 Hello everybody and welcome to another PMP end of month review. Why what is this? Well, this is the painters motivating painters end of month review painters motivating painters is our Facebook hobby group and Every month we encourage folks to post one no more than one Submission into this if they like and then at the end of the month I will review it and offer feedback as always. I ask that you provide Some detail as to what you're looking for So, please do be specific as to how I can help you take your next step on your hobby journey So that's what we're gonna be doing today. We're gonna be looking through everything for the April event So obviously this has been a this is a busy month. This is the busiest month ever We're approaching the limit of what I can review in a month and still remain sane There was more than 80 submissions this month Just to do the math for you there if I spent two minutes a piece on each of them That would mean that I would be here for about three hours So I do I will have to be quick with this and as always there is a video I will link down below where I go into greater detail Sometimes I might just direct you a particular hobby cheating videos or stuff like that I do want to give everybody their time, but you know, there's only so much feedback I can give before my brain melts out of my ears That being said I am excited. There's some really really great stuff this month. So I'm looking forward to it So if you want to join us on your hobby journey, why look down below? There's a link to the PMP go ahead and click that You do have to answer all three questions all of them if you don't answer all of them You don't get approved to get in it's really that simple So with that being said, oh, and I'd like just to close that out We'd love to have you along whether you're just starting out or whether you're a longtime master You're more than welcome here Everybody has their own place on their hobby journey and the ultimate purpose and goal of this community Is to just help everyone take their next step whatever that may be okay So with that let's get into it start off with Benjamin here first series display piece feedback on his overall color composition As well as his non metallic gold Yeah, so I think overall your color composition is fine. It's a little bit intense with the purple That's the main problem more purple needs to be up top So like I would have changed these straps to actually be this same purple you have a really intense Color here that isn't balanced on the miniature up high. That's probably your biggest problem The contrast is in general pretty good like when I look at the skin I see lots of nice shadows across the piece everything's looking like it's contrasting how it should the non-metallic runs from black to white I can see the soft tones in the skin. So I think that looks pretty nice The now on the gold non-metallic metal, yeah, it's probably the part that's a little too flat Your steel non-metallic metal solid, but the gold non-metallic metal needs to run a little higher more contrast more Number one value. So oh shorthand for this One two three four five. I'm just defining general color segments one being the brightest three being your mid-tone five being the deepest So when I say you need more one, I mean more highlight if I say any more five you need more shadow And in general, I think you could use a little bit of both here Especially light catches and light dots things like that on the gold the silver you pushed a lot better You used a lot of blue interference color on there, which I think is fine I think that looks interesting it sets the blades apart from the armor as the armor is a much more soft And subtle De-saturated blue so but yeah, I think the gold is where you've got your opportunity for improvement It needs to push higher into the contrast, but overall this is good you may want to think about working some other colors into your skin tone on on a Manager like this pushing pinks and purples and things like that into orkskin will often make them feel Little more alive as we would recognize it. So there you go, but great stuff Okay, next up we've got Cal who brings us Eliminators from his Raven guard chapter going for a camo pattern. Yeah, I think overall the camo pattern works well I like the little splotches. I think it's really good if you're going for a tabletop standard here I think you've certainly achieved that. I think they look nice You could push the the reflectiveness on the goggles a little more and have some little little brighter light catches up in the corner To kind of show the reflectiveness of them. I think actually the thing that jumps out to me the most is on the snow It looks a little gloopy sill. I would go back and check out A hobby cheating like 92 whatever realistic snow bases to 91 or 92 somewhere in that area Because it'll help your snow stop from just looking like that gloopy pace that's kind of put down and then Why is there a bunch of snow here and no snow right next to it? That just doesn't tend to be how snow actually works So I would say give a look at that but on the whole I think these guys look good. Well done Okay, next up Abel don't know if you already posted this one You did not trying hard to challenge yourself in practicing down metallic metal and limiting is your color choices. Sure So composition and that so the first thing that jumps out of me is I think the Actually want to go to this picture because I think this is really nice This will let us have more conversation. So the The sword is good. We need to smooth out some of that check out maybe my painting smooth white video I think that might help you out a little In general looks like some of the paint got a little dry here in some places where it feels like things got chalky And it's usually where whites involved see me. I want to look into something like a white ink So the silver sort of reflectiveness. I think works mostly fine where you have it I think you do need some darker colors and like the moon symbol on his helmet and stuff like that I think your biggest opportunity really is with the gold non-metallic metal here. It's more just yellow We don't have enough one and two at all. So there's really not enough Highlights, there's not enough of that being captured There's also in most places not enough shadow So you're really operating almost completely in the three and four range here and non-metallic has to run the full Contrast just like you did on the sword here, right? You need to really pop those highlights Make sure you have those beams of light every shape has a different way that light is going to catch on it And so you just want to break it down to its constituent shapes Is it a cylinder? Is it a globe? Is it a square or flat panel, you know, whatever it happens to be? That will sort of guide you as to how you want to create those those highlights on there So that would be my biggest piece of advice for you to push is more tunnel variation in that metal Bring it up to a higher value contrast Okay, next up Apollo who did Darren Latham's masterclass and basically he's Looking for some color Translation and basing feedback. So sure So I think you did fine. It's on Darren's thing. There is a big problem though with your base So let's talk about basing. I'm a fan of a big base One thing you generally want to avoid is a base that is as tall as the mini And this is pretty darn close like if it wasn't for this thing over his back the actual big problem though with the base is this This is no good Because this as a lot of yellow yellow has a high Lumosity and this is way brighter than anything on your miniature Just let's all do an experiment together relax your eyes. Look at this mini Don't focus on anything. Just let your eyes go go slack and sort of, you know Unfocused. What's the only thing you see for me? It's this Okay, that's a problem. We can't even see the figure anymore. This this figure would be ten times stronger if this was just mud Okay So it's okay to use some some bright colors and goopy stuff in the base But then you need to make sure that you're still drawing attention up here And this is just so much of this like if you had a thin crack of it running along the side here and maybe dripping down And then maybe you had another a couple of bits up on these skulls up here So we had a nice compositional line running through the piece Great, we'd be a plus, you know, I mean then we'd be aces But as it stands that that just takes away from it now as to the figure itself I think you did a very nice job of translating and following along with Darren there I think you could push the highlights on the greens a little more Especially up by the helmet So if you watch Darren really focuses in on that single eye and on this area here Because he really does want to make sure that the attention is drawn up there And right now you were able to get the highlights higher on the feet than on the head And the reason that was that because you had an edge there and you edge highlighted it So now again, we're drawing attention away from the face where we want to and into the The lower legs. So that's kind of my quick thoughts, you know, pop up the