Painting Faces 2- how to paint eyes.

A little while ago, I wrote a post about painting male faces, and another about painting female faces. Both posts featured a lot of details on the faces, and they both mentioned something interesting about the way that eyes are done.

I think that makes sense, since I've done eyes a number of different ways, and I don't see anything wrong with painting them in any given way.

But there are advantages and disadvantages to the different methods. With this Reeve of Orboros, I started out by painting the eyes over a black undercoat. I simply added spots of white, painted the pupils in the center, and cleaned up the edges in black again.

This method is very useful for two main reasons. First off, it is very forgiving to paint the eyes directly over the undercoat. If you've got too much paint on your brush, or if it slips, you haven't ruined any painting you've already done on her face.

Secondly- it tends to exaggerate the size of the eyes slightly. This mini's sculpted eyes could probably stand to be painted a little smaller (and her face altogether would look more realistic). However, the size of her eyes allows her eyes to pop at greater distances. She works a little better at tabletop level because her eyes are a little too large.

There's a good step by step post of this method over at Reaper. They have some work in progress photos that should be helpful.


Well, there's nothing wrong with doing things that way, but it certainly isn't the only way that things are done. More recently, I painted up Epic Magnus' face to be more realistic in its detail work.

As you can see, the eyes are very small. Instead of painting them first, I painted them after I had worked quite a bit on the rest of the face. I had a lot of nice shading in the eye sockets, and I simply painted the eyes over the shade layer- first dark brown, then white shape of the eyes, and then black dots for the pupils.


This is trickier to do, and is a far less forgiving process. I had to get out my smallest brush to get the pupils just right. This wasn't very forgiving at all, and any slip from the brush requires a decent amount of clean up work.As you can see, his eyes aren't as large as the Reeve's. It makes him a little more of a "pick up and examine" mini, but the face also looks a little more realistic because of this.

Again, there are advantages to painting this way. I often prefer the realistic look over the exaggerated one, but ultimately, they're both quite legitimate.

These are only two methods for painting eyes. I've seen many different methods, and most of them worked rather well for something. These two are the ones I use most often, though, and I hope I've encouraged some experimentation.

Repainting miniatures

Every miniatures painter knows that there are a number of games that use miniatures that are already painted. Everything from Heroclix to AT-43 has gone in this direction.

Now, AT-43 and Confrontation minis were designed by Rackham, who have strongly advertised that their minis are 100% repaintable. But it is interesting to look at how much other pre-painted miniatures benefit from some love and care.

I have done a number of repaints from several different sources- including Monsterpocalypse and the now completely altered D&D miniatures line.

There are a few things that you will need to do differently as you approach a prepainted miniature.

First of all, the paint that is already on the miniature is pretty much impossible to remove as far as I can tell (if anyone has succeeded in getting paint off of a wizards of the coast mini, let me know).

Usually that means that the details aren't going to be as deep and defined as minis you're used to painting. That makes the most difference on the faces. It is best to approach a pre-paint's face already knowing where all the details are. Paint the eyes as if they were freehand, and add in the highlights to the places you know the highlights need to go (the cheeks, forehead, nose and area below the nose- etc.). The sculpts just aren't detailed enough to guide you through the painting.


The second problem you'll run up against is that most of the sculpts are a little less detailed than the pewter sculpts that you're used to painting. Don't let any of that stop you. There're a lot of great things you can do with pre-painted miniatures. But you have to be a little creative, and be willing to do some free-hand where the details ought to be.

For example, the simplicity of the sculpt usually means that there are broad areas that are ripe to add in some effects. Lighting effects, freehand, blood weathering and starscapes are all fair game.


Here is an example:

Starscape painting

I've had some questions recently about how I paint my starscape effects.

It is actually a fairly simple process, but it depends very much on a good eye for balance and composition.

The first thing to do is get the night sky look right. The effect won't look right if you just paint stars over black, so you have to go in there with some dark blues and violets to try and form dark clouds.

This image shows the blue/black contrast very well. I started out by painting some dark blue over parts of the black orb, and then putting some blue ink over it all before adding any of the stars.




The next big step is to add in the stars. For the most part, you only want some non-uniform tiny white dots across the sky. If you know astronomy well enough, you can throw in some constellations, but to most of us, it will look right so long as the stars don't look too balanced or too much in line.

