painting - how to get it wrong

OK, this one is tough for me.  I have to show you my worst piece of painting ever.. Not that my usual painting is all that.
So, without further ado, here it is..

Pretty bad huh?
So what went wrong?

Bad undercoat.
Paints too thin
Badly posed (for painting purposes)
Should have been painted before being glued together.
Missed areas
Paint where it shouldn't be.






Is there anything else?  Could there be anything else?
Lets break this down..

Undercoat.  I have struggled for some time with white spray undercoats.  I'm fine with black, goes on fine, but white?  Shake it as much as I like, whatever brand, whatever temperature, it just goes on gritty and not smoothly.  This model was one of a batch that I did as a last attempt.  I should have stripped it but I didn't.  I've since started hand undercoating using Foundation paints as I don't like to undercoat in black as I can't see the detail.  I've also found that a wash applied afterwards counteracts much of the problems that arise from such a poor undercoat.
The roughness of the finish is murder on your brushes, and makes it difficult to control where the paint goes, especially if you..

Make your paints too thin.  Had a brain storm, decided really thin paints were the way to go.  Which maybe it might be in the right conditions, but with this rough finish the paints just get pulled all over the shop I think via capillary action or something similar.  Check out the paint from the hood on his face and the big line across his chest.  Again a pre-wash would have limited this problem, but never the less it was rather stupid and naive of me.

Badly Posed.  Well, I don't mind the pose really, but it makes it almost impossible to get every surface covered in paint.
Check out the crook of his bent arm.. There's a bloody great white patch, and trust me, there's more of it than you can see here, some form the arm, some from the torso, so multiple colours will be required.  We might have a view in form here but getting a brush in there?  it might be possible to get it all covered, but make a good neat job of it?  I'm not so sure.

Which means it would have been much better to have painted this model before I put it together.  My impatience has cost me again.  I rarely pre-paint and I really aught to, it can pay dividends.  The alternative is to find a pose that isn't going to cause you problems, but do give it some consideration before you apply the glue.
The base would have been much easier to make a good job of if I'd painted it before glueing the figure on, with the fallen statue facing the Executioner it's going to be a 'right laugh' getting any detail painted on it.  Might have to leave it as base coat and wash.

Missed areas.  This is just plain sloppy on my part.  If I have an excuse it's the poor light I work in most of the time.  Poor lighting is unhelpful with any of the issues I've had with this figure so do ensure you have plenty of lighting, daylight bulbs if you can.

Paint where it shouldn't be.  Again, this is just me being sloppy.  Mostly this will be easy to tidy up, but is just another example of things to get wrong.  Don't paint when you're tired, be careful and steady handed.  Odd misplaced spots are not unusual, but can be avoided.  Luckily they can also be easily covered, especially if you're using foundation paints that cover so well.

I think it's going to be tough to turn this into anything other than a poor figure, but I'll post my efforts once done.

(previously published elsewhere November 2011)

more painting and initial liquid green stuff thoughts

A little more painting done last night and my first use of Games Workshop's Liquid Green Stuff.

Elbow gap

First the LGS.
I had, as mentioned previously, stuck the arm on Santiago but the glue had left a gap.

Filled

It was my intent to fill this gap using LGS.  So I popped the lid on the bottle, selected a brush - Nylon bristled - and painted green stuff into the crack.


Worked  a treat, how simple.  Any excess was easily wiped away and the result seems quite neat, although there's still a little extra on there that I will have to trim off later I think, in the crease on the left hand side as you look at it.

Wash brush thoroughly after use, it's easy to do, comes off nearly as easily as paint, but I wouldn't use my best brushes for it.

The proof will be in the painting I think, so no formal conlcusion, but until then a big thumbs up.


On to painting then.  I did not finish off the Sorrows, which I aught really to have done, but decided to partly move on to something new from the Neverborn and partly make some further progress with models that were half done or less from my Guild collection.

Candy, Austringer & terrible Executioner

Here then is a picture of how the 3 relevant figures were when I thought I'd finished last night, as you can see the Executioner was simply awful, I was aware that he was in trouble but not quite how bad things were until I took and viewed this photo.  Just about everything you can do wrong with a figure I'd done wrong here.  I've decided to dedicate an entire blog post as a lesson to those that listen.  As I hope you can see here though, I've started to tidy things up where I can.

Candy, Austringer & still terrible but improving? Executioner

The work on the Guild models last night consisted in applying a wash of Devlan Mud on the Austringers bird.  On the Executioner I finished off his claws/ backpack and pipes, applied a dry brush of Gretchin Green on the base before tidying up the statue and applying a Devlan Mud wash to the statue.

The work on Candy was entirely on the base, I decided to complete the base before taking on Candy herself hoping, by dividing it this way, to keep it to two smaller projects to concentrate on and complete, rather than getting bogged down in too much at once.

Candy with base near complete.

Firstly I applied some Liquid Green Stuff arounf the edge of the base insert to fill the gap, this worked nicely but I should probably have been more patient and applied a second layer before painting.

The stonework and sewage were treated the same way as the sorrows, though it looks like a re-visit with the wash on the sewage might be required.

The Ironwork I treated a little differently.  The phones flash has, to some extent, washed out the detail and shading.  I went for a brighter finish this time.  Boltgun Metal base, then Shining  Gold was over-brushed onto parts of the flat surfaces very lightly.  I did not apply the black wash this time though I think maybe I should have.  The 'decoration' on the pipe was painted with Shining Gold.  Burning orange was applied to certain areas to represent rust and then the whole thing was washed with Gryphone Sepia.  As gaming quality was the aim I think this will suffice.  If I was aiming for better I would have applied some highlights along the edges of further Boltgun Metal and applied a black wash before the rust and Sepia wash.  Need to apply highlights to the stonework, then I'm ready to go to work on Candy.

I look forwad to cpmpleting Candy.  The Executioner will be a pain in the neck.  Look for a specific post shortly.

(Originally painted elsewhere November 2011)