Hi, I am new here and new to Fantasy. I love to paint, convert and play. I recently finished my lizard men which can be seen here: http://glennsgwmodels.blogspot.com/2008 ... rdmen.html
Wow! That looks really great! Awesome colors! The Terradons you made look even better than the actual models! I'm not so keen on the Kroxigors, though. I'm curious to see what you would do with a Slann Mage-Priest...
Im watch in envy.. Wish my models was as good... How long have you been painting? Any magic tricks up your sleeve you could share with other cold blooded fellas?
I got the skulls from the skaven clan rat sprue. A friend of mine plays them and he gave me a bunch. I used them for the eagle skulls too, I just shaved the noise down into a beak. The feathers are from the Saurus banners. As far as my technique: "Selective Dry-brushing". I dryrush the main color (usually a dark green base coat, then a light green dry-brush. These layers are traditional dry-brushing, so I didn't worry about getting green in places it doesn't belong because I will be going over it later. I 'selectively' dry brushed the other parts, such as under bellies, feathers and gold. I use the term selective, because i make special effort to only get paint where I want it. First I base coat the part in question (My skinks for example would have their underbelly painted light grey, and feathers or shields would be blue-violet and and weapons or armour I used tin-bitz), then I selectively dry brush the high light (underbellies white, feathers and shields blue, weapons and armour gold). Any bones, claws or teeth I base in snakebite leather and selectively drybrushed in bleach bone. For Character and monsters, I would then pick out high lights with a mix of bleach bone and white. After that it is a simple matter of picking out details like eyes, jems, tongues, etc.
Never. I use Testors plastic cement to assemble models because it is clean and holds stronger then super glue (due to it chemically melting the pieces into one solid model). If I painted them on the sprue, the plastic cement would not work as well as paint would be over the plastic. Reason #2 why I never paint on the sprue is because each piece needs to be cut of and cleaned of excessive mold lines and flash left over from where the pieces contacted the sprue. If you paint first, you creat extra work as you will need to touch up the model once it is together. Reason #3 is because drybrushing creates shading when a model is assembled only. It is much harder to get paint in the creases of a models where things join together, and this creates the illusion of natural shadows. If one were to paint the model before assembling, this affect would be lost. So you see, it never benefits to paint before assembling. Only in rare cases, like shields that are very close to the body, do you want to only partially assembe models so that you can get into certain spots, but I usually ignore these areas because you never really see them unless you look at the model from an odd angle. The only models I have ever only partially assemble were my Eldar Jetbikes. I left the main canopy off to get under it, which was visible, but hard to get at with the canopy on. After I painted it, I had to scrap off the primer where the canopy and bike would contact so that the plastic cement would work.
Truely amazing work mate. Love how you took bits and pieces from other armies and other sprues to model your models. Painting wise i can just say....:O I'm by no means a great painter but after studying my colors for days i came up with a topic for my Lizzies and went to work. I Paint them fully in blazing orange then i drybrush a yellow color (at work and the name escaped my brain atm) but not sunburst, it's a bit darker than that. This is to get soem small highlights to knuckles arms knees aso. Tip very welcome if any other color would do this better than a yellow color. I then drybrush chaos black on the scaley part of my sauruses backs (so far only working on my sauruses) and the spikes are painted black. The tip of the spikes are painted in bleched bone. What I could really use help with is figure out an eye color that will be seen under blazing orange, and I'm also thinking if I would liek to do a different tone on the underbelly since it's a weaker part of the body. Question is which tone I'd go for to still keep the volcanic look theme i got going? And sorry for hijacking this thread mate but after watching your models I thought you could be the one to ask.
Base coating yellow to the inderbelly then drybrushing a mix of the same yellow and white could look good. As far as the eyes go, any cool color would contrast well (blue, purple or green), but to keep with the volcanic look, I'd say bright red with an orange pupil.
I'll see what i can do about the pictures sure. And I think it was golden yellow when i come to think of it (forgot to check last night since I was working late). Never took my painting to a higher level so neve been mizing colors, but I think your right about that so will try it out actually. Thanks for the tip and oh yeh I will try the red eyes but I need a really bright red. Or I coudl try basepaint white on the eyes so the color shines through better. That way i guess i could make some colors work that didn't before. But red and orange eyes i will try.