head. Honestly, I would You know, like the base of the base at this point So it is what it is But for the future avoid stuff like this where you have this super bright thing drawing attention away from your mini Okay, next up Kyle didn't notice until I took the pictures of the chest seems more pink than red Sure. So so basically skin tone and the hair. Yeah, let's start with the hair That's actually the easy one. So it's You want to focus in more on still creating the light striations of the hair like Hair has a halo hair has light in certain places. You've still highlighted this quite evenly throughout Okay, and you want like this should be more in shadow. This should be a super popped highlight There should be a highlight here where it's cascading over shoulders And then on some of these edge pieces where it's popping way up kind of a light lying across here as well Go look at like a v-dalsis soon or a panting hair dye bottle And look at how they construct the highlights and the shadows on there where they take a picture of a model in perfect Lighting conditions and then photoshop it to to even you know, perfect all of that That's what you you're you're trying to aim at those are like perfect lighting conditions And they give you really good guides as to what it should be Now as to the skin the you know, the reason that it Um That it feels more pink is because you did work like you definitely you clearly have a slightly different blend up on the The top here, but also it's because you you So breasts aren't orbs that just stick out like they don't have a shadow line right here like that That's so deep at the top of the The breast right this is this goes out smoothly Um, like there there's a there's a shadow up here by the collar bone Generally because your your chest will kind of fall in under your collar bone, which protrudes So but you don't want to make a line all the way around it should kind of start here and come down right In the center of the torso. This should be more of a smooth out You can have a little bit shadow push towards the edge where the the Where the chest itself is falling away right like that is to say under around the rib cage But it shouldn't be one there and I think the addition of the extra red and stuff you put in there for that shadow is what's causing that So, yeah, those would be my couple pieces of advice for you. Kyle. I hope that helps Okay, next up So this is uh benji and he wanted to know Said he was inspired by the aerangels. I did well. Thank you very much. It's very nice But he's looking for something a little more realistic and he he wants to see some vibrancy Sure. So, you know, I know somebody mentioned blood effects. I'll be honest I'm not down with blood effects. I mean, you can if you want, but they should be pretty minimal The reason you have a lack of vibrancy here is because we have a Everything is desaturated. The blue is highly desaturated. The green is highly desaturated. Everything is desaturated So that's fine. Um Honestly, the the right answer here is probably what I did which is to add a little bit of some orange here Like your flames are white. You you use the same flame pattern I did just making those actually a sort of orange yellow flame would add a little bit of kick back in And just kind of scattering a little bit of those pieces around they could be minimal like in the little You know, we're re recessed almost flame pieces little licking flame pieces holes of the armor here stuff like that Just a little pop colors like that. I don't otherwise desaturated many spaced evenly around can do a huge amount of work Now as to here One of the things you can do with the face as well to add more Pop to it is more color like we don't have enough color in there the the addition of purple to the lip is good but again reds and pinks around the nose around the the The ears, you know up here in the top of the the eyebrows anywhere where there would be a lot of blood Okay, you have a little bit of like this desaturated red here push that more into like almost a Pink color honestly Same with under the eyes by the way Because wherever there's sort of these capillaries close to the surface even if the orc himself doesn't actually have red blood Which who knows whether he does or doesn't He can if you want use your orc the The reality is it'll it'll make it feel more Alive and it'll make the face feel more vibrant with those kind of colors in there So I hope that helps overall. They're looking really cool. I love the the super desaturated like almost denim blue. I think looks good All right, uh, jeffrey bryant, uh, basically it was looking for something that didn't lack tonal variation is chibi Areas for improvement you wanted to look at the uh flesh tones And Yeah, and started looking for feedback on the green because it doesn't come off as cold So let's talk about this Uh, so your areas where you still need to push your tonal variation, especially on a chibi is in the hair Um hair needs to again see previous comments about looking at a pantene bottle with chibis You just want to make it look like that it needs to come up to like white basically at the highest highlight with a chibi um And so there should be like a light halo here running down both sides of her part and then probably You know near that on the sides like where the where the curve out is going Now white is the green feel warm because you added yellow Right and yellow is a warm color Uh, and so you've you've went for that now if you were if you want to go to a cold green Add like a white gray or a white blue or something like that and turn it into a more mint green Mint green is perceived as very cold. You could also use like maggot white from reaper or something Which is a slightly green infused. You could use duck egg green from uh belay ho game model air, sorry You know all those sorts of things, but that that's why it felt more warm now that being said I actually like it feeling more warm I don't that was me telling you how you'd make a uh a cold green, but I actually think it looks nice Uh with the warm green you you created sort of circles of alternating color I wouldn't change it it it's better like this than it would be if it was cold To be completely honest So to me, I think that's that's good as to the skin tone You do want to still push some more of that especially around the face The cheeks have no color in them like again chivis need to be everything times 10 You know where you're really really expressing all the color. So I would look at Making sure that you have You know like some red and pink tones in the cheeks Some more colors in and around the eyes like right now. It's kind of brown But where's my purples? Where's my more reds? Where's my uh magenta's and stuff like that? That's what I want to see in there. So that would be my advice Okay, next up a con said uh, this is uh honorable mention and he didn't get to get feedback from the judges and So he thought hey, why not? Uh, okay, cool Sure Uh, yeah, so I think the piece is uh really nice Um, so my my best advice for it is one I feel like the feet and this is going to sound crazy because I always talk about this But I feel like the feet are a little too dirty Because this is supposed to be really big Like in scale this thing is actually Huge like it's standing across a four lane highway The amount of dirt that's up on it that's coming up onto it is actually a bit extreme by the standards of especially if it's walking on Concrete I understand there's dirt around it. I can see the dirt on the side of the road But it's kind of not like it almost feels like you the dirt's blown up too high Now the other thing I'll say is that it just doesn't have enough pop and contrast. It's rather flat So like the tonal variation is lacking in places where we could be doing more interesting things Like these vents where I you know darkness in between darker in between the lines of the vents Brighter edges on the edge of the vents lighter edges here Um, you know this big gun it has like it feels like the gun shouldn't been this Whatever this barrel is could be a different tone or color than the rest of the body Right, so we want to make sure that we're uh that we're creating Visual interest across the piece where I have a reason to keep moving The other thing I would say is you could go a little farther with weathering scratching stuff like that to make it a little More interesting if this thing is that dirty and you also seem to be doing some oxidation on the copper Then you probably want to uh also then have some more chips or scratches Or streaking even or something like that you've got some I can see some rub around the edges and things like that You could go a little farther and especially with things like big machines streaking is usually a good call because if this thing's walking around It's probably in the same position most of the time like it's flat like this So right water would collect and then run down it. So that's what I would really recommend Okay, all right All right, so uh Derek, uh working on his non-metallic metal and his flesh tones Uh, yeah, so let's take a look So I feel like the Well, let's start with the flesh tones. That's the