Blog Aginor's Painting Blog

Sounds good... Right now I rely on YT and tutorials from elsewhere on the net (this site for example).
Still learning so much, I actually think my main problem is practice right now, not necessarily missing knowledge.

 

We are all in the same boat

 

Ok so here is the guy.
The base was too boring so I added some blue magic lines that are glowing in resonance with the magic energy that radiates from the Ogre.

I placed the hooves in a way so it looks like he might have broken off that part by stepping on it with his enormous weight.






Here's his base before I glued him on.


I am pretty happy with him now I think.
I didn't think that would be the case initially.
Surely not my best model but decent looking and I learned a lot at least.

Next up: Gaunt Summoner.

 

And here he is!

The Gaunt Summoner was the last of the ST enemies, I finished him in one day because I really wanted to get him done. With the techniques learned doing the other ones this one was rather easy actually.

Remarks:
The staff was done the same way as the skin of my Pink Horrors
This is the second model that has pupils in its eyes. This one has a LOT of eyes though, and some of them are pretty small. I still tried it and it worked. Not perfect but I am happy with it.
I added some green thingies to that otherwise kinda boring looking black thing his head is growing around.
The armor is again done with the same recipe as the one of the Acolytes, Tzaangors and the Ogre.
I messed up up the blending on the robe a bit. It looked cool after drybrushing the color transitions but then while I was glazing it blue my daughter spilled her milk over half of the living room so I had to intervene and while I was away some of the glaze dried and it looked really ugly. I drybrushed and glazed over the parts where it was worst and now it looks... ok at least.


...and yes I took a picture with a part of my finger on it. Again....

 

WIP, but very close to being finished: Gryph Hounds.

I bought them in March or so and they sat on my desk primed and ready for painting, now I finally had time for them.
I am happy with their paintjobs. Those three with the freehand lines on them were a challenge. They looked dire but then I corrected a bit and I think I got it right now, at least if you don't look too close.
What I am kinda unhappy about is one part of the sculpt: the feet. They look clunky and weird and not up yo GWs usual standard.
I had to paint those claws on, the model is missing the shape.
Maybe I got a bad box? Can anyone who has some of them check that please?

Anyway, more pics soon.

 

I'll take proper pictures tonight.

For now here are a few textual descriptions:

Hound 1
- Base black, drybrushed blueish grey a bit
- feathers blue drybrushed,
- crest feathers blue, highlighted light blue, then highlighted white
- claws grey
- beak grey, shaded dark, drybrushed light grey and white
- armor gold
- straps brown leather
- eyes blue

The spots are something special I read somewhere (actually might have been here in the forums): watered down (in this case dark blue paint), put a few drops of various shapes on the model, wait a few seconds, then use a dry brush to partly soak up the paint again. That leaves washed-out, irregular shapes with dark centres and brighter edges where the paint drops have already dried.
Then wash over it dark. That's it. The results resemble Leopard spots a bit, but not quite. If you want to make it more Leopard-ish, you have to break them up a bit more.


Hound 2
- Base desert yellow, shaded sepia
- feathers brown, shaded dark
- crest feathers white, shaded sepia
- claws black
- beak yellow, shaded sepia
- armor gold
- straps black leather
- eyes yellow

The freehand on this one are tiger stripes. Those - surprisingly to me - were pretty easy to paint. I just took the dark brown from the feathers again, on a very small brush, a picture of a tiger, and started. Important: Break the lines up a bit, don't draw them too continously, also add a "hook" now and then. Also important: Connect the lines of both sides on the top, but don't draw an "eel back". They have to be fairly vertical, pretty dense, and thin to look good IMO. Mine are far from perfect but I like how they turned out.

Hound 3
- Base dark brown, shaded sepia
- feathers and head desert yellow, shaded dark, drybrushed desert yellow
- claws black
- beak yellow, shaded sepia
- armor gold
- straps black leather
- eyes black

The freehand on this one is based on the "lightning" look of some official artworks and models, but I did it a bit differently.
It was made using desert yellow, painting those lines on, and then messing up so it looks poorly, then correct with the original brown color to make the lines thinner and pointy. then shade over it with sepia in the end. I overpainted some of those lines multiple times which is why they look not so good up close, but I am happy how they look from a bit of a distance.

