 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video. This week we're going to do something a little different. Maybe six ish months ago I talked to you about how after Golden Demon I wasn't happy with my hobby and what I was doing and what I was focusing on and I said I was going to make a change and start painting some different things, some things that really ignited my passion. So today we're going to check in on that goal and see how I've done and look at some of the figures for both competition and display that I've been painting over the past six months. And spoilers, I've really had a great time. The strict techno mancer that is Vinci V. Let us get into the technique and learn it Vinci V's time. Now I want to start this video by saying there is absolutely nothing wrong with painting for your army, for painting tabletop figures, I still have done that a lot. In between all of these other projects I worked on lots of games workshop figures and stuff for my army. I painted a few Skaven models, I've started working on my Tron Tau, you know all sorts of fun stuff like that. There is nothing wrong with those things at all and I still have a great deal of fun doing them. But what I wasn't doing beforehand as in the lead up to Golden Demon was I wasn't focusing on art that was really pushing me, that was making me happy, that was making me feel like I was growing and pushing myself and experimenting and just making something really cool and neat and unique for me. There's nothing truly unique in the world but it was unique for me. And so that's what I've really tried to hone in on. So today we're going to look at six pieces I've sort of painted over that time that I think are worth discussing and what I learned on each one. So I hope you'll enjoy coming with me on this journey. As we kind of just look at these figures I'm going to share them with you. Some of them I've shared out on social media here or there or you've seen them in previous videos but these are some nice shots of where they currently sit after all touch-ups and everything like that. And some of these went to Nova Open as well. So really well timing here. So let's just jump into the figs. First up is this bust. And this is a cool rat person bust. It's not actually scaven because I believe it's a 3D print of a kind. A friend gave it to me, printed it out and I just really liked it. Now this showed up in my OSL Glow video. All of these will be linked up above so you can find all of those if you'd like to go back and check out the original videos these appear in if they did at all. And this guy was just a really fun time of experimenting with extremely strong cross-directional lighting, both a normal environmental light and then also pushed with a strong direct object light, even if that object's off-screen. And it was really fun to play in this space where the figure on one side of him, you know about half this figure, is lit basically in one color. It's just green and then adding the yellow in for highlight. That's really all that's happening. Even though it's so incredibly simplistic in the number of paints that were used, especially on that side of the figure where that light is dominant, it still was incredibly fun and there's a lot of nuance and challenge to it. In the strength, the intensity, where you place the highlight, how you place the shadows, it honestly made me think a lot more about how I treat lighting in general. By scaling everything back to just a single tone, a single color, in this case the green, I had to think completely and only about value. Where did every highlight go? Where did every shadow go? All of that sort of thing. And in doing so, it focused my mind in a way that I find, oftentimes I don't or we don't maybe, because we're caught up in the colors that the thing is, right? Oh, this is a red cloak and so I need to use my lighter red color and is it going to be a pink red or an orange red or whatever, right? And in fact, none of that matters. The light is all that matters. And by stripping it down to just this sort of very simplistic image of just one tone, one dominant tone down here, it took all the color concerns out and let me focus completely on the light. So I feel like I really learned a lot there and I'm going to be playing more with these sort of heavy object source lighting color palettes in the future. Actually, I want to kind of switch one where the object source is the dominant light over most of the figure and then maybe there's a soft environmental light trailing off. So look for more of that in the future. Next up was the morrigan. So this is a really, really amazing figure. Again, you can find the video linked up above. I had an absolutely incredible time with this one. I love this fig. And if you watch the video where I talked about the skin tone, you know that one of the most fun things to do here was to sort of tap into my inner frazetta and really play with how we're introducing the skin tones. Using unusual paints, using a lot of pinks, a lot of greens, and a lot of blues. And what's awesome about this is now how different it looks. I love painting skin. In fact, you're going to see an absolute theme over these six figures. I'm going to tell you that right now. I've been on a real kick recently of just playing with skin tones in every way. And I love it. And working in these soft, subtle greens down in the shadows, I see now why frazetta did this sort of thing. It adds this earthiness, this very subtle naturalistic shadow, whereas things get toward the lower part of the miniature. They just feel more dark, a bit sinister, a bit more earthy at the same time. It really works. And at the same time, managing to like sap most of the life out of her skin, making her feel very pale as though she does live underground, sort of in the shadows, in this cave, sending out her ravens and waiting for some foolish adventure to happen upon her. This was another experiment as well in the object source lighting. This was actually a motivated light, since the object is in figure, as it were, with the blue. And so I carried a lot of lessons from the previous figure over to this one. And again, it was really fun to kind of capture those small, unique movements of the light and the blue and stuff like that here. But this was really, really fun from the silk of the pink in her robe down to like