easy one We definitely need more tonal variation on the flesh tones like the flesh tones are still very flat More reds more purples more highlights like we're basically in a two three and that's it. There's no fours There's no fives. I don't have enough pink the lips don't stand out enough the You know the eyelids and under the eyes and around the side of the head under the hair All that sort of stuff. So if you go watch, you know, any of the recent flesh videos I've done like how to paint ready flesh or pale flesh or all that kind of stuff You'll see what I'm talking about as far as that goes. So just in general We need a lot more color and life in the skin tone now onto the metal so the general contrast is correct and So what I want to actually direct you to here is where we need to to work is in reflective shadows, so Nometallic metal doesn't just go one two three four five. So let's we're just gonna because it's the easiest thing to do Let's look at her like her chest here and her knees Okay, so you did it on this knee where you have like your light and then it goes down into Uh dark and then we've got this light here again at the bottom Looks here too, but we didn't do it up here Nor do we do it on the side of the arm Or in these other places where we go into deep shadow So that would be the first thing I would say is it looks like you captured it a little but whenever you You know, there's there's secondary reflections on most shapes Cylinders and globes, especially right? So or spheres as it were So you definitely want to make sure you're you're pushing into that area Now beyond that thing that jumped out at me. I think uh, you know in general, this is a very cold non-metallic gold, which I think is fine Uh, I would still probably smooth some of those blends down a little bit You know some glazing of your three over all the tones would kind of help to draw it together a little bit Uh, and then from there the only thing you'd want to think about is is light catches whether or not you want off light shadows, uh, so like or sorry not off light shadows like shadow based off Let me see if I can explain this Uh, within the shadows there can be flicks and catches of light It's basically the idea if you go look at um Darren Latham's blog and look up his non-metallic metal when he painted sanguinius or whatever Uh, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. He has a whole article on non-metallic metal that I Still reference to this day and consider one of the gold standards Uh, uh, okay, uh of how to paint non-metallic. So uh, go and check that out, but overall this is really good I mean, I think you're definitely in the right space. You're most of the shapes look like they're highlighted correctly So now it's just a matter of continuing to push and refine Okay, next up, uh, alexand, uh, alexandru Uh, a few hours of painting, uh, interested in The overall look at the eyes. Uh, okay So yeah, I mean one of the reasons with the eyes is we don't we need it to be darker around the eye itself And brighter in the center So when you want a glowing eye go back and watch my glowing eye tutorial The key is to go from bright to mid to very dark To a faded mid right now overall though for you know, a couple hours. I think this guy's fine It's fun cool snake good edges. He's got patterns I mean your obvious place where you could go is the bones could have a little more Texture and visual interest going on right now. They're kind of flat and just bone colored Yeah, so that's what jumps out of me. I hope that helps Okay, uh Johnny back with a trader guard missing something with the mud dirt Yeah, I think the mud dirt just feels too samey is basically my answer there Um, everything in here is kind of all just in each other's business So some separation of elements in some places, especially on the guys where I know you want them to be dirty and kind of You know in the muck and mire But the individual elements that aren't dirty like their helmets in their face And this should still be more darkly separated with shadowed and light transitions You want like light lines against dark against light and that kind of thing Within the mud itself, uh, I mean, I think it looks good like a bunch of mud But you could go farther with some other color tones in there things like that. So, you know having Uh, a little more of like Reds and purples and greens mixed in there a little more. I think would help also mixing up Even some more smaller grit texture. I really like these large chunks You're using but having a little bit of like smaller grit almost like a sand grit more scattered in Might also help to include, you know, sort of make you a little more comfortable with the feeling there. So Hope that helps Okay, uh, next up Damian, uh, basically looking for feedback on the skin weapons in the overall color scheme Sure. So we'll talk about the skin first. Uh, so I think with the skin It's I'm fine with this as an alternate color take, but we're not really painting skin So like it's still too monochromatic Skin needs to have a pretty wide variation of color. It's not reflective metal But it's not far off because skin has a natural sheen to it And tends to have a lot of different Hughes so it has it needs to have a tonal variation of of hue as well as value In other words many colors as well as dark to light And you know with with this kind of like purple scheme here going up into this And a blue or whatever you need a more shapely defined the muscles And you got a question like how to draw them together Well, like up top you have you go to your three or your two And then there's still ones out on the tops of the individual muscles So you have to run the whole sort of gamut Um Yeah, I would I would really what's lacking here is we don't have enough Sort of two or one at all and our transition into the five goes like three five. It's very Sudden of a jump So working it through where you're bringing in more subtle soft shadows and then working up highlights and honestly I would just use a Pale flesh tone or a sunny skin tone or something like that as your highlight color In the purple like you can still keep it purple just mix that into the purple to create more highlights. Okay Now as to the weapons, uh, I think they're fine I think overall you'd probably want to get these are very rough weapons these things to paint these corn weapons But overall I would recommend, you know, you want to like define the images a little bit more Make sure they're a little more clean as far as like what's an edge make sure your edges are more sharply highlighted Make sure there's more clearly defined shadows Just go and look at the all the videos I have on like working with true metallic metal and that's I'm gonna be your guide there, but you want that to be more clean more more easily readable to the eye. So There you go. Hope that helps Okay, uh Matus, let's go with that Uh, okay, uh, he says I'm a beginner one mini fully painted in several in basic I was trying to paint the skin but failed so decided to make a dirty look Sure So I appreciate the black and whites by the way my my best advice is don't worry too much I mean if this is your first fully painted mini you you're welcome to the beginning of your journey. You've got so much to learn Um, yeah, I mean what I would focus on at this point. Yes, there certainly needs to be more tonal variation But honestly, I'll tell you one thing I would I would honestly grab figures with more definition because you will learn volumes better when you're working with better sculpts That's just the reality like Worse sculpts and worse like grabbing something like green army men or something like that Which is what this is sort of the equivalent of It's just it's gonna be hard because they're so squishy and squishy and lacking in proper detail It becomes very hard to actually make them look good Uh, so my best advice for you is to honestly just keep Painting work on your brush control. It looks like you you're pretty clean Which is good. If you can stay clean right now You have good, you know, you have that kind of control over placing your paint where you want it. So I think that's a great start Um, where you want to go is largely in working with blending and how you get your Your highlights and shadows mixed together. So my big challenge for you would be, you know, work on Continuing to refine your brush control and doing that through blending Uh, you don't have to go spend a ton of money on figures, but even just grabbing like some old Ebayed, you know, plastic sculpts that are pretty nice that you can get usually in bulk from something like a gw line Or anybody like that frankly doesn't have to be gw, but you know something like that You can often find people selling off just like big lots of kind of unwanted older sculpts That are no longer in the game pretty cheap. That would be my recommendation for you because Uh, just having the crispness of detail there is really going to be a big help. So I hope that helps All right, Dan, uh, largest most complicated mini he's attempted Uh, okay, and uh general feedback on areas where he can improve sure Uh So let's I want to touch on one of his last comments I