After that, you will need to pick some things to add centers of interest. The star scape is never enough by itself.

The easiest detail to add is a bright star. Don't worry too much about realism here, what you're going for is the star that they print on Christmas cards.





You might want to consider a few other options. The Woldwyrd above has a comet on it- something very small and simple, but it gives just enough point of interest to make the starscape work.

The opposite way to go is to use the moon. A simple sphere or crescent shape isn't quite all you need. The moon in the sky is not quite all white, so the best way to treat it is to use a little off white bone or even yellow layered underneath to provide texture.

After that you paint some white over portions of the moon, giving it a strong shape.

There are a lot of places that a starscape can work, and plenty of times you won't want to use it. Try it on parts of the mini that are largely blank, and yet need to be centers of interest.






That's all of the basic techniques. From there, try experimenting with different nebulae or effects, and see what you can come up with.

Alternate Studio minis

As part of a fundraiser to help start up Tu Publishing, we painted up and auctioned off a few of our minis painted in very different color schemes.

I'm glad to say the fundraiser was a huge success, thanks to the very many people who donated through Kickstarter for making Tu Publishing a reality.

Anyway, before we shipped them out, we got a few photographs of our minis, and I'm only now getting around to posting them up.

Here they are:






As is often the case, there are some other angles available in the Garden Ninja Gallery.

Based on the Goblin Quest Books by Jim C. Hines. Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero and Goblin War are Copyright © Jim C. Hines 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 and used by permission of Jim C. Hines, www.jimchines.com

Based on the Mistborn books by Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn, Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages are copyright © Brandon Sanderson 2006, 2007, and 2008 used by permission of Brandon Sanderson, www.BrandonSanderson.com

Based on Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, www.schlockmercenary.com. Sculpted by Melissa Mayhew. Schlock Mercenary Copyright Howard Tayler 2000-2009 and used by permission of Howard Tayler.

Painting Hazard Stripes

Somewhere, towards the beginning of Game's Workshop's foray into Warhammer 40,000, or maybe from FASA's first edition of Battletech, there must have been a studio painter who really, really liked hazard stripes. As the hobby advanced, this pioneer's fetish became a standard for all around him, in ways that look rather interesting, but haven't got a whole lot to do with actual hazard safety.

I mean, do we really need to have stripes telling us that chainswords are dangerous? We don't mark out actual chainsaws that way, and for the most part those ones aren't designed with combat in mind.



Anyway, this mainstay of the hobby has endured in some form or another for the past thirty years or so, and is now a sort of 'classic' look that many painters like to employ.


My method for applying hazard stripes is fairly simple. The first thing I usually do is paint the area white.

The most obvious use of the white coat is to help the yellow show up, because no matter what brand of paint you're using, yellows are some of the hardest to get a good coat of paint on the mini with.

The other thing this allows me to do is shade and highlight the whole area with the white. This shading/highlighting helps to make the area pop and not look flat next to the rest of the mini.

I normally add the stripes onto the white before applying the yellow. The real trick to doing the stripes is to not worry too much about getting them straight the first time. Try and make them more or less even, and when you mess up a part, just remember that you can go back to it in a minute and fix it.

I often do some of my highlighting on the black before I apply yellow paint to the mini. Since you already have a good shaded white area to work from, you'll mostly want to try and get the black highlighted areas to match the white highlighted areas.

The yellow is applied with layers of thinned down yellow paint/ink. The thinning helps it keep the shading that you did with the white, even though you often have to do some of the extreme highlights over again afterward.

Almost every hazard stripe that I've painted is also quite dirty, and battle damaged. You can apply battle damage to hazard stripes the same way as anything else (and if you're damaging the mini, you need to use the same methods or it will look wonky).

As for grime, I usually like to throw on a quick glaze-thin coat of brown, gray or rust colored paint. It is best to use colors that you have on your base (so that we know where the mud has come from) and also to match any grime that you've put on the rest of the mini.

The only other thing you'll need to watch for is placement. Hazard stripes tend to be very bright focal points for the eye, so try and keep your mini balanced. I often do stripes on two opposite sides of a mini to balance it out.

Alright, now go have fun with it.

Here's something that I hadn't seen before. A new miniature for Smartmax's Mauser Earth line.

His name is Streetbot Willy. He's rather interesting mix of time periods to create a World War I style mech.

