The Rookery

[Sjeng]

Oh my! Rook, that's some serious painting skills you have! Those look amazing!! I can never understand how people can pull off all that detail and shading on such small minis...

[knightkrawler]

You basically need around 15 paints (I can give you a list if you want to)

I'd like to know what colors you (and others) use most.

To start out you need:
- a very light offwhite or pure white
- black (matte finish, e.g. Vallejo Model Color Black)
- a gray as neutral as possible, doesn't matter how light or dark; medium works best; of course it makes the most sense to buy another black and a pure white to mix neutral grays when you need them as light or dark as you need them
- a buff/bone/yellowish beige (VMC Buff or GW Ushabti Bone)
- a khaki/dark sandish kind of color
- a medium to dark neutral brown (e.g. VMC Chocolate Brown)
- a violet (not purple)
- flat yellow
- flat red
- flat blue
- flat green (grassgreen, not too yellow, not too blue)
- olive green
- a nice medium skintone (not too yellow, not too pink)
- a light seafoam green (a personal favorite of mine)
I think that's all. Of course, one or two mediums help and with a setup like that, you'll have to fill up faster. Also, this is only for the layerer. Buy glaze medium if you wanna wash, too.
I saw a youtube video from AG Productions and I've internalized this list although I have way over 200 colors now. I use as much as 30 of them and a lot of washes.
This is not only a list for the beginner who wants to try himself at painting. It's under 50 bucks for paints.
The colors on this list are, for me, also most of the paints I tend to use most often.

[StratosVX]

Thank you! That's a big help. I'm hoping to try my hand at this in the near future.

[Rook]

Wow, great to see such positive and helpful discussion on miniature painting! Keep it coming!

Watch these Warhammer TV painting tutorials. They are indeed very very good for a beginner and the result will look like slightly better than that of a beginner.
Take them with a grain of salt. You will not need 150 colors from the Citadel range. You basically need around 15 paints (I can give you a list if you want to) to start out and a color wheel and some understanding how mixing colors works.

Oh I totally agree. You could buy an entire paint range and then simply have every single colour you could ever possibly need... or make a list similar to what Knight posted and go with that. At the end of the day the videos job is to promote their niche of the hobby and to make money, so I don't begrudge them that one bit. However, you can save yourself a lot of money if you make a list of what you need, like Knightkrawler recommended (You could even just mirror his!) and then check to see if any of the companies have a 'starter' kit that fills in those needs. Sometimes that can save you some extra dollars as well.


As for my personal hobby today, I had the ironman shift (re: 12 hours) and with a baby at home it didn't leave much hobby time. Gargoyle did get cleaned up and primed, but no photos since... well... it's a Chaos Black primed Gargoyle... I think everyone here has seen one Still gotta get the paint off one more gobbo and a fimir and we'll be completely done with that stage.

I'll admit, I'm starting to get excited!

[slev]

I paint a LOT, since I also do minis gaming. I have a LOT of paints. Even with my vast selection, for any given project, there will be a half-dozen I use almost exclusively.

Realistically, you need a dozen core paints (six primary pigments and a few other useful ones), plus a few that you find you favour. You can mix most of the rest, since you won't much use them.

[knightkrawler]

As I said, you have to know your basic color theory and off you go.
You CAN mix a seafoam green or a rotting flesh kind of color into your red to lighten it up for highlights. You DON'T use white for that.

On a sidenote, THE color I use most often, is probably Vallejo Model Color Ice Yellow, cause I use it to lighten many neutral midtones to give them some warmth in the hightlights.

[Rook]

Got a bit more work done today, with the focus being on Chaos Warriors! I'm following a colour scheme close to the card art and wanted to have a heavy red to the armour, like Khornate followers if you're a Warhammer junkie. The scheme has me working up from Leadbelcher to Runefang and then dousing it with Bloodletter glaze.

Unfortunately as I'm still learning this art of miniature photography I can either produce a picture that is not visible at all, or a flash induced mess that turns my mean, nasty, Chaos Warriors into some sort of angry pink warriors... Slaanesh maybe? Regardless, they are red really, and when I figure out this photo taking thing I'll start posting better pictures.

In addition I've managed to sort through the various sets I've managed to accrue, as well as my own sets from when I was a kid, and it seems I have two sets of the Game System, Kellar's Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, Mage in the Mirror, and have everything for the Barbarian quest pack save the quest book itself and a couple of the mercenary weapons. Shouldn't be too hard to fix that up and then I can focus on the two that will be significantly more difficult, which should make for a fun adventure in and of itself!

[Redav]

Gee, they look really good.

As for the photography, flashes aren't your best friend. If you can get some good lighting (maybe try a light box?), tripod, cable release / timer and most importantly, shoot in RAW* (assuming your camera can do that), then you can correct the white balance (so that white is white - different styles of 'white' light sources vary in colour from yellow to blue etc) and you can get excellent results.

* unless you're actively interested in photography, it's hard to convince people to try this, especially if you don't have a workflow and only care about the resulting JPG's.

Keep it up, keen on seeing moar!

[The Road Warrior]

I wanted to try out the GW glazes on my Chaos Warriors but still haven't got around to buying the paint

Are you pleased with the result, even if you're not happy with how they appear in the photo?

[Rook]

I wanted to try out the GW glazes on my Chaos Warriors but still haven't got around to buying the paint

Are you pleased with the result, even if you're not happy with how they appear in the photo?

I'll admit, at first I wasn't, since the glaze is very thin. I had gotten the impression from the videos and tutorials that the red is very vibrant from one pass, and it's not. In hindsight this is actually far better, since it gives you far better control over how 'red' you want it to be, just takes a bit of getting used to. Now that I've figured it out, I really am happy with how it works and will likely pick up the other colours.

The picture this time is a lot closer to the actual colour. In this case I believe the problem is a mix of not enough lighting (1 lamp nearly 3' from the subject) and loss of detail due to the cameraman thinking he doesn't need a tripod when he obviously needs a tripod (Silly cameraman). I will have to add that to the list of things to pick up, but in the meantime I still have a lot to learn anyways and I feel like I am making some progress. I also tweaked the lighting in GIMP by manipulating the thresholds to bring the white background up to more of a white, so the colours are closer to reality, but still not right.

I'll also admit, I'm using the camera on my phone, so I'll have to see if I can borrow a real camera at some point and see if I can try everyone else's suggestions!

Additionally, finishing the 4 Chaos Warriors means I'm now a little over one quarter of the way through my first core set

And now begins the really hard question: To have them start with the Maze, or the Trial?