also wanted to muddy his feet, but I was worried I would spoil it Don't ever be worried. You'll spoil it by making it more realistic like that You can use pigment use a little wash just do a little stippling You can be super light super thin and you can make it happen So and then you can slowly build up to like real paint and mud around the very bottom You can't ruin anything. Okay, it's paint. If you don't like it You just paint back over that area real quick It will only take a few minutes. It feels like it would take longer than it does But that's because you're looking back at the whole Project of how long it took you to do the whole thing and not at the Three minutes you spent on, you know, that the you would spend fixing one foot, right Now at any rate onto this, uh, sure. I think overall it, uh works well You know things that I would push on is things like the snail shell could have a little more texture and a little more variation I like some of the shadow it can go farther. I think the purple works really well I like some of your shadows in the purple. I think that looks nice with the sort of pink tones added in I like, uh, I like corticulus on back. I think he looks nice in that purple tone So I think that looks really good The bright yellow nurgling I'm not too sure about. I think I would have brought him into the same green as everything else There the the bright yellow is basically that nurgling and then the two eyes of the snail And it's kind of too attention grabbing as like I said earlier in this Yellow is a really really powerful color if you're going to use it. It needs to be balanced So for example, if you were going to do that with the yellow Then like corticulus his eye should have been yellow and this thing back here should have been yellow That way I had lots of reason to move my eye across the move my eyes across the miniature like this He would have created a nice line for me, right? But as it stands now, this is very distracting So Overall think about things like texture on stuff like the leather that he's on Maybe on the shell where you can use like some hashing Type of stuff just like you know quickly hashing with your brush to add a little bit of extra life and interest But on the whole of this is good. I think this is really nice Uh, keep pushing the contrast keep taking it up higher and uh, yeah, you're doing great All right, uh andy, uh third miniature overall a lot of people who are just starting out. That's great. Uh Last time you said you needed the army and more shadows the non-metallic steel sword needed more mid-tones Uh, okay, sure So let's take a look. So, um Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is pretty solid You see, you know the blue is a nice color to work with I feel like you've got some good variation here Uh, yeah, when we look at the black and white, I think that looks really nice I think we could push a little bit more shadow here on the rear side of the leg But I mean this is like little minor quibbles I could have here and there For the most part, I think this is a good marine if you're not going into like a non-metallic marine And you want them to be kind of a flat color. I think you're in the right place here Uh, the red feels a little flat. So much like last time, you know, your blue is good But then it's you've got the red of the gun and the red of the line on his helmet and that doesn't have the same pop Uh, now as the sword again, we could still go farther with it That definitely needs more one and two. It's way too much like three four five right now It needs to go much much farther on pushing the highlights And frankly, I would say the same with the the gold by the way on the Aegis and the little Bejangly jangly on his belt and such Um, he's a little reliquary or whatever Uh, all of those things feel like they could they need to come up more ones and twos. That's where you need to be going Uh, and and learning exactly that light placement having that stuff is good that you're you're starting out with really tough stuff So, um, it's good. I mean, you'll you'll you'll learn a lot which is helpful Okay Next up pauli, uh, many where he decided to push as much as he's able verge applying the last step Where can he improve his contrast? Sure? So I saw all the blood on these guys and on the we'll see what he's looking at here Hold on get to this There you go. So this is his other stuff I will just say this is too much blood. I get what you're going for with the viscera, but This would be better off as like light spatter up on the shields than is these actual streaks Personal taste. It's just you're undoing so much work with that and making it so much the central thesis of the the mini Uh, it it overwhelms the paint job. Now, let's get back to this dude Uh, so here, uh So first things first, uh, I think your skin is good, uh It could go a little farther. We could basically through smoothing adding a little more soft tones in there in like a sort of Red purple color just some very supple glazes to kind of bring some of those shadows and mid tones together Some of the lines, especially like here and in here are a little harsh Um, the tattoo if you're going to do this kind of a tattoo, it shouldn't be black It should be more blue. You want to glaze flesh tones over it and um You you want it to be very clean. So you're going to need like flow improver or inks or stuff like that to really do tattoos I have a video on tattoos as well as a video on painting sharp thin lines Go check those out. You want to go back in with your flesh tones and clean those up afterward now as to the The rest of it. I mean, I think it's fine Uh, but that's you know where where I would push the you said to kind of where could you push the contrast? Um, I think for the most part this is a very contrasting figure I actually think that the the challenge here has to do with kind of separation of elements a little more His helmet feels like we could have a little more separation like when you do this glowing I think there should still be a black ring or something dark not really black but you know black line Like there should still be something dark here Around it and then the glow should come out of it. I know it's counterintuitive But we only really see bright set against dark Okay, so that kind of thing Here on the edge of this where I can still see this like strong You know sort of line right here. This should that kind of thing getting cleaned up That's the stuff that jumps out at me. So almost more just like paint cleanliness and cleaning up more than anything else Uh, but yeah, hope that helps All right, uh, one Francisco Gonzalez Hidalgo the best name in the pmp Uh, he painted this at golden demon level would look at like a critique Is if you found it at golden demon or another painting competition. Sure. So I've looked at this fig quite a bit One since you you shared it And I've already studied this thing quite a bit. So I'm gonna I'm gonna point out the areas that I think you want to you want to watch out and improve on Um, I am not a golden demon judge and I often get judged harshly I've won a couple literally two and uh, you know, so there are many out there who are better judges than me But I will I will give you my best on an honest answer Overall, I think this is really strong work Where we've got opportunities is in two chief areas. I noticed the first is just overall smoothness golden demon really respects sort of technical proficiency and Uh, and appropriate application of paint technical proficiency more than anything else More than any other competition. I've been at so like with something like golden demon You want to make sure that every that these blends are as creamy smooth as they can be And some of them still look a little rough, right? So just some additional glazing and stuff like that would probably help The the the white like light catches I think is cool But again, you want to make sure that they're either thinner or sharp and like well applied The but the other that probably wouldn't be as big a deal. The thing that actually jumps out of me the most is this Where you use like a sepia wash or something or a contrast paint or something of that nature And it just looks like brown. I mean this just looks dirty. It doesn't look like a shadow to the white And it looks like there's mud trapped down in the cloak here. So more White to smooth this over And then see where your freehand line is. I've gotten busted on this one before This needs to be cleaned back up with white if you do freehand lines They have to be as though you drew them with an ink pen They need to be razor sharp So you want to come back in after you've done the line as clean as you can And then you want to clean that back up from the other side with the white So there you go. Overall, I think this is really really really good work. Okay. I think you did a great job with this Uh, so just keep pushing man. I think this is really wonderful. This gorgeous gorgeous job. I really dig it Uh, okay Jamie uh first bust going for all around basic competence on each surface Aiming for fairly standard realistic skin tones. Sure So the thing that jumps out at me the most with this bust is like