For the record, I haven't played the game at all, but this guy has got me interested. At very least, I'll be trying to get a hold of some of their other minis.

Also, check out Smartmax's victorian fantasy line Smog. There are a lot of winners in there.

Extreme Behemoth Conversion

Privateer Press' line of "Extreme Sculpts" has been pretty fantastic to us. The first one, the Dire Troll Mauler was a fantastically iconic mini that just begged to be painted and made into an army's centerpiece.

The addition of the Juggernaut extreme to the line erupted something new. This warjack featured removable everything (even the axe in his hand was a separate piece, as were his fingers). Also, around half of all Khadoran warjacks use the same hull as the Juggernaut, so with just a little conversion work, it was possible to get an extreme Destroyer, Maurader, Decimator, Kodiak and Beast 09.


Of course, if you were to do all of that, your force would dwarf any other warjacks you brought. Sure, that's ok if you're bringing Berzerkers along- they're the lightest Khadoran warjacks after all. But what about the Behemoth? It is meant to dwarf all those around it.

That is one of the reasons that a few people have created the Extreme Behemoth. I made the one featured below for a client. Using the main hull of the extreme Juggernaut, and after that, I threw in a few bits from the Behemoth (the head, arm pistons and guns on his shoulders).

There's some green stuffing I had to do to fill in the gaps, and on the pistons on the arms, there was a little extra cutting to make them fit.

The guns on his shoulders increase his size just enough that he does look right in an all extreme force. Of course, if your army isn't all about the extremes, he's still appropriately sized- just way bigger than anyone else.

Anyway, here he is:

Hordes official temporary rules available

Privateer Press have just released the official rules for Hordes Mark II.

In November and December, Privateer Press hosted a field test for the new version of Hordes. It worked kind of like an open beta test, where they periodically updated with new miniature's rules.

The current version they have up is not the finished product. Rather, it is a "hold you over" product. The rules are tournament legal until the release of Hordes Mark II officially, at which point we can expect a few changes.

So, for everyone who hasn't tried out Hordes before- check it out. The beta rules are all available for free download, and everything is looking pretty good.

For everyone who has been playing Hordes for a while, it is time to go and see what has become of your favorite warlocks. I've noticed some nice new things on Morvahna...

Privateer Press, along with the release of Warmachine MK II, have started releasing re-sculpts of their older warcasters. So far, it looks as though the first four warcasters from each of the original four factions will be getting a resculpt.

It makes sense. A lot of those older warcasters come from a time when Privateer Press hadn't pinned down the scale of the miniatures they were using. A few of those older minis looked very small next to the post scale creep minis they've released more recently.

Well, I recently got my first commission to paint one of these new minis:


I think the Butcher mini was probably the least out of scale of all of those old warcasters. He was a giant of a man, and the original sculpt made him stand out pretty well.

Now, we've got a new version of him that is noticeably larger, and far more dynamically posed. While most of the details on the armor, axe and coat have remained the same, the face stands out as a vast improvement over the original. he is far more expressive than he was.

Overall, I think that these new sculpts are a good enough excuse to release some fine miniatures. I look forward to painting some of the others.

Privateer Press' new previews

Yes, there has been a lot going on with Privateer Press lately. The company has just launched Warmachine into Mark II, it has just finished the field test to do the same for Hordes, and it has recently started replacing many of its older warjacks with plastic kits. And faction books are on the way.

But there's something else they've started doing recently. They've started previewing many of their new minis online.

For a long time, we've received previews of upcoming Warmachine books through No Quarter magazine. These have always had mixed reviews, since they would often preview so much that when the book was released, it felt like there was hardly anything new in it.

That hasn't changed. The most recent issue of No Quarter previews two new units each for the upcomming Khador and Cygnar books.

Now, they've started previewing their new models online. Now, we don't have to wait until the next No Quarter comes out to read the rules on the minis that we'll be drooling over for a month or two before they're released.

Mind, the most recent one happens to be a mini that I already have. Yep, good old Taryn di la Rovissi has been sitting in my painting box, just waiting for me to make a steampunk gunslinger character in an RPG. Well, she need wait no more.

You can find some others if you start looking around. Tabletop Gaming News has compiled cards for the previewed Rhulic warjack and Protectorate of Menoth units.

Painting with Silver Metallic Metals

One thing that people often get distraught over is how to paint realistic looking metals. Just look around on your local game night, you'll likely see more than a few people who can get everything else in their army looking great, and run into tons of trouble with the metals.

