Disciples of Caliban

i got tired of painting red, so i decided to strip my blood angels and redo them in a Dark Angels Successor livery. so far i'm rather liking the new color scheme. here's the link to the photo gallery i'll be keeping all the pictures on:
Disciples of Caliban Photo Gallery

I'd reccomend trying to thin your paint with a little water. That step alone will give you much better looking miniatures.

yea, i didnt thin it quite enough; the camera gives that away. but i cant tell the difference anymore with my eyesight what it is, so at least i 'think' they look a grade higher than tabletop quality but i wouldn't fool myself into thinking my minis will reach the quality Paz, or yours Scott, get to. but hey, still ahead of the curve compared to many gamers, since my mini's are painted fully and not bare plastic or sporadic base-coating, so that's always something to be happy about!

The bases aren't finished, are they?

If you really want to paint an army that is a step above tabletop qualtiy I think you should try these things.

-Thin your paint. 2-3 coats of coverage with paint thinned 1:1 will solve a lot of issues on the mini's you've shown.

-Even coverage. The details like the metal bits aren't at all even. Take some time and paint them with a couple coats. They look like you just sorta touched on them a little bit in a hurry. Take your time, it's worth it!

-Shading/Highlighting. These mini's are all base coated, if you do want to put them up a notch they'll need some shading and highlighting. It doesn't have to be much, even just some edge highlighting will work along with some thinned badab black painted into the recesses. Or what I often do when painting tabletop stuff is start from a darker than usual basecoat and just layer on some paint in a stage or two. It'll work good enough to start with.

Don't mean to sound harsh. It looks like from primer to finished mini these figs are painted in around an hour each. I'd try to make a conscious effort to spend double that on each mini. You'll defo be glad you did.

i appreciate the tips, actually. and you're right on a couple things.

The bases aren't finished, are they?
no, they're just primered atm; i'm going to base them with snow and some stoney outcroppings later. i like to do basing in batches, so when i have more than 5 models done, i'll start basing them.

If you really want to paint an army that is a step above tabletop quality I think you should try these things.

-Thin your paint. 2-3 coats of coverage with paint thinned 1:1 will solve a lot of issues on the mini's you've shown.
yes, this is something i need to remember more often. i don't thin them quite as much or as often as i should be.

-Even coverage. The details like the metal bits aren't at all even. Take some time and paint them with a couple coats. They look like you just sorta touched on them a little bit in a hurry. Take your time, it's worth it!
good eye; yes, the gold is the most noticable in the pictures for that. its Tamiya X-31 Titanium Gold, and i drybrush it on, but i take the paint off the cap to begin with, and sadly, that dries a little quickly so it gets goopy and then i don't realize it until it's on the model. the nicer smoother spots are where i switch over to dipping into the bottle.

-Shading/Highlighting. These mini's are all base coated, if you do want to put them up a notch they'll need some shading and highlighting. It doesn't have to be much, even just some edge highlighting will work along with some thinned badab black painted into the recesses. Or what I often do when painting tabletop stuff is start from a darker than usual basecoat and just layer on some paint in a stage or two. It'll work good enough to start with.
this is one thing I'm disappointed in my photos with; they 'are' actually highlighted, but the lighting wasn't right so it never showed up. the greens were started off with a thin coat of Orkhide Shade, followed by a 1:1 mixture of Dark Angels Green and Snot Green. after that, i highlighted the armour with pure snot green in areas i thought a top-down light might hit the green. the pictures just didnt show a single bit of the highlighting, which is annoying.

the models will be getting further shading later on though; like how i prefer to batch work my bases, i prefer to shade in batches to save my brushes; the models will be getting a coating of Quickshade STRONG tone. after that's cured, i'll probably hmm and hah over whether i like the sheen or if i want to go over it with dullcoat afterwards. i know many prefer the dullcoat, but there's something about the way the quickshade looks on certain colors before dullcoated that i like.

Don't mean to sound harsh. It looks like from primer to finished mini these figs are painted in around an hour each. I'd try to make a conscious effort to spend double that on each mini. You'll defo be glad you did.
Hmm, an hour or so might not be far off. maybe an hour or two was what i spent. the fact these photos didn't show off all the highlighting i did makes it hard to gauge the time i spent per model. plus a demanding pregnant fiance cuts into painting time .

but given the amount of batch-work i plan to do to them still, i'd say these are at maybe....60%...or thereabouts...complete. since they're just frontline troops, i wont spend as much time on them as special characters, so their probably not going to see too much more detail. But my special characters i'd like to take more time on, just because they should stand out more.

i added a wip shot to the gallery that actually captured the highlights on the green better.

I think on your snow-bases (I assume that last shot was a "more done" version) could use a watered down light blue ink or wash to give the snow an icy look, with maybe a gloss applied afterward to give it a bit of a shine. One trick I've done for snow bases in the past is mixing a bit of fine grained sand in with the white paint, which adds quite a bit of texture to the base, but this is tricky to do and you end up sacrificing a brush to the brush gods :-)

It totally looks really good though :-)

actually to be honest, none of the bases in those pics are done yet; they're all just painted astronomican grey for the ring accent. what i'll be doing is placing a layer of pva glue, then sprinkle a couple of these "rocks" (really, its chopped up cork made to look like rocks" and one they're on there, i coat the rest of the exposed glue in army painter's Snow Flock. i let that cure, and then i put a little more glue, paricularly on top of the rocks, and put some more snow so some of the rocks look snowed over, and others are jutting out of the fresh snow. If you've seen my converted storm raven's base, you know what the effect will look like. stupidly simple, but looks nice i think, and no one else here does snow bases so it's still unique.

I did snow bases a while ago, but sold the army :-P

after buying some new greens, including the new waywatcher green glaze, i redid one of my caliban models, and i think the line highlighting turned out better. the sword was done in leachbelcher, then drybrushed necron compound, then 2 coats of waywatcher green.

pure epicness

Look'en good Mike. Like the green high lights on the armor. Maybe try putting an ink of your flavor on the eyes and a mild brown ink for the scrolls. But still looks sharp. Look forward to battling them one day.

yea, so far the eyes are just tamiya titanium gold. i'm thinking i'm going to use the new method for lenses GW posted in the new painting book and make them red; they basecoat the lens white or mythril, and then put a coat of the new red wash. i tried it on my biker command squad and it gives an interesting effect if you dont overdo the wash. it pools and dries just right so you get a natural white reflection near the top of the lens.

finished highlighting another model

I'd have to agree with Scott, moar water.

I like the scheme though.

Is that last mini still a WIP?

ScottRadom wrote:Is that last mini still a WIP?

yep. the green is...done enough for what i want. the lines are still a little thick cause im still getting used to the whole line highlighting technique, but as i do more of the army's models, they should get nicer. the purity seals need work. the bases need work. but pretty close to the level that's my goal for him and the 50 other models in that army.

oh, and after you mentioned how they didnt look highlighted at first, scott, when i redid these, i added a 2nd layer of highlighting, and that finally made it stand out. my 1st layer was too close in tone to the basecoat. now i see the reason for 2 shades of line highlighting.

here's an update of what i got done at the tournament while everyone was playing. by the time i got to the chainsword guy and the chaplain, my line highlighting was getting a bit cleaner. the bases white-washed in the photos; they're not that overly white.

i think these photos look better than the previous ones; mainly cause i didnt get right up to an inch from the model like a retard to take these shots. these are how they look from 2 feet away: