or advice is of course welcome  

Like always, practice is everything. The more you will paint, the more confident, precise and quick you will get.
Of course, there is the matter of tools and techniques. Fortunately there are plenty of demonstrations & tutorials out there. I find myself watching a lot of youtube paint session these days...
Knowing and delivering are 2 different things so you can watch other paints and listen to all the rights advices but nothing replace the actual performance !
I've still a lot of mini's to practice over (Conan & Descent v2) before being (as) ready (as I can be) for the MB:P mini's...

(for brushes advice, I have none as I am still not satisfied - I bought Windsor and Newton series 7 brushed but discovered there are 2 kinds: short and long; long is better as it holds more paint and of course I bought short...)

Bon courage.

Gotta keep on keeping on.
Had the occasion to try out my new work lamp.
Gotta buy new brushes new month I guess.



Some lights to add, the beastman's whole head, some corrections to make, and let's move on to other minis!

Thank you for your motivation Telgar.
Actually I do the same as you and use my Descent minis to practice.

Nice work. I forgot about Descent I (I play Descent II with friends), but it does have some decent pieces for practice. And some of them are nice pieces that could be used for other games, e.g. that dragon or demon. Or if you GM for a RPG game, it can just hang out by your side for intimidation factor

Descent is THE game that never stopped being played among my group of players. I remember investing what was a huge amount of money for me at that time (65€) to buy the huge core box, filled with minis...

Compared to nowadays prices and given the number of games I had with it, I think that was a pretty good investment to make, having minis to practice is a bonus.

Finished! Now moving on to the next minis, I hope I'll have learnt from the mistakes I made with these...

Descent, again, this time I tried to use more thinned paints to get better transitions.
Still in love with washes.
Yet, this model lacks some contrast I guess.
Muh, good enough for tabletop.
As long as I enjoy my time and get better in the process...
I still need to base it and let's call it done!

It lacked something. Now I can call it done!

I felt the need to get a break from Descent and finally opened a blister, bought many years ago, to finally try to paint a decent metal.
Obviously, it's still in WIP phase.

Good WIP. Are the gleam I see in the gold bits done with highlighting of is it truly a gleam from lighting on the metallic paint? if it's highlighting, I would say great job. Is the red "skirt" chipping or did you paint a silver trim. Difficult to determine from the photo.

BTW, where is he from? A friend of mine really like fighter in armour. Most of his are in heavy plate. Something is a half plate with chainmail would be nice for him.

Hi and thank you!

The gleam you see are indeed highlights, I'll try to take a better photo when finished (then maybe you won't say great job).
The red skirt is not done yet, since I've not even finished the base coat, what you see is the metal from the mini. I'll maybe take care of this next weekend, with caution (exaggerate the shadings and highlights, but not too much, and keep the light sources coherent).

This is (was) and ooold dark elf executioner from GW.

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/WFB-Dark-Elf-EXECUTIONER-Warhammer-Fantasy-Battle-Special-Units-388-/263021910979?hash=item3d3d53dbc3:g:MGsAAOSwxu5ZNeGi

I still have 2 left to experiment on.

At last, I took a few hours to finish it. A few things I don't like but I doubt I can do better right now.

My opinion has not change. Great work!

Thanks a lot! The next step is to improve my speed, since I have so many minis that are awaiting their turn...

No WIP this time, since I painted this in a row, approx 3 hours. Pretty satisfied with the result, I'm seeing some progress. Many mistakes but not so bad I guess.

I decided I could not leave it that way so, after some corrections and a proper (my first!) basing, here we are.







Hope you'll like it!

I guess I'm getting somewhere after all...



Will I be ready for december?

Very nice work on both the lizard and the steamjack. For the lizard, I particularly like the spines. I often mess up on that darkened roots look, but too lazy to fix afterward. Nice base too. What did you use to the rock? cork? putty? bark?

For the steamjack, the gradient on the eagle(?) device on the shield is superb. I've never manged such smooth transition myself.

Great job!

Thank you for your kind words!

For the lizard, I mostly used Nuln Oil in several layers to darken the roots, being careful to cover less and less surface at each layer.
The base is part lead, part slate that I found at work. It was primed and drybrushed several times, with various nuances of grey, then shaded to fit to the cast shadow.

For the steamjack, thank you again, but if you look closely (zoom in), you will notice the gradients are far from perfect, I should have done at least twice as much layers to get a smooth effect.

Right now I'm wondering if I shouldn't add a dot of orange in the eyes, and create some kind of heat effect on the furnace.

Hi, I decided to run some tests about blending, shining armor plates and strong contrasts.




Can't wait to get my hands on MBP minis!

I kinda like the result...

+1 with the previous comments.
I find the tech-lizard very nice : the green skin effects + dorsal spikes + stone base are very well performed !

Arghh, now I want to paint Space Marines again... I've only ever played the game once back in college days, but I've painted a few Marines since then just for fun. My friends would tell me that the weapon combos I choose was illegal, and I can only tell him that I have no intention of ever buying a full army and entering tournaments

Anyway, very nice work. The only thing that would make it better would be if you did some basing. Perhaps a piece of cork and some modeling paste to make a crumbling road?

Maybe nutshells to simulate tyranid eggs? My trees are quite productive, I get plenty of basing material in my garden.