Guardian paint experiment

Added yellow to the helms and some highlighting to the left gun thats too subtle for this camera it seems

I feel dissatisfied with the yellow so I want to try some alternate shades. The white where the yellow is now wasnt my cup of tea either though.

Learning this hobby has gotten lonely and increasingly sporadic as my health fails to keep up with my ambition.

Frustration.

But hey the highlighting on that gun went ok. Some messy spots but for the most part I did what I wanted to do. Highlighted edges with a mix of the base color and ice yellow as per vince venturella’s advice for creating interesting lighter shades through paint mixing.

I feel the temptation to go full try hard and edge highlight the shit out of these guardians even though they’re disposable footsoldiers in game. I barely play the game so why should I care?

Anyways. Not in the mood to fiddle with painting tiny details today so the project can wait.

A new guardian paint scheme variant

White helmet looks fresh… the botched prime job leaves it with a gritty texture though

So I gave in and ended my hobby streak at day 47? I think? And I feel I got an admirable amount of things done for someone whose last projects were like 15 years ago. I learned things. I tried new techniques. I ended up with a handful of minis passable as ‘done’ and a bunch of WIPs.

I tended to follow a schedule that focused on paint effeciency over model completion. As in, don’t use a paint until I have multiple uses for it lined up to minimize waste. This method let me try out a variety of painting techniques in the last month. But the lack of finished products rubs me wrong. I think going forward I may have to bite the bullet and accept inefficiencies for my sanity in order to finish more minis. Which opens me up to the risk of staying on a project too long, but given my adhd approach so far I predict that going the other way with the pendulum will help me learn new lessons that help in the long run.

Wile E outta here 👋

I paint my first Eldar soul gems

My first two! On chest and hanging off the gun hose.

I pumped myself up with a bunch of tutorials and finally went for it. Darren Latham’s was the last one I used for reference before I started painting.

Honestly they came out looking so legit that the face looks like crap next to them haha I need to fix that for my pride.

Better view of gem 2. I ended up with some spill onto the metallic gem holder so I hope I can touch it up without hurting the gem 😬
Second try.

I painted two gems at a time on each which I think helped because while I layered onto one gem the other could dry.

Even got the back of the gem which was not as hard as I thought it would be 🙂
My palette

I got the orange color by mixing up bright red, ice yellow and bright yellow. I used ice yellow as the white for the brightest spots on the gems.

#hobbystreak day 49

scraped mold lines off a couple Gondor footsoldiers

Warriors Of Minas Tirith
Y’know, some of these guys

Literally I only scraped two of these guys before I tired of it and moved on. They take a surprising amount of patience. The old GW soft plastic is kindof a pain to scrape without damaging the model (hello flimsy bows and spears), plus the molds from that era seem to have a lot of misalignments in my experience where no amount of scraping can make the details on either side of the mold line line up the way they should. Not to mention how lots of the models of this time have tiny hairline fissures here and there on their surface thanks to imperfections in the molds.

So flawless seems like a long shot with these guys but when I play with them I hear the LoTR movie soundtracks, the yells of orcs and men at war, and I see the beautiful vistas of New Zealand I mean Middle Earth. And this inspires me to keep working on them, prettying them up, slow as I may go about doing so.

I’d like to see if I can fill in the hairline fissures with some gloss varnish, a product I wanted to get my hands on anyways. I want to post an update on my progress once I try that out.

#hobbystreak day 47

Trying advanced moves: edge highlighting and face painting

Now with highlights of a slightly less dark blue!

Naturally I started highlighting on the head so that my rookie mistakes could be the first thing you notice and not the brush strokes where I nailed my control.

But really it was a test to see what highlights on the top of the hood would look like and as I predicted they didn’t come out so good.

I think I did well on other parts though. Since I’m so new I need time to process whether I’ve gotten a look I like or not.

Subtle on the back here… too subtle or just right?

And now a showcase of me painting a face! To a state of somewhat doneness:

Eyeballs and all! Let’s not talk about her lack of eyebrows 🤐

Things I might update if I feel confident: her mouth region looks almost like 5 oclock shadow from how the wash pooled. Though maybe shes a dwarf woman who actually can grow a 5:00 shadow…

Progress pics:

Pre wash
Post wash
Another layer of skin tone and wash I didnt photograph progress pics of later: eye whites added

#hobbystreak day 45

Test model Guardian… feels like its missing something

Here he is, finally with a head on

I want to imagine the gun a different color. I think the gun distracts too much from the head as is in a way that clashes. And the head would be more annoying to repaint. Not that I couldnt highlight it a bit.

Added highlights to the helmet

With that change I like the helmet more but still not sold on the gun. Maybe sleeping on it will help. Got the highlight color by mixing off white into my light blue reaper paint.

#hobbystreak day 40