I like your skin I like the addition of the colors. There's good lots of good reds and purples in there. So that's that's perfectly fine Um, the stuff that jumps out to me as as needing improvement has to do with the leather and the hair When you're dealing with a bust of this size again My constant advice on on busts is go as far as you think you should and then go twice as far as that Okay, so get to the end of your rope Stop and then do that in the exact same amount of time again And that exact same amount of time again is there for adding detail when we blow the scale up this large Like, okay. I am the same size as her right now. Wait, hold on. Where's she at? There she is. She's right there. God. It's really hard doing reverse Her head is like the same size as mine Right so You like this is the scale you're operating at and the leather is rather flat It doesn't have like if you want realism, then we need texture edges Torns like that's old worn very torn leather. So we need to see lots more like Hashing scratching edging all that kind of stuff on there The hair is again like very much in this massive scale So I need more more control over light and shadows of where the reflection points are Lighting of the individual strands shadowing of the in between the individual strands lots of stuff like that Uh, it's always just more the almost always the answer to what do I need to do with this bust? The answer is just more more of everything right more push of the contrast more push of the texture of that kind of thing What I will say is I do really like the skin. I think you did a really great job on it You caught the lights really well. Um, I think that looks really really nice, which is a great great great Um, uh victory on a bust of this size Okay, uh jack current tabletop standard for his elite units looking for any standout weaknesses Um, I mean if you're looking for like a tabletop standard because that's kind of what you said you were aiming at I'll be honest with you The only thing that jumped out at me was stuff like his back You know, you could go back in and give that kind of a very light dry brush with a soft makeup brush Especially around here to really pop out and catch those edges You want to use you want to use something real real soft There you go. There's my makeup brush like this Okay, you can order a bunch of these in big packs online cheap and uh, like this is so baby soft because it's meant for like You know, it's meant for for your face and around your eyes and stuff So it's the bristles need to be like really really soft You get a little over this you wipe most of the paint off like almost all the paint off And then you just lightly go over the back if I was going for tabletop That's the kind of thing I'd want to do those kind of little pop elements. I think really help Same with the The the crystals on the rock maybe you could draw a little more shadow down in there could be as simple as just drawing maybe a little like Deep brown into the lower part of the crystalline parts So that way they seem a little more reflective But I think that'd be basically my main advice going for tabletop overall I think this is a perfectly great scheme and I think you're hitting a great effect for for tabletop standard So I hope that helps Mark tan had fun painting this pox walker Find it really hard to have the brightest highlights in the face and reflect colors in more area of the model. Okay sure so my best advice here looking at this guy Is you can you can cheat in a couple ways to get that attention up on the face So you want the attention up here, but it doesn't have to you don't have to always do that through just the face But the number one way you would do it is by darkening everything else not brightening Remember there's two ways to make something stand out a white dot on a white Sheet of paper does not stand out a white dot on a black sheet of paper You you can see it immediately. Okay, or perhaps more more eloquently a white dot on an ivory sheet of paper It doesn't stand out, right So the point being is that if you shadowed more around the side of the cheek the back of the head and this guy is all sorts of really bruised flesh so bring in some more deep purple And bring that in around the wounds, especially down below on the body here on the side of the head Here on the back toward the disease, right Shadow more like you can push the bone striations darker here And then pop the highlights up more here on the edges If all of this was brighter and darker if this had more contrast and there was more shadow here What are we left with as the brightest spot? Tada, all right, and we have this nice little frame of all these bones to draw us into it So, uh, that would be my best advice for you now. I want to spin around to the leather here I'm sure this because you think this was a great piece Oh, there you go. I guess that's my leather. I thought I had one of the gun more directly or whatever, but we don't Okay, that's fine. I think you did a good job. That's the the take home. I think the leather works Okay, I think you got some nice edges there You could maybe do one more very soft glaze overall of it to kind of tie it a little more together But for the most part, it's great Okay, uh, Sean Paint and cover this guy to see how good you could make something also wanted to add in some color to it So what what he's looking for feedback on are the shadows done? Well, is the model looking like it had seen combat and do the colors work? Well, sure Well, it's kind of hard to me to tell to be honest for some reason. I think Sean it compressed your pictures So just a couple things. I'll say what I can say. It's like it just I don't know why it's and I don't think if I I can try to make it bigger No, no did it do a little okay Now that's about as big as I can get it Oh my gosh Okay, maybe it's catching up All right, so I it clearly compressed your image, but I'll do my best sir um, I think that the Again, so we've I like dirty feet, but this is a little too far up You want to focus more on the foot area? It shouldn't go all the way up to the knees Like put that into scale. I know you said you want this guy to feel like he's in battle That's fine. It shouldn't be uniformly like this add some extra like spots and stipples of dirt And you'll get you'll go a lot farther. Okay Same thing here. Um, go watch like the battle damage video would be my best advice like I have a video on doing battle damage And I think that will help you, you know capture those scuffs and stuff like that um Beyond that, I think that when you know when it comes to like the actual shadows I think the shades are fine. I think some of the elements need a little more highlighting Again, it's a little hard for me to tell but things that pop out like this blue Could actually pop up to slightly lighter color on the edge Um, just so that these things are very far away from where they might be normally Uh, where they're very much in the way of light and very far away from where dirt would normally gather So stuff like that, uh, but yeah, I think overall it's good. He does look dirty. I think it's nice Uh, yeah, I think just it's I'm a little limited on what I can do because unfortunately, I think Facebook got you there by Giving you real small pictures So but hopefully that helps Sean. Okay, and we're back to normal side All right. Tomas, uh, muted almost monochromatic rusty scheme. Uh, very vibrant demonic manifestations. Sure uh So And he's not sure if it really happened So my answer is remember what I said earlier about making sure the elements are separated That's very much the case here a lot of this is very much flowing together Right like the different elements like look at how similar the hand is to the gun to the skull To the leg to the belly to everything and that's Fine if something's all sort of rusted together, but it makes the figure very hard to read. Okay Now if you're going for really bright stuff, we need more than just this Like you said that and I looked and I was like I had to look at this thing Like twice to know what you were even talking about because there's there's like three tentacles on this guy that are bright So if we're going to do that, we got to pick bigger elements and pop them out, right? Um, and and we've got to fade everything else into a more muted scheme and really make sure the lines are well separated So like everything here needs to be have these dark lines between it We need to have highlights here on the edge still like it's actually much harder to paint Good dirty than it is to make good clean because you have to paint it to a high standard clean first and then dirty it Now that all being said, uh, I would look at I think the scheme will work fine I think you just want to focus on what are the elements you're popping out It needs to be more than like three bright green tentacles on the side Right, so figure out if you want to do maybe some bright corrosion or rust Maybe these horns could be in a bright color, right because they're kind of all over But again cleaning stuff up There's too much places where it's just like the wash is all kind of here and it all kind of runs together and that's the