Diary of a noob painter

[Stelio]

I first encountered Citadel miniatures at age 11, back in 1989, when Rogue Trader was in the shops. I've been collecting them on and off over the next nearly-30 years, and I've built up several armies. But I've shied away from painting. Why?

• I had some initial failures, both in using the wrong paints (e.g. gouache) and bad techniques (not thinning the paints) that put me off.
• There were no tutorial videos back then, and photos with descriptions just aren't as good. My local GW didn't advertise painting lessons, that I ever noticed.
• Example painted models were intimidatingly good, which put me off since I believed I couldn't reach that level.
• Painting a model badly means a wasted model, when you're a young kid with no easy access to paint stripper.
• And later, when I could get painting lessons in a GW shop, they couldn't do spray tutorials. (Not inside for health and safety, and not out the back as that's a customer no-go area for insurance reasons.)

But as my modelling thread has shown, I've been putting a lot of effort into getting my army into a functional state and actually playing games. And I do want to paint them. Recently I've had to focus just on getting the models ready in time for whichever game is coming up, but I've finally reached a point where I have enough built and can now begin painting them. And thanks to Youtube, I've watched a range of helpful tutorials.

I've started with a test Plaguebearer model, since they've got a relatively small number of surfaces. This is one of the 2nd release (1994) metal models, and it's a testing model because it's miscast (note how the sword is abnormally short).





Lighting doesn't show the full detail, of course. Still it looks alright to me, fine for a tabletop standard, but with some flaws that I'd like to address on other models. The boils aren't right, in particular, but it'll do as a first attempt. And I think I'll do the eyes differently.

Time to get more models ready for painting...

[Dai]

Mate, you paint just fine. That PB looks great for a "Tester" and if you keep going, don't let your doubts control you, you'll see progress as you work on your army.

Keep it up! I'm excited to see what you show us!

[minamoto]

Looks like a solid paintjob.
The theme also looks convincing

[Tapeworm]

One of the things that Martijn did with his daemons that I was really impressed with (He actually owned minis and paint at one time) was paint the eyes this glowing whitish blue that really made the models pop and also unified the theme. Maybe we can get him to post an old picture of them unless all the photos have crumpled to dust . . .

[Dai]

One of the things that Martijn did with his daemons that I was really impressed with (He actually owned minis and paint at one time) was paint the eyes this glowing whitish blue that really made the models pop and also unified the theme. Maybe we can get him to post an old picture of them unless all the photos have crumpled to dust . . .

I think Squigg himself has crumbled to dust....

[minamoto]

I think I saw something like miniatures in his glass cabinet blitzing from beneath the pile of paper and dust in front of the cabinet. So he might take new pictures.