Painting Timeline

 Despite being into minis games for somewhere around 6 or 7 years, I only properly started enjoying painting within the last 18 months. So as you can imagine, I started putting in a lot more effort and my results became considerably better. So the blog has some more content on its first day, here is a little timeline of some of my painting to give you an idea of how I've improved over time.

Below is a selection of models that I would consider to be representative of my best painting at any particular time.

 

 

Starting off above, we have Lenny from Malifaux on the left. He was essentially the first model I ever painted. Technically as a kid I painted some models, we used to get the Lord of the Rings magazine, and I had some 40k models too but I never really painted properly. Looking back, I don't think I did too terrible of a job considering what I was working with. At this point I painted with -- and I am not making this up -- unthinned acrylics for traditional canvas painting. As you can tell, there is no shading or highlighting (except by accident - the lighter streaks ont he shorts are simply where I didn't get solid coverage of the paint). And if you're wondering what's up with the white pig and log, well they're supposed to be marble. I wanted to do sort of vaporwave inspired gremlins with the pink and blue colour scheme along with marble and checquered patterns. I think the freehand on the shirt and floor were pretty decent but by gum trying marble on my first mini was... ambitious. While the pink & blue colour scheme and the tiled bases remained throughout my Malifaux career, the marble was never attempted again.

We then move on, on the right we have Stoker from Guild Ball. He was still painted in the era where I didn't really try to shade or highlight anything and used non-model paints, and I really consider him a good example of my best at that point because of the fire and his cape (not pictured). The cape is fur, and I had a go at washing and drybrushing it, and likewise with the fire. Again, given the tools I was working with I think he looks okay.

 

 

 

Moving onto some more Guild Ballers, we jump forwards a few years and in the centre above we have Seasoned Brisket. Her team is still my favourite to play, and was at the time my favourite to paint. I sort of went into a trance and hyperfocused, painting the entire team of eight members in a weekend which was unprecedented for me at the time. By this time I had begun to use model paints, and after impulse buying a bottle of Army Painter Soft Tone, I had started to shade things (the way I shaded at this point was pretty much to slather the model in the stuff... to be fair to Army Painter Soft Tone that works pretty well about three quarters of the time).

On the left in this image is Rage, also from Guild Ball. I was very proud of getting the fine detail onto the buttons, hat band, and cigar without spilling over, and I felt that generally it was quite good. I was also highlighting some things at this point - you may be able to see the little shine I added to his boots. I think this was about when I started to genuinely become proud of my painting and yeah, despite having improved a lot since then, the models I painted contemporaneously are still models I am happy with and would put on the table without feeling bad about my efforts.

And we come to a more recent model still - a Stormcast Eternals Sequitor. The thing that I think is really impressive about these models is that they almost telegraph how to paint them well. They're big for the scale, with a lot of nice large flat surfaces where you can practise getting an even smooth finish, and lots of creases and folds and sharp edges for edge highlighting. I was definitely into painting recreationally at this point, and props to Games Workshop for helping me get there. There's a reason that I think they push Stormcasts as a new player friendly army and it's partly because of the models being inviting to paint.

That's the end of the timeline I originally made when I first finished that Sequitor, but that was about a year ago now. I've improved a lot since then and wanted to share one last model to show what I now consider the peak of my skills.

This is my Astreia Solbright, a quite recently finished model. I've been playing with blending, and I couldn't be happier with this model. It's really been a trip learning a lot of techniques that I used on her, and I can't wait to use them more!