last Right. Um, I need more separation of the definition of elements and the application of light dark light dark to still keep it in line So that's my that's my feedback for you. I hope that helps Uh, all right true, uh diorama inspired by conan Uh, feel you missed something about the flesh tones even to try a different approach for each mini Uh, test piece to participate in monty. Sure So, uh, very conan here obviously so and I can talk about kind of everything I want to from from here So you were trying a bunch of different flesh tones, which is fine. Here's the challenge. All of these people are in the same place This is one location underground like and in a diorama There's one light source like this is assumingly underground lighting. Maybe there's a torch You don't have it modeled. Maybe it's just the cold blue light of the place. I don't know But, um, in any event what I would focus on is with the skin tones the challenge is you can have people that are different skin tones So for example, the the evil sorceress lady there who has like almost completely gray or gray skin tone the very ruddy barbarian and the sort of, uh, scared chained up lady there, uh, who's kind of more neutral All that's fine, but they should be lit and shadowed the same way So you can use the mid tone however you want. So maybe the barbarian's more tan Maybe the sorceress is very gray and pale But your ultimate highlight color that you're mixing in should be a universal ambiance because they're all affected by the same light So either they all have warm highlights and cold shadows or something like that, right? So, uh, you know, which is what you would do by the way if these people were all lit by torches You also want to make sure that on the the kind of ground itself You create a lighting pattern like all of your stone is basically just stone It's just all universally the same thing In underground scenes like this and dioramas you want to create some kind of lights or some focal area So like this area here should be brighter than anything back here Okay, and you by by lighting the center of the scene where the three figures are it'll go a long way toward, um toward really like showing What's happening and drawing the viewer's attention to the right place. So there you go Okay, so, uh Eugene, uh First submission, so this is a slaughter priest. How can you improve the light and shading? Uh with the selected color scheme found it difficult to make the face pop Uh, sure Okay, so let's talk about this. I don't think you have too much edge highlighting I don't I don't see a super superfluous amount of it in any way to be completely honest That's just the nature of these guys Honestly, my biggest challenge is so so forget all of that to the side I don't normally push aside people's critiques or what they're asking for but you said, you know Kind of whatever else I noticed and I noticed one big thing here first off the same thing I just said earlier applies here, right? Like if you deepen the rest of the areas you need to brighten the face less Now that being said you have these we are way too stark on these transitions in the skin Like way way way way way too stark. This goes five two That is way too far like it's going five two one Okay So you want to be paying heating the volumes of the skin and smoothing them out more My best advice again would be go watch the ruddy skin video I did And or the pale skin video either one is fine. Those are just two recent skin videos that are on the top of my head And both both would serve this there's a really important step here of smoothing out this transitions Okay now as to how to make the face pop again same thing as I said before more shadow around the face and that kind of stuff So we have a more brightened focused area here by adding more depth of shadow on the sides It actually makes the bright parts seem brighter. Okay So there you go. That would be my number one thing for you to focus on Eugene. I hope that helps Okay first submission Zach recently started painting again any and all critiques and comments welcome sure So my biggest advice for you here is it looks like we're relying on dry brushing a lot And again like paint cleanliness is I think your big challenge now that you're back in painting These elements need to be well defined and separated. So like This gold doesn't have any kind of real separation from this mask Right these little lines like we need deep You need to have dark to light dark to light clean paint jobs Create high contrast on edge changes. Okay, and what happens here is we've got a lot of places where things are kind of fudging together They don't really have as much separation as we would want Right, so we want to make sure we're pushing more shadows like against this belt and have a light on the edge of the belt and that kind of thing Um, also when you're going to do like dry brushing to kind of get it in there You need to glaze over that in a bigger way to smooth that out Like I can really see it when I look at stuff like here where I can really see the the this texture still I would look at stuff like makeup brushes for your dry brushing It'll make your dry brushing a lot better And really look at separating your elements focusing on cleanliness of the paint and brush control That's going to be your your big areas where you you want to be Focusing your your improvement Additional glazes and if you need more info on glazing you can check out 122 how to glaze and that'll help by I mean I think you've got the basic idea Because you seem to be manipulating some glazes here in some osl We just need to smooth down that that dry brushing more. Okay. Hope that helps act All right So We bringing us his test model scheme would this be good enough quality and army? I mean dude, this would be absolutely great for an army. Sure. I'll tell you right now I don't know that I would worry about the non-metallic on the army. I still I It's fine if you really feel like doing it. There's nothing wrong with it But in general armies are viewed under really poor lighting Most of the time when you take your army out and you go to a store or a club or an event the lighting in there sucks And non-metallic just will end up kind of looking flat a lot. It's a cool trick. It can certainly take you there But you're gonna want to like your non-metallic doesn't have quite enough pop into highlights in some places So you're gonna want to push that a little higher if you're gonna go this route Like more whites more light catches. This is good. This is lacking Like the bands are good. Some of these pieces are lacking I would honestly and like the line here on the dagger needs to be thinner or smoother transitions that kind of stuff I would honestly like it better if it was just true metallic To be completely honest Avoid the whites in the fire bring that that you still have some bit of yellow in it Avoid pure white and fire But other than that, I think this is absolutely fantastic skin looks great. Wonderful transition from the pink into the blue Yeah, it's good stuff, man I'd like is this good enough for an army? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah 100% So thank god what I said about the non-metallic versus true metallic And if you're gonna do the non-metallic you're in for a long road. It's very rewarding But just understand that you're gonna have to like Really put in the work Because otherwise it will do less than just what doing true metallic would have done All right, john, uh Second entry, uh, best you could do uh, want to see how you can prove painting skin. Sure Let's take a look All right, so again, we're we're getting better But the same thing is going to apply that I said a lot already More tonal variation the skin go see the you know the attached video I need more purples more highlights. Basically we're in we've got some threes and fours here But we need more I need deeper shadows. I need more colors Uh, I need uh more highlights things like that more tones worked into it So not just the not just the valuation not just the variation of hue but also of value. So There you go. Uh, that's my biggest piece of feedback keep pushing keep looking at those highlights I've talked about a lot of the skin tones here, you know Go look at like the orc from the beginning go look at some of the ones that i've commented on being really good And try to see what you can do there Okay, that's It's crazy to me by the way the two people in the road at this dark oath chieftain right back to back I mean this thing's been out for years and here we go like within two days of each other It's really funny. Uh, so at any rate, honza said first try at his competition standard Spent 20 hours on the mini And followed the strategy and painting for gold demon quality was a successful major flaws. Sure So the answer is we need to continue to smooth things more So some of the skin that transitions here between our shadow and our light is rather stark We want to avoid that. Uh, we need more transition in the skin. So again and more focus of the highlighting in the areas so the Skin up here on the top of his chest. This should be brighter than our highlights down Here or here. So like, you