capturing the light in her hair, to just playing around with really fun stone too. And of course, that skin tone. I really, really enjoyed this one. And I'm definitely going to be doing more experimentation in the future with these sorts of earthy, yellow, brown greens in the skin and really kind of see how much I can get that kind of braum, frasetta, 80s fantasy look going. Pretty jazz because I feel like I kind of, I unlocked something in my brain when I did this figure. I really want to try to replicate it in some interesting ways going forward. Next up is Morgana Lefe from Mind Works. And this was another really, really fun figure to paint. Again, I did a video on the cloak, but this one was more about experimenting with a very, what do I want to call this, almost alien skin tone because she is cast in these grays and purples. She almost doesn't feel alive, almost, but there's still a little bit of those subtle red tones in there that I think keep her looking still living and making it feeling like skin, just something perhaps otherworldly and magical. And really the fun with this one was that reflected water. So I've never done the reflected water effect before like had, we can all picture it. You're standing by a pool and it's dark or something and you get that blue sort of swirly, wavy reflection happening up on you. And I was really excited to give that a shot. I will be honest with you, I had no idea what I was doing when I started that. And so it was me just placing colors and working back and forth. And I think I came to something that I really like. And don't worry, I will try to make a video out of that in the future. The next time I sort of have an opportunity to make a figure standing by water, so we'll get there. But I will do a dedicated tutorial on it. But this one was really fun because I love crossing that alien skin, which felt so unnatural with this soft turquoise light reflection, which felt very natural, like something we've all experienced and seen and have knowledge of in the world. It somehow grounded the figure in a way that I think if she was just normal and had the skin tones and sort of look that she does, she wouldn't feel as natural. But because there's that element of her that feels completely, like, quote, unquote, realistic, I guess, I don't know, matching experiences we've all had, it somehow says it tricks your brain into going, OK, this is a real person because they're in a real environment. So I think there's more I have to think about there and things I want to experiment with in the future there. What I learned with this one is oftentimes the way that we set the base and use these other colors and tones in even minimal parts of the model can affect how we interpret the model writ large, like the whole thing. So very fun and a lot more to play with there. Next up was this girl I call her born of fire. This was another really, really, really great miniature. So this was just a ton of fun to paint. And here, as soon as I saw it in its sort of original art, which this is Night of the Zombie from Mineworks in its original art, it was very dark, very green. It was sort of like an undead necromancy kind of feel in the art. And I just didn't vibe with that. I had done some other pieces, obviously, they were very dark, they were very sort of sinister. I really wanted to hit something warm. And as I sat there and stared at the figure and just like looked at it, I literally just turned it my hand for probably a half hour an hour, just literally looking and thinking, letting some music be on in the background and really just letting my mind wander over what this figure could be. And as I did so, what I saw was the shape of her cloak just hit me like this. It looks like a flame, almost like roiling up, right? As though it's like lifted either by heat or it itself is a candle flame, just somewhat blowing in an extremely light wind. And then like, boom, all of it snapped into place right there. The soft orange light from below, the bright intense light from above, as she sort of is just kind of born out of this lava, out of this fire and just springs into existence. Almost, what is it, almost like Aphrodite or whatever rising out of the clam shell, right? I think that's what that is. I need to restudy my Greek mythology, I guess, but similar-ish thing. And I really, like, I love the dynamism of the figure because even though it's very static in its pose, it has all, like it's just a person standing there with like a slight back bend. Because of that amazing cloak, it's doing so much work to shape your perception of the figure. So with this one working with that really intense light, really intense shadows. That was actually really fun here. Not truly cast shadows because they don't have like those hard lines, but really intense shadows are something that I think we often miss when we're painting. We tend to paint our figures as though they're under like a general diffuse kind of lighting. You're outside on a cloudy-ish day. Whereas here, if you know, if you go out and it's noon and it's a bright, sunny, perfectly blue sky day, take a picture of someone standing outside like that. You'll notice that they have really strong shadows, like under their their chin and, you know, under their arms. Those are like really, really intense, strong cast shadows. And I don't tend to play with that strong of shadows very much in my painting. And I want to start an experiment with that because playing with skin and playing with lighting has really been the focus of this six months. And having those really intense, hard jumps of shadows, just almost completely devoid of light, was I think it makes the other bright parts of the figure really, really striking and kind of keeping that balance between the intense, bright light shining on her face and her shoulder and down to the gold while still letting the lower part of the figure in her abdomen and her torso show some of that, but not much and mostly get swallowed into those shadows was really a fun back and forth balancing act. I mean, I glazed back and forth and back and forth on this girl for hours, just getting the colors exactly where I want them. And I had a lot of fun doing it because every time I would notice slight changes in the way I perceived the figure and the emotion and the overall scene I was setting. So this one was just