I am always a little disappointed by close up pictures of my figure models. I use an 'impressionist' style of painting which is designed to make the miniatures look good as a unit on the wargame table. The unrelenting eye of a Nikon macro lens tends to make them look a mess, like observing an impressionist painting from two feet away.
The Heavy Metal painting technique is designed for photography. Funnily enough these models never look to me so good on the table top. Too much detail and too many colours make them look 'toylike'. It is just a personal taste thing. I could not paint to Heavy Metal standard anyway so I suppose the popint is of academin interest - but I am a retired academic.
I am also mildly colour blind. I am the guy who painted the Pink Tyrannids from the Lambshead Nebula in the last Cyphus Caine novel. I thought they were Purple!
I am very sensitive to shade and tone, however, so I suspect that also affects my painting.
John
I've noted the same thing you did about the Heavy Metal paint style. Great in pics, but not terribly realistic looking otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI'd not worry too much about the color blindness. I had a friend who as truly and completely color blind. He would bring newly painted marines over to games nights and they would look... special?
info on color blindness here - Colour Blindness
ReplyDeleteThese look great! Did you do the conversion work? Looks like they are base on WHFB Ogers?
ReplyDeleteAs for the painting, I think they look great but very few miniatures can handle the high res digital photos. I make sure that any picture of my figures get cropped and then the image size reduce to about 800x800. This give the look of the figure at about arms length, which is where my stuff looks the best.
To my eye one of the things that can really hurt a good paint job is the basing. The goblin green bases remind me of some of the plastic tiy soldiers. You might want to consider a change in you basing to more of a earth tone color scheme and see how that changes your impression of the models. It can make a huge difference.
" am always a little disappointed by close up pictures of my figure models. I use an 'impressionist' style of painting which is designed to make the miniatures look good as a unit on the wargame table."
ReplyDeleteWhat you need to do is blend your colours. You have the basics of painting down. Your skin, for example, has harsh lines. Up close, these will be glaring. From 120cm away, these are fine.
Wet-blend. Don't drybrush, anything, and your painting will improve immensely!
But good work on the Ogryns regardless, bravo!
To the Drunken Samurai, those are Forgeworld Vraks Ogres http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/renogs.htm
Thanks for the comments guys. I have been diagnosed as red and green blind at various times. I was born that way. It manifests as an inability to distinguish between pink-brown-green, purple-blue, green-blue and so on.
ReplyDeleteI am very sensitive to shade. I can see very well in the dark if there any light at all. I lead people around in dim lighting.
I painted a Foundry Tarzan with pink hair (looked brown to me) and I have painted green horses.
Red/green X chromosome colour blindness is found above average among natives of the British Isles. Evolution has probably fixed it in the male population at a few percent because it is an advantage for a hunting group to have a colour-blind member. You don't 'see' camofluage colours so you see outlines instead. It works for tanks as well!
John
Wow, these guys look top notch. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteI have the exact same problem with my painting vs. photography, for the exact same reason. The difference between a couple of feet and a couple of inches is amazing.
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed with people who wet-colour blend. It gives superb results. However, I doubt that I have the patience to use it for my armies.
ReplyDeleteThe 'impressionist' rough brush method looks really quite good on a wargame table.
I think that I will have to look at my basing. I am still doing it the same way as 20 yrs ago but my colours on the figures are much toned down.
John
Drunken Samurai
ReplyDeleteI have tried a darker base colour. You are right - it looks better and suits the Siege of Vrak. I will post them once we have enough sun for me to take photo.
John