Blog Togetic's Beginner Bin

[Togetic]

I picked up my first set of paints and Seraphon about a week ago and i've been learning the ropes with some contrast paints and metallics since then, this is mostly just showing off some of my progress so far. They're not great, but I think they're bordering on passable so far.
Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/8DlyOYU

My first paintjob, terradon turqoise for the skin with templar black over the scales, skeleton horde for the teeth/horns, bloodangel red for the shield, and Nazdreg Yellow with retributor armor over the top for the gold parts. Kind of a mess, but i'm more or less happy with him for the first mini i've ever painted.

A very WIP cold one rider, using the same paints as the saurus warrior. The rider torso isn't currently stuck to the legs, and the legs aren't attached to the cold one saddle either. I just like having the indiviual parts there for painting without getting fiddly around everything.


That's all so far, i'm not happy with progress on the cold one rider but I feel like i'm getting a handle on the paints so far. I'd like to get some more and hone my skills a little before I try other models, especially the carnosaur and it's rider, but I think i'm getting the hang of it. Any criticism or tips is appreciated!

 

[Killer Angel]

They are very similar to my first models, back to aeons ago, so the nostalgia effect kicks in for me.

 

[bOdziO Wolf]

I like the dark saurus color you gave him and I think with some edge highlights on the scales he will get more aggressive look. You need a non-contrast paint for that.
As for gold. Buy the cheapest bronze paint you find and paint with that first. Then you can put one or two layers of gold paint. This will fix the undiluted paint look on your gold parts of the model.

Cheers!

 

[Aginor]

Those contrast paints really help new painters to make early results not look flat.

Not a bad start at all!

 

[Togetic]

I like the dark saurus color you gave him and I think with some edge highlights on the scales he will get more aggressive look. You need a non-contrast paint for that.

Thanks for the tips! I've seen people mixing contrast paint with their undercoat/basecoat with contrast paints to make highlights, do you think that would work here?

 

[Togetic]

Bit of a double post, but I bought a very strange looking skink priest kitbashed from the Oracle parts on Ebay a few weeks ago, and finally got it today. I filled in the patchy gold plating, and the bits they missed with airbrushing the base (The gold looks a lot smoother and less gaudy in person, i swear!), so i'm hopeful I can do something to make it look nice. Ideally i'd like to go for a bit of a light red paint scheme with it, but i'm not totally confident on the colours i'd need to apply to get the thing i'm looking for- something like this maybe?

I'm also a little inspired by seeing someone here place the spit of a troglodon at the end of the diviniation rod to make it look like a magical sword, so I might snip the orb and stick it to the bottom of the hand instead of the top to make room for trying that.

 

[Killer Angel]

Is that a bag? what's inside?
Christmas presents? a skaven for the high priest of Sotek?

 

[Togetic]

Is that a bag? what's inside?
Christmas presents? a skaven for the high priest of Sotek?

It is a sack! I have no idea why the person that made him put it there, but it sort of looks like he's winding up to hit it with that little mace, so my wager is that it's a skaven that's about to get what's coming to it

 

[bOdziO Wolf]

Thanks for the tips! I've seen people mixing contrast paint with their undercoat/basecoat with contrast paints to make highlights, do you think that would work here?

@Itepixcauh has a very nice set of reference videos on Space Marines showing how to use regular paints to beef up contrasts:
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/itepixcauh-skinks.17670/page-22

 

[Itepixcauh]

@Itepixcauh has a very nice set of reference videos on Space Marines showing how to use regular paints to beef up contrasts:
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/itepixcauh-skinks.17670/page-22

Thanks!

I started a kind of experiment/challenge to try the new paints and to see how far I could go with them.

I'm having an amazing time and im also falling in love with those paints. You can go and check my channel, I have a lot of tutorials (Contrast and regular)

www.youtube.com/juanhidalgominiatures

 

[Cageyblood]

You’re already a better painter than I was when I was at your level of experience. Really superb start, looking forward to seeing your progress moving forward.

 

[Togetic]

A couple updates since i've gotten confident enough to start on tackling some of the projects i've wanted to touch, named the carnosaur and that skink priest.

I'm happy with the red coat so far, there's little elements i need to touch up still but I think it's mostly good? The tail was an attempt to wet blend yellow with the body red, but it didn't really work out like i'd intended and looks a little bit patchy. I also swapped the mace into being the bottom of a bif flaming sword, which I made with the nullification rod + troglodon spit. I haven't attached or painted it yet because i still want to get better at wet blending enough for the fire effect to work, though.

Spoiler: Skink priest

My carnosaur i'm also sort of happy with, although since I just painted on the primer I think it made it a little patchy too. It also needs some minor sprucing, but i'm planning on trying some drybrushing with a darker blue over the back spines in a pattern. I pretty much just followed this video, down to the colour scheme, because i thought it looked pretty nice.