an incredible amount of fun to paint. And so I was was thrilled how this one came out. Love the lava, how it looks kind of spilling over and love the like soft orange below, not much, just enough to show that she's born a fire. Next up is Northern Wind. This is from Big Child. This is one of my favorite busts like maybe ever. I really love this thing. The only thing I ever hated about it was the she was holding like a head in her offhand. And I just I hate figures holding decapitated heads. I cannot explain why. I just I don't like a second face, especially not on a bust. Humans are naturally drawn to look at faces and eyes. And so by putting a second head on the bust, you naturally sort of detract and prevent the eye from looking where you want it to. So I got rid of that and gave her a second weapon. And I like her much better with the two weapons. This one was a chance to just paint something I really wanted to for a long time. I've looked at this figure for years and one of the pieces I always of advice I always give to people is, you know, if you've got a figure, don't hold off on painting it until you're quote unquote better. You're always going to be better. You hope, right? You hope the next day, the next month, the next year, the next five years, you're better than where you were yesterday, last month, last year, five years ago. And, you know, I say, get into it. You'll learn and I'll admit this one was one where I'm not sure I took my own advice. Most of the time I do manage to stick to that. I just paint things and and have fun with them. And I know I can always do a second one later or repaint it or whatever it's, you know, it's just paint. But this one was one where I just didn't pick up the figure because I just wasn't sure I was going to be able to do it justice in a way that I was happy with. But I finally felt in the middle of this period, it was time. It was time to do it. And I'm glad I did. I still think there's more I could have done. There's more I could do. But I learned a lot. And one of the things I was most happy with was honestly what I made a video out of. And that was the blonde hair. Blonde hair is really challenging. I've done blonde hair on plenty of figures, both display competition and tabletop before. And it's all fine. But I do feel like this one hit a new plateau. I'm really happy with how I managed to capture sort of the crown of light and the soft shadows. Just like the exact tones and paints and things that I used all seem to finally click into place for me. That and again, I think the skin and the way that that's starting to pop, like I really feel like I'm starting to get a good handle on that skin progression, that tan skin and mastering the volume overall of of how that should look as the skin and the light sort of dapples over the figure as it were, right? As it flows from the top to the bottom from the more intense areas from the higher value areas to the lower value, lower intensity areas at the bottom. So this one was a lot of fun. I, you know, I think overall it came out pretty pretty pretty darn good. And I was happy with it. And I know in a year I'm going to look back on it and think, Oh, God, I could have done so much better. And you know what, I'll buy a second one then and paint it again. And see if I can live up to my own shortcomings. This is the last guy I painted this as as I'm recording this video. You're actually going to see him in a future video. So he hasn't even actually come out yet. But this guy is going to be in on some skin tone videos and stuff like that. This was a very fun barbarian figure. This is a 3D print. And I really just wanted to, again, play with speed paints, which is actually what's used to tone this skin. Stay tuned for that one. That's going to be really exciting. And I wanted to see kind of how much I could push that barbarian, warm, ruddy, tanned, desert skin, right? To really show the full range of that color of someone, not only in a bright light, but who's regularly in that and where their skin is has really showing those rich, sepia, warm tones. And I really am happy with some of the colors and paints that I used here. I think there's going to be a banger video, so stay tuned. If you're interested in how I achieved this, like, really warm skin tone using Speed Paint 2.0 from the Army Painter, it's going to be coming up soon, and I'm really excited about it. So there you go. That's the six figures that I've six display figures slash competition figures I've done in this time. There was a lot of other stuff I painted, of course. But each of these to me represented a step on my journey. Maybe they were a plateau, maybe they weren't. I don't know. Maybe they were me reaching beyond and learning something new. But what I do know is that I had a tremendous amount of fun with each of them. And I think that what I want you to get out of this video is every so often step out of your comfort zone, paint something new, try something different, try a different scale, a different size, a different technique. Push yourself in some way and just see what happens. Not everything here worked out how I wanted. There was failures along the way. But each time I just kind of went up and over the top of it. And I think in most of them, I got them to a place where I was at least decently happy. Hey, do me a favor. Drop down below in the comments which one you liked or what you didn't like in any of them. If there's anything you thought I could have changed or you would have liked to see in these figures, I'd love to hear your feedback positive or negative. It only helps me grow and take my next step on my hobby journey. So this is your chance to give me some feedback. So pop that down there. But if you liked this, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. Don't forget we have new videos here every Saturday. If you've got any questions about any of these figs. Hey, drop that down there, too. I always answer every question asked if you want to support the channel. Not only is liking and subscribing a great way to do that, but you could take the next step through the Patreon link down below. That's focused on review and feedback and taking your own next step on your hobby journey. We'd love to have you as part of the community. As always, thank you so much for watching this. I really appreciate it. I'll see you next time.