know, this should be at a pure one These should be at like a 1.3 something like that You want it to be volumetric to where the things near the light are brighter. Okay Um, I think the sword looks good. I think the you've got an interesting take on color scheme here I think the texture on the cloth looks good. I like that. I think your major challenge here is one in the metals Um, they're still quite flat. We need more more variation there So push more shadows in there some weathering things like that And then on the skin smoothing it out and again adding more of a lot of especially the the extra value To it in the the low areas like we're missing kind of a four here We don't really have enough shade connecting the deepest part of it to the middle tone It's almost like you need a little more three four Is what I would say so but i'm glad the video was helpful and uh, it came out really nice So I hope I give you some good advice to keep pushing Okay, uh bartas paint this unit best score for a squad painting competition looking for some general critique on the unit But especially the banner and the rusty metal Sure, uh, so overall, I think these guys look cool. Um, I do dig them. I think you did a nice job Let's start with the banner Banner looks nice. Your biggest issue is shading in the red The freehand looks really cool and good. I love the texture to it I would just love it if overall there was a little more texture or sorry shadow in the red The red feels very Flat compared to the visual interest that you created on the freehand piece Uh, so a little more darker shades, especially here and here up under here where the skulls are um As far as the rusted metal goes It's very brown and we're lacking a lot of like the super orange edges where things would be rusted out We're a lot in the same tone. I think we need to push it on the stippling a little more and have a little more focus into the pockmarky Blotchy nature of metals and having a little more focus on some deep dark browns and blacks There's a little bit in here We can go farther and pushing more up into the orange or purple or pink rust or yellow rust It all exists So you can do all sorts of stuff like that to kind of because right now the armor feels flat It's rusted, but it's just it's just kind of all brown. It doesn't have enough variation texture and Transition of color. So I hope that helps Okay Sergei, uh, the butcher from kingdom death looking for feedback on areas you can prove especially the osl in the lanterns on the lanterns on the back Sure, uh So he's nice. He's very much cast in shadow when you're doing this like super dark Uh, non-metallic where you have very small volumes of light My best advice is you want to make sure those those high highs are really high They need to like pop hard to keep drawing attention So like taking a couple pure white light points here just scattered around where the light is really the dim light is reflecting Even a dim light will on a shiny metal will pop a point of almost pure white light where it hits the reflection, right? So you can capture that kind of stuff Uh, now onto the osl Uh, I think it's fine. You could you maybe bring a little more of the soft ochre orange Into the overall flames. I think is probably what I would say Uh, the light itself feels the way it's cast is all right With one small thing that sticks out at me Which is just that all your metal on the back is still cold lit So this is just a common thing that happens. You started painting the metal Using a certain selection of colors, you know, whatever you're white to to dark blue black Maybe you're using dark sea blue or something Fine in a neutral lighting situation like you have on the front it sells On the back. He's lit by all this extremely warm candle light The lighting of the metal would no longer be this cold white. You can see it like right here, right? It would be very cold So like this light that's on the top of the lanterns on the sides of lanterns That should be the yellow light. That is the dominant light source that's creating these reflections you've painted So the color that it's reflecting needs to be reflected appropriate So when you change lighting conditions Highly reflective surfaces like metal will change in accordance with the light temperature. Okay, so that's my big piece of feedback for you All right, dan Uh, inquisitor designs his commander for his custom space marine chapter Lifts some advice on painting ivory light brown fabric and some general input on the glow of the scepter base and color choices Sure. So, I mean, I think the color choices are fine. It's pretty standard sister stuff I would have maybe you want to pop up the black hair a little more it kind of fades in I think one of the challenges here is she is very and so the black and white is going to give this way She's very samey, right? Like there's not a lot of variation in here It's a little bit where we can see the light reflecting off the true metallic Stuff like that. So My best advice would be You know to push the highlights, especially on the black a little farther Um, careful with the base by the way. It does just look like cork that's been drybrushed again Never make your cork look like cork. It should have stuff on it It should have texture It should have things if it's meant to be a big piece of concrete Then put a piece of plastic card over it or something and stipple some texture into it Put down some milliput some dots some something and stipple some texture into it It it wouldn't look like that right like scale that up and that would be it would just You'd have a very strange it looks like she'd be standing on igneous volcanic rock right not on concrete But the uh, I mean, I think uh, you know composition wise it mostly works I think your biggest challenge here is you want to still push your tonal variation across the miniature a lot higher So, uh, especially in the blacks, uh, actually cult of paint just put out a nice video about highlighting blacks So you could go check that out I think that was like really well explained They were doing a sister a battle with and showing how they do the black armor And I think it looks really nice for sort of a uh tabletop or higher to higher than tabletop standard So that's would be my recommendation So I hope that helps Dan All right, Michael. Hey, Mike. Good to see you again. This is uh, a night. He started back with me in the class I very much remember this guy Feedback on the things he could do to take it to the next level. Well, I always love to see One of my students complete a project like this. It's so gorgeous. I just want to say off the off the rip I think he did a great job of bringing it to completion. Love the purple and And green color schemes. I think that worked really well Um now as to the uh, you know, where do you go from here? Uh, I think your areas for improvement are probably in some additional like weathering or scratching or stuff like that He is very clean So just even if we did some light streaking some chips here or there Just a little bit is going to add a lot more texture to this guy You don't have to go crazy. You can be very very subtle with it. And I think it'll still help a lot I noticed a couple chips in like the leg Doing some streaks or something would help. Uh, the same thing with the gold I feel like we could push the contrast on the gold a little farther I like some stuff up here on the side But like the front of this is turned away from the light the bottom here is turned away from the light More glazing of those colors into the metal. I think would really, uh, help as far as taking it to the next level Same with the metal itself Um going back into the steel and just kind of taking some light washes or some very thin dinks And glazing in just like some subtle browns here or there Or stuff like that could really help to bring the model all the way together And to make sure that there's a lot more visual interest in what is otherwise kind of you know, going to be the Basic steel we put together, which is nice variation But it adds a little more life and texture to what is a giant robot So I hope that helps michael great stuff the the big dragon free hand on the back that you were working on I remember in the class this came out great. Um the additions on the side are wonderful Uh, so yeah, good stuff. I think basically it's just more colors more more sort of additions of light washes Uh, not as not over washed just as light glazes and filters put over the metals to kind of add some more texture and life to them I think is where you want to go. So hope that helps Bleep bloop. Oh bill bloop Always a great time when we get a post from bleep bloop. Let's take a look at his unit of 20 a grim gas reapers Bleep has an absolutely gorgeous army. Honestly one of the best-looking armies in the country Uh in the u.s. And it's it's absolutely a stunner Uh, as usual, this is Just fantastic work So what I was talking I'm just going to pause here because this is more I don't really have much feedback for for bleep I mean his stuff is always great My what I want to do instead is reference this part in the video so I can come back to it for other people who might have