Chest of Colors forum

Its been a couple of months since my last post, my free time was a little limited until recently. Anywhoo I thought I'd post my latest mini, one of my favourite minis, Skarsnik and Gobbla. I dont know why but I love goblins, so much more zanny and fun than other characters

Again its not the best of paint jobs, I know there is still much room for improvement, but I'd love any feedback, advice, critisim you guys could give.

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First of all I think the photos are too dark.

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Better?

I think it's a very good paintjob which would only benefit from a little bit more highlighting. For example Gobbla seems to be shaded but lacks highlights. Don't you agree, guys?

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It looks really well. Very clean painting.
Gobbla looks great - I like the scales, tongue and the skin. The eyes could be more visible.
Skarsnik`s gold is my favourite part, but the purple rags could get more contrast with high lights.

I agree with sea-man, the model is neatly painted and is done well however the bright red overpowers the purple of skarsnik so the focus is primarily on Gobbla, i think perhaps some sort of white and black checkered patterning might help bring him back into equal focus?

I'm with Mahon here. More highlighting would really improve this piece. The horns on Skarsnik look a bit rushed. They might have looked better if you had painted them in a similar style to Gobbla's scales.

Ughh I didnt realise until this morning, but Skarsnik is supposed to have a little sickle strapped to his back, you may have noticed the little slot hole on his back in the chainmail. Mines still in a draw unpainted, I had forgot all about it

mahon wrote:First of all I think the photos are too dark.

I think it's a very good paintjob which would only benefit from a little bit more highlighting. For example Gobbla seems to be shaded but lacks highlights. Don't you agree, guys?

I'm not to sure why they came out so dark, I bought a small light tent especially for photographing, and have 2 halogen, and a standard desk lamp illuminating it, maybe its something to do with the camera settings, I'll have to experiement.

As for highlights, your photo looks way better Mahon, I'll have a go at touching up the mini later on today (Now I wish I hadn't been so keen to glue it to the base last night).

czlowiek.morze wrote:It looks really well. Very clean painting.
Gobbla looks great - I like the scales, tongue and the skin. The eyes could be more visible.
Skarsnik`s gold is my favourite part, but the purple rags could get more contrast with high lights.

I actually really struggled with the eyes, the eye sockets are deceptively deep and narrow, and I had great trouble getting the brush down their without making a big mess around the eye socket. I think if I was going to do this again, I'd probabablly do the eyes first.

As for the purple, I agree it didnt come out quite as I imagined. My original intention was to paint his robes black like a typical night gobbo, however most of the best blacks I have seen painted, use a hint of colour to highlight with, rather than grey. I went for purple, and I think I went a bit overboard with it, before I knew it he was wearing purple robes

arctica wrote:I agree with sea-man, the model is neatly painted and is done well however the bright red overpowers the purple of skarsnik so the focus is primarily on Gobbla, i think perhaps some sort of white and black checkered patterning might help bring him back into equal focus?

How do you mean? Do you mean in isolated areas, like Orc models tend to be painted with checkered shoulder pads sometimes? I had actually thought about adding a yellow flame theme to his robes. It seems to be a common theme by painters on this mini, around the base of the robe and the rim of his hood. It sounds a little horrible, but when done properly it actually looks very nice, however I'm not to confident with my free hand yet, and didnt want to risk butchering it.

ToMaZ wrote:I'm with Mahon here. More highlighting would really improve this piece. The horns on Skarsnik look a bit rushed. They might have looked better if you had painted them in a similar style to Gobbla's scales.

I noticed that my self, I was quite happy with how Gobblas turned out, but Skarsniks look a little sloppy even though they were done in the same way. I think because I painted them about a week apart I must have missed somthing without realising it. I think maybe a touch of off white feathered at the tips would even things out?

when it comes to contrasts, shading and highlighting one universal rule remains true:
paint it until you think it looks OK, and then paint a bit more. somehow usually one has to overdo it and then it looks better. Probably because the author is so used to the way the model looks and has seen it since the stage when it was totally flat, that any degree of highlighting looks OK. but usually it's still not enough...

are you planning to work more on the Skarsnik or are you moving forward to the next one?

When i mentioned some sort of patterning, notice on a lot of the goblin images they always have a checkered or flame (as you suggested) patterning on the edges of their clothes, whether it's the sleeves, hoods or bottoms etc. It helps define their small proportions and generally brightens the model up a bit. But i also agree very much with Mahon and i've sort of pushed my style to his advice about contrast to pushing it to the far extremes of dark and light to give a certain effect. It does help when taking photos too as a model with subdued highlights can more easily look flat when a photo is taken. Just something to bear in mind ^^

arctica wrote:But i also agree very much with Mahon and i've sort of pushed my style to his advice about contrast to pushing it to the far extremes of dark and light to give a certain effect.

And it worked, didn't it?
Everybody says your painting is oh so nice now ^^