Hound 4
- Base desert yellow, shaded sepia
- feathers and head "Greenskin" green, shaded dark, drybrushed GW moot green
- claws black
- beak yellow, shaded sepia
- armor gold
- straps black leather
- eyes black

Hound 5
- Base dark brown, shaded sepia
- feathers and head dark red, shaded dark, drybrushed brighter red
- claws black
- beak yellow, shaded sepia
- armor gold
- straps black leather
- eyes black

Hound 6
Almost exactly like Hound 4, with the following differences:
- feathers and head white, shaded sepia, drybrushed white again


The bases for all of them will receive some grass tufts and other small accessories but otherwise they are good. I want to contrast the colorful models with a kinda bleak looking base.

 

Also thanks for the comments, guys!

That was an important goal for me. I have at least a dozen more styles/colors in mind that I could try, but I think those will stay my only Gryph-Hounds for the forseeable future so I had to choose a few that IMO look good and diverse enough and are not too much work.

I have such a big backlog, I have to move on.

 

Just click the picture it should zoom in

 

Excellent work on Hounds

 

A Glaze has many uses, if you highlight a model and it starts to look "chalky" a glaze will tone it down and help unify the colours.

To tint a colour slightly or add depth or to help blend colours together, I painted a cloak red and at the bottom it was green I used a glaze to blend the colours together.

 

Ok, let's talk about glazes a bit.
A disclaimer: As I am not an experienced painter I might get some things wrong, so please, @y'all experienced guys, correct me where I am wrong.

EDIT: And while I wrote this wall of text some others already answered and posted some stuff I forgot.

So, what is a glaze?

In principle it is a wash.
It is highly transparent and like all paints it contains some sort of pigment, and some sort of carrier liquid.
In contrast to a shade it is not meant to darken the material though, although it will of course do that if you build up several layers of glaze over some bright color.
It will tint the base coat, and some glazes also cause a slight shine effect. That last effect is also the only meaningful distinction I could find between a wash and a glaze.
In general I would probably say that "wash" is the broader term, and both glazes and shades being special cases of washes, with the shades having the focus on darkening, while the glazes have the focus on just tinting and/or adding a bit of a glassy or glossy effect.

Where to get glazes?
Well, GW sells them of course. Those GW glazes are specialized, they are thin and rather shiny, and they make nice glass-like effects if you build up a few layers of them on a white base color. They are also great for tinting metallic colors without darkening them. You can see examples where I used glazes on my following models:
- I tinted a silver helmet on my Skink Chief using GW's Waywatcher Green. I also used it for my Balewind Vortex
Skink Chief
Balewind Vortex
- I used GW's Lamenter's Yellow to make the glass ball in the Skink Priest's staff yellow, and used the same technique on my Oldblood's Spear. But most importantly I used it for the Solar Engine of my Bastiladon
Bastiladon
- I used GW's Guilliman Blue to tint my Tzaangor's skin (originally grey basecoated) and for making the blue glow on my Pink Horrors' weapons.
Horror

Ok, so those are GW glazes and I am sure those exist from other companies as well. I like those a lot. What about other glazes?
Well, actually you can make your own washes to act as glazes. In principle you just thin down a paint. Some notes about that:
- dark colors won't work well. You're creating a shade. Bright will do though.
- if you use water as the carrier liquid you will get to a point where the water behaves... well, like water. Your paint will get 'uneven' and leave water stains instead tinting properly. You can't do anything about that I guess. Using distilled water might help though, I haven't tried that. Better use some other carrier, like GW's Lamian medium, or airbrush thinner. I normally use water though.
- You will notice a slight shine. I don't exactly know what causes it but heavily thinned down paints shine differently than normal paints. You can use that to your advantage of course!

The cool thing about glazes is that they can actually make things brighter. So if you ever thought: "Dammit, I have some crevices here that I want to make brighter. If there only was 'reverse-shade' that flows like shade but could help brighten them up instead of darkening them..." Glazes might help there!
I used a homemade light blue glaze on my Ogroid Thaumaturge Ogre WIP, because those sigils were too dark. Those were white, and glazed with Guilliman Blue. I wanted to brighten them up.
So (as suggested by other members) I thinned down a light blue and let it flow in. I was very sceptical first but it turned out great.

EDIT: Blending is something for which you can use both shades and glazes well. Reducing the "chalky" effect drybrushing leaves is a good example.

Ok, I think that's all I know (or think I know) about glazes.