There are even a good number of people who only paint non-metallic metals because they're intimidated by metallic ones. (Yes, there are people who refuse to paint NMM for the same reason, but that's a topic for another time).

The biggest problem with metallic metals is that we see them as being different from other colors. They have their very own special section on the paint rack, and even their very own set of inks and washes.

So, the great secret to getting great looking metals is to treat them like any other color you are layering. They can be blended with other metallic colors or layered over other metallic colors in exactly the same way as your non-shiny paints.

The treads of this tank were painted first in Citidel's Tin Bitz, and then highlighted to P3 Pig Iron. Starting with Tin Bitz is a good way to get a metal with some good depth, even before adding in any washes.


Treat your Mithril Silver is like metallic white. You can do your final highlights for anything in Mithril Silver, but you really can't highlight Mithril. You can take any metallic base color, and mix it with Mithril for highlighting.

You don't really have a metallic black, but your darkest color is probably Tin Bitz. Tin Bitz works amazingly well as a base color for both silver and gold metals. For silver metals, the different color gives you a greater sense of depth to the metals that you cannot normally get from simply starting out with a darker silver metal.

Glazing is another great method to use on metals. Its best use on metallic colors is to tie your metals to the other colors on the mini. It can help keep the metallic colors from looking separate from the rest of your mini. Also, certain glazes can be great for weathering and rusting your metals.
Darius' metals were all given a strong blue wash, giving them a slightly oxidized look. Washing your metals can tie them to the colors on the rest of the mini rather well.

One quick note- you can wash, glaze or ink your metals in any color you want. You can even base your mini in non-metallic colors and highlight him with metallics. But you cannot highlight your metallic colors with non-metallic colors. Going up to something that is less shiny than the recesses never looks right.

Also, it is best to never dry-brush a metal. The method of drybrushing tends to leave the metal flakes in the paint pointed in different directions, giving you a very spotty and unrealistic look. It may seem like a lot of work at first to layer your metals, but once you get used to it, it is very simple.
Viktor Pendrak's armor has been painted using all of the techniques below. It was based in Tin Bitz, highlighted up to mithril and washed with a thin black ink and a blue ink to tie it to the blue coat better.

Stormlord Superheavy tank

This is a Stormlord tank that I recently finished for a client. As an absolutely massive mini, this tank is set to become the centerpiece for a very large force of Imperial Guardsmen.

There are a number of interesting techniques that I've employed on it, each of which warrents its own entry and tutorial. So I'll leave the instructions for later and right now just show off the tank.

Commentary is always welcome.

Avatars of War update

Felix Paniagua has given us another excellent addition to his brilliant miniatures range Avatars of War. This time it is an orc general mounted on a war boar.

Avatars of War is an absolutely fantastic range of miniatures that fit in perfectly as generals and champions for Warhammer Fantasty Battle.

They also have their own game attached to them called Arena Deathmatch. It throws all of these fine fantasy heroes into gladiatorial matches against one another. The full rulebook is available for free download, or purchase for those who'd prefer a hard copy.

The esiest way to find these great miniatures in the US is to go through the Coolminiornot.com online store.

Lightning freehand effects

This is a particular technique that I have found to be very useful. Painting lightning arc freehand.

It is far more useful a technique than I had expected. It is terribly useful for painting on Space Marine power weapons or for adding some splashy effects onto Cygnaran weapons.

Also, if the same effect were painted in orange rather than blue, it would look less like spider lightning and more like cracked earth lava effects (good for Salamanders and Balrogs).





These gun mages show the details of the lightning pretty well. You start out with a completely black area (highlighting the area up isn't really necessary, and might even conflict with the freehand if you're not careful).

First, paint on the lines of lightning with a slightly watered down turquoise. Make sure the lightning is branching out in the right directions. These lines can be a little thick, don't worry about it. For realistic lightning, remember that lightning usually branches out as it travels downward. It is best to start at the top and draw the lines down the mini.

The next step is to go over the center of the turquoise lines with mix of turquoise and white. This lighter mix should go over the center of each line, allowing the edges to still show your darker turquoise, making the lines look like they have a faint glow about them.

The final step is to simply put dots of pure white into every intersection of the lightning. Lightening up the intersections will make the whole design fill come more alive.