I also gave it the troglodon tail, because I liked it too much to use the more boring carnosaur one. I guess i'm sort of accidentally building up a sotek inspired set so far?

Spoiler: Carnosaur

I got my hands on some ripperdactyls too, sadly missing the blot toad, so i'm happy to be progressing my collection there. I think i'll have to hold off on them until I'm better at dry brushing, though, since they're a lot more reliant on patterns. Thanks for all the tips and links, they've been a lot of help!

 

[Crowsfoot]

Those contrast paints do make it easier for beginners, I wish they were around when I first started.

When you get confident with drybrushing you will see a massive improvement on how your models look.

Great start keep the pics coming.

 

[Togetic]

I never got around to updating this thread with all the stuff i've been trying lately, but I ended up finishing the little skink, complete with a fire sword made out of Troglodon spit. It's a little wonky since it was my first attempt at blending, but i'm happy with it and him as a whole.

The actual game of AoS has always been a little out of my league with how large scale it is, but with Seraphon warbands in warcry and how much I enjoyed kitbashing this little guy, it's encouraged me to maybe take a look at that side of things, once covid restrictions are a little better. At the very least i'm wanting to find more fun little skink kitbashes to make a warband, even if i never play with one- i'm definitely open to suggestions, if anyone has some!

Spoiler: Skink priest

 

[Togetic]

Continuing both conversions (kitbashes?) and sort of an eye to a warcry warband, I got curious about how the Master of Skies parts would fit onto a normal skink, and despite their scale difference it actually fit in a pretty cool way, a real Oracle vibe to it.

Not enteirly convinced my painting was that good here, I think grey might've been better than flack black, or that I should do a red drybrysh on the scales. I'm also not as into the agrax wash over the gold, especially the mask, it feels like it's not making it look a little textured like I hoped and is more lumpy looking, but overall I like that the model came out decently.

Spoiler: Skink Alpha

 

[Togetic]

A bit of a break from seraphon for the moment, I ended up nabbing the Ynnari triumvate for christmas for myself with an eye to conversions (maybe to use in aos, maybe just for fun). This one is the Visarch with the head of a Black Ark Fleetmaster, though he's only about 80% done and mostly stuck together with tack here (skin is very hard! Scales are clearly the superior thing) but I think i'm even a little more proud of him than I am with the fire skink I started my conversion journey with

Spoiler: Visarch?

[/SPOILER="Visarch?"]

 

[Lizards of Renown]

Great work @Togetic keep going!

 

[Togetic]

I've been playing around with these two for a while, but I think i finally settled on what I want to do with them in the broad strokes (though not entierly sure whether the Spite on the arm fits as much as i thought). An Eternity Warden made out of a ton of saurus parts and a Blood Bowl saurus, and a Wanderer Prince cobbled together from a Wild Rider and a handful of dark elf and eldar bits.

Spoiler: A twosome

Great work @Togetic keep going!

Thank you! The resources and encouragement have been really helpful in getting more into it and improving.

 

[Togetic]

Had a very stressful week with some medical stuff from people close to me, very lucky they're coming out of it entierly ok, but I ended up doing a lot of worry-modeling to calm down that i'm pretty happy with.

Still looking to Warcry, i threw some fun spin on the shoot'n'bolt skinks that dominate lists there and solidified the theme i'm going for with them (more war-like, with blue chaff and red twin-tailed heroes/alphas). If skinks now have little merchant enclaves in free cities, they've got to be spending their money on something- i'd say some sweet new gear sounds like as good a use of it as any (plus i had a bunch of handbows and swords leftover from some other projects anyway).

The Starseer i've had sitting around for a year but his resin nature made it difficult to bother putting him together (so much superglue!) though i'm insanely happy with how he turned out. Since taking this picture i snipped a little bit of tail off of another skink to split his at the end, which turned out pretty good too, and washed the bottom silver with a heavy agrax tint to make it fit the theme.. The eyes and crystal ball are both done in Turbodork's Ground is Lava colourshift paint, so the red shifts depending on where the light is hitting it- something very hard to show off in recordings and images, but that gives a mystical feel in person.

Spoiler: Another twosome

This guy's cloak is aethermatic blue with the spikier part as terradon turqoise, the same colour scheme as the basic skinks above. I think that works to tie them together?

 

[Togetic]

Not a lot of progress lately, and most of it on some other non-seraphon stuff i'm not super close to done with, but i've been making a Skink Alpha for those handbow skinks and doubling down on the pirate feel for them (though making an eyepatch was sadly above my paygrade). Definitely needs some work smoothing it down (mould lines on skinks are awful!) but i'm happy with the vibe i've got going for him. A mix of Dark Eldar Kabalite, Terradon rider, Black Ark Corsair on top of the skink body.

Kep'ten, scourge of the seas, absolute authority onboard the Bloodied Fang, and big fan of this whole "piracy" thing he's heard so much about

Spoiler: Kep'ten