Hello All. I'm looking for some feedback on my painting after a long hiatus. Most recently I finished painting this Naffatun over the last week. I've posted photos of the basecoat, after wash and highlighting green, and finally after finishing. She is joined by two other similar minis which I painted sometime over the past year or two. Over the past two years I have done very little painting. What do you think? How am I doing, and where or what could I improve on? My initial thoughts were the face. The skin tone is off (this is largely due to watery paints that are just impossible to apply.. so, I figured I'd solve it later and just get this mini done). Also eyes are a weakness for me. I generally just don't paint them, but I took a go at them for the naffatun. I didnt use black as I thought i could hide my mistakes better by discreetly using a darker skin tone with a touch of white. The results are..... fine. But I'd say my eyes are drawn to that point on the mini, which is probably the weakest area. Secondly I painted the rifle without any reference, then after wards looked at good NMM on guns and understood most of my flaws. I over did it and my lines are too thick... the results are ok, but I know thats a (rather difficult for me) area I need to improve on. I wonder if it would look better just to drybrush it mostly. Feedback and especially criticism is welcome! I am trying to improve so let me know what you think and enjoy the picture show. btw apologies for the photos. I did my best with the iphone camera, but it always struggles to focus on minis.
ok there are some funny things First - Boobs - they are the only one thing on female mini that got struck by a light from the front rest is painted like the light is over the top of the dead - aka Zenithal light - you end up in my topic so you you may check up - tits cast shadows even on 32 mm minis ;) For focusing on camera - on phone select one focal point (in camera menu) and just point it on a mini - default setting is multi focus points - so camera will search for everyting beside mini - if you set one - just set it on mini and done (or set central focus and point center on mini ) Hairs .. they are hard to paint and ppl usualy ends with "spagetti " or "Wood" the thing is they are non of thous good idea is to realize they are like Silk and should be painted as sutch (unless dread locks - then go for Wood ) - so basicly hairs got this "shine" to them so you pain them like a caind of NMM in case of Femfatun mini - your lacks contrast and lacks of colour Variation (your green is green , Brown is just brown and so on when things that build interesting paint job are thous colour nuances ) if i recognise well you have used "contrast paints " or some simiar type of washes - it can be done easy with them if you wish i may elaborate more on this topic ;) o nan ye curently they will look good on table but you may always step up the quality or just learn something new
Thank you for your comments. This is very useful. I can see there is definitely something wrong with the hair , and it needs more highlights at least . I’m unhappy with that part of the mini. Your advice is good here. She has spaghetti on her head.. I’m pretty much fine with calling this mini finished but perhaps I should take one more pass to fix the boobs and hair at least. as for creating colour nuance ... it might be a bit beyond my level for now but something to consider more in the future . thanks for the advice. I always enjoy seeing your painted minis!
Colour nuance is a an easy thing as long as you realise that you may influence the look of the mini by temperature - cold and warmth colours and in this way just a dd a bit of a cold hue to all things in shadow and warm in light or in reverse - you will find in my topic on 9 page a Hanibal mini from Aristea step by step - the first picture is already made by me map of temperatures and nuances on mini - and it is made with a brush the size of half the mini. this is one of the way of doing it other usable with Contrast paints is just work with added one paint or 2 as values - one for shadows other for lights lets say we work with cold light - so blue would be added in a small amount to all washes on surfaces exposed to light and a bit of brown to all in shadow - in this way all in light will be puled toward cold and all in shadows to warmth
Update. I'll turn this thread into my general Haqqislam paint long and showcase. As always, critiques are very welcome as I stated in my first post. Tell me how I'm doing. Here is a ghulam doctor I've been working on. Bad lighting today because of rainy weather every day. I added a highlight to her coat and some other green areas which you can see in the last 2 photos. Just need to finish the glasses, black areas, and the base.
And here I will add this poorly lit group shot of my work in progress. Having a lot of fun painting these. Some of them were started over a year ago, which is why I titled this thread the return to bourak. It's a true homecoming to the hobby of painting.
Looking at your ghulam doctor, I'd say you got layering and shading down. You can try to work on transitioning colours between the layers. For example the top and bottom of her boobs need an in between tone so the transition isn't so stark. You can achieve this by either layering or wet blending. I've been trying to work on wet blending skills myself on my last two models. Your model will look good on the table. If you want you can add some edge highlights to make it "pop". It all depends on how much time you're willing to put into it.
Yes, exactly. I am kind of afraid of blending because I think I will mess it up. And you can see from my first post of the naffatun that the boob armor is a specific point I tried to improve on. Step by step haha. also not sure how many layers I feel like painting. Like you said, it depends how much time you feel like spending and I already spent way too much time. But thank you for your feed back, that's something I can try to achieve next time. As for edge highlighting, I do usually do this. I have edge highlighted the green areas, but didnt push it to pure white or ivory because I was happy with how it looked. It doesn't show up well in the photos however, and you may have a point and I should push it further. Maybe you will see that on the black areas when I get around to finishing her. Thanks for your feedback, It helps me know what I need to work on.
I know what you mean by highlighting. I don't highlight to white either and often what looks nice in real life doesn't look as good in photos.
Minor Update. I finished the good doctor this afternoon. I personally feel that this is my best miniature to date, which is always a good sign of progress. I had some trouble getting the glasses to look good. Probably better to do dark green base, and yellow on top, but whatever happened, it ended up looking decent so I'll leave it. I also couldn't stand to look at the weird eyes and shiny skin on my naffatun, so I touched her up. The skin is now matte and smoother looking. Her eyes were redone completely, though in the photo I can see that I should reduce the black area somewhat, unless I want her to look cyberpunk goth I guess.
@Law Dawg Yeah, I know what you mean. It looks like dark make up, and makes it easier to see. I might leave it as is.
for blicks on glases - mix yellow with green - and then make a spot then just white - do not mix white in to green this ends with bad milky hue
@maru Thank you. That is exactly what happened . I ended up washing it with yellow. It looks fine but not as I hoped . Not too many minis with green glasses though so not sure I’ll get a chance again.
I've slowly been working away at the Tuareg Hacker. Here I have finished the base coat, and just applied a sepia wash. I love this wash for Haqqislam. I apply the wash over the entire model (typically) and it really unifies the colours, as well as adding a first step of shading depth as expected. From here I will add some more shading, and begin highlighting, and any final details. Until this point, I guess I have spent about 2 hours. And to finish the model, I believe I will spend another 2 to 3 hours. How does that compare to you?