The process for the gun mages is almost exactly the same as the process as used on weapons. The only real difference is that the lightning should travel down the weapon from point of impact backwards. For example, lightning shoudl travel from the tip of the hammer back, or from the tip of a sword to the hilt.

Often on weapons, you're working with a smaller area, so you have to make sure that your lightning arcs out without overwelming the weapon. This isn't too difficult to do, since you can always simply clean up any troublesome lines by adding in more black.




That's about all there is to it. Happy painting.

Movie Space Marines- the story so far

A while ago, I decided that I wanted to collect and paint a Movie Space Marine force. For those of you saying "huh?" right now, Movie Marines were an unofficial force list that was included in White Dwarf 300.

The force list itself is full of satire and self awareness. We all know that Space Marines can't actually function in game the same way they do in the fluff and fiction, but it seems wrong that there's so much disparity between the unlucky terminator who is killed by a lasgun when he rolls a 1 on his save, and the terminators who can stand back to back and take on the entire Hive Fleet Behemoth by themselves. I mean, in Space Hulk, my terminators are panicking when they see one Broodlord showing up.

Anyway, the Movie Marines list represents Space Marines as action heroes from a film. Ten Space Marines gives you a 1500 point army.

So I decided that I'd like to spend as much time converting and painting ten marines as I would normally use on a 1500 point army. I've posted most of these up in other place before, so I'll start with the most recently finished marines.

I'm not quite done with them all just yet, but I'm getting close. I have three more converted Marines to paint, and one tank to go with them.

Old Witch and Scrapjack diorama

I recently had a chance to put together this diorama for a client. I really love the Old Witch character from Warmachine, and her mini does not disappoint.

Naturally, she and her scrap jack had to be pretty beat up and battle worn, or they wouldn't look right at all. In addition to the battle damage, I added some glazes made from a medium brown to dirty the bottom of the 'jack's legs and feet.

This diorama is mounted on a CD- they tend to be just the right size for dioramas like this.

Here's something strange that I got to paint recently. The mini in the center is from Reaper's Chronoscope range. Everything else is either kitbashed from my bitz box or sculpted from green/grey stuff.

The midget mad scientist was a lot of fun. I used the same techniques on the face that I normally use. There is actually a very subtle grey for a five o'clock shadow on him, even though he looks fairly clean shaven.

Aside from that, I think everything on him was painted using fairly normal methods.

Tabletop Gaming News has just announced their 2009 Editor's choice awards.

The editors over at TGN tend to have rather good taste, so if there's something on their list that you haven't heard about, it is probably worth checking out.

My favorite category is still the miniatures, where they've picked out a good number of excellent miniatures to show up. Things like the Grunt Ape from Incursion or Eurynome, Prince of the Dead from Hell Dorado.


So head on over to tabletopgamingnews.com and see what you missed in 2009.

Working within a limited pallet 2

A little while ago I posted up a Calandra mini that I painted using only five pots of paint:


There were a lot of things that I liked about painting this mini. Honestly, Calandra is ranking up with a lot of my favorite minis to date. I also loved working in the limited pallet- it gave my work a really interesting unified look without being monochromatic.

Also, I did not keep this Calandra for myself. So that means that my own Trollblood force was in need. So, armed with many good excuses, I set out to paint a second Calandra.

I did a lot to switch things up with her.

I used four of the same five colors (I switched out a brown for a cooler brown color) but overall, she's the same pallet. Overall, she looks like she has a much cooler pallet, and that comes down to the usage of colors entirely. There was a great deal more mixing of colors than in the first Calandra- her skin and tabard are both the same color mixes, simply with different amounts of red in them.

I also picked out some details with jewel effects- most of these were simply stone the first time around.

I've tried out some other limited pallet works that I'll be posting up soon. Overall, I think they've been a pretty enourmous sucess.

I don't really get to paint Lord of the Rings stuff very often. Locally, no one really plays Lord of the Rings (although there has been a little buzz about the War of the Ring version).

Painting the magma in the cracks of his skin was quite a bit of fun. I started out with a black undercoat, then put a thinned down wash of white over all of areas that I wanted to have magma in them.

After that, I did a some wet blending with the base of his fiery mohawk as the lightest point.

It really looked funny until I went back and reclaimed all of the black areas on his shoulders. A finishing touch was added with some red washes (it helped the black look a little red even).