some challenges This is all non-metallic metal and here you notice how well he's running from like one to five How well he's creating his light and shadows in contrast on the sides And on the sides of the the heads and then they're little, you know elements that are gold and dangling or whatever notice how he's Defined all of the elements really cleanly like you can see the light and dark separation between everything notice how each finger has a dark line each hand has a dark line. There's a dark line between the uh the face and the side of the Uh of this robe whatever he has I don't know notice how it gets dark under the cloth here that kind of stuff is what makes It looks so clean and so sharp Uh, so this is sort of what I'm talking about if you're going to do non-metallic on an army level This is the sort of standard you want to you want to paint too. So there you go Awesome awesome work bleep beautiful as always. Uh, I was so sad that I didn't get to see You at a depth gone, but uh, I look forward to the next event where we can get together, buddy, and I can't wait to see your army Okay, uh vlog bringing in some finished storm fiends got them up to the warpstone crystal in the back What doesn't show up is the flickering effects. It's kind of cool He has some some really neat effect here. I'll spin to the picture with it. You see he has like glowing warp crystals That's really cool So very good stuff overall, uh, my biggest feedback for you is going to be One cleaning up some of your stuff like your edge highlighting You want to go back and make sure that those are nice smooth transitions There's a lot of places where it's rough and to see all my previous comments about tonal variation on the skin The skin is kind of flat across them So those are the two big big things that jump out at me that I think would be chances for Improvement, but very cool. Vlad and I always love to see some led work like that. It looks really nice Okay, uh saying who brings us uh the con been practicing, uh White for the past six months. This has been a great journey. You've been on uh saying and I just I love seeing these white scars I I want to paint a white scar and dedicate it to you. I honestly do Uh, because I've I've honestly been inspired by all your your work with this sang has gone on such a journey of every month learning and pushing himself and Uh, just really doing an amazing job of continuing to grow and that's what I love to see in this community Uh, it's people really taking in the feedback and continuing to push it. So Uh, did you achieve white non-metallic metal? No, but that's okay. You achieved beautiful white My honest answer is I like this better. I think this sells man. I think this is gorgeous Now because I don't I think it would be kind of disruptive honestly if it was the same as the sword or something like that So I think you captured the shadows of the white scar of the white really nicely He still reads his white, but there's a there's beautiful rich lustrous cold shadows I'm good with it, buddy. I really am Now that being said if you want white non-metallic metal, you can do it This is something I've threatened to make a video about forever, but it's really really a difficult paint job to pull off Um, and I've just I've just haven't wanted to do it frankly. Uh, but at any rate If you want to do it, here's my best advice Uh, go look up, uh, gareth, uh, nicolas. Okay former Uh designer for gw and like more times than I can count golden demon winner who painted a reflective white Uh white scar And you'll notice that the element there that he did is it's in reflective lighting Uh, do make sure you map these guys out. By the way, see how that reflection is getting in the way with like That's just a glossy reflection. You really want to avoid that minor note But at any rate, you'll notice how he heeds the normal rules where he'll have it go and he'll have lights in the shadows So just to make this very simple, it'll go like one two three four five four three four five Right, so they'll be like light caught in the shadow from the reflected light That's what you're doing when you're painting something like this Right, which by the way, you want to make sure you smooth out that transition there between the deep black and the blue But at any rate when we paint our non-metallic swords like this This is reflected lighting only one of these is the direct immediate light source Everything else is bounce lights where it hits the ground and it's coming back up or it hits his armor It's coming back up or something like that, right? That's what we're meaning to capture here the ambient environment so Uh, so if you want to push in that direction, I think that's where you would go But again, I'll leave that up to you. You have uh, you've done beautiful work here. You've really been pushing the white scars And I think you're doing a great job saying Okay So next up cast me in trolls and loon balls complete thoughts on the yellow armor and the troll skin is appreciated Though fairly pleased with the results overall Let's see if we can get to some Excuse me some good lighting here Yeah, I think the troll skin is fine. Um, I think you can glaze in some more soft pink tones a little more You've got a little bit of it in there brown like the sides the belly up under the arms That would be kind of my big advice there push some of that up some more Uh The loon boss now on him, it you know, the yellow is kind of very very muted He looks like he's you know, mostly lit by the the light below I think I'd love to see a little bit more of a color element somewhere on him standing out maybe Like the nose piece or the the weapon should be slightly different in color I don't mind it. I really like how you captured the green sort of glow coming up. I think that's well executed I just feel like we need to push maybe a highlight a little higher or have more of a color in there Maybe it could be like the shoulder pad is different Or something and then you know like something that draws from everything's very samey That's my only issue with it The weapon being the same color as the mask to a large degree is also throwing me off So those are my big piece of feedback for you cast me and hope that helps Okay Next up uh zen really appreciate any advice you or advice you have on general areas of improvement uh, sure, so My best advice for you at this point is um, again, it's going to be very much tonal variation Go and watch the the linked video. There's there's many opportunities for it here The shield is very flat colored green. This is a this is a Sphere shape it should have reflections that you know speak to that the Hair hair like I've mentioned many times to have like a bright beard like this should have lots of highlights here Around the bottom of the beard where it's coming out There should be deeper shadows and there should be lights where anytime it anytime hair condenses It gets darker and then when it pops back out it catches the light That's an easy guideline to follow. It's not a rule It's a guideline, right? So there would be a bright and then a shadow and then a bright and then a shadow and then a bright and then a shadow And again, go look at like those, you know, panting or medallus assuming bottles or whatever But tonal variation is your big thing. That's what you want to push for and if you go watch the the linked video I have uh, they're especially where I talk about the scaven and you'll see kind of The old scaven and the new scaven and how that translates that should really clear things up for you. So I do hope that helps All right, Ben Layton A third attempt at painting a bust figure after painting managers love to get some feedback Yeah, I think so I looked at this guy quite a lot. I think it's pretty great. I really like this guy I think you did a wonderful job The biggest areas improvement are probably on the little birdie birds They feel like they could use a little more feather texture where it's kind of being pulled out You're really doing a great job with texture in these in this big like really great And then it just doesn't feel like you have enough in the in the birds themselves The skin on the red parts is a little harsh around his forehead I feel like you could soften that up here Like I don't mind this lower part being a little darker But it should fade a little more and be like more of a soft subtle pink You could also he's really old You could have like liver spots or stuff like that around the side of his head here around his forehead Like where it meets his hairline that could be another way to kick it up a little bit The softness of the pink down here in the hand. I really like This part again is a little too harsh. These needs smoothed a little I do love the beard great job on the texture there. You really this is what I'm talking about with the light and the shadow The texture on the leather and the green cape They're both executed very well The one thing I would say and challenge you on is you might have wanted to make those a little bit more Different textures, so they stood out like maybe you stippling more on the one and hashing a little more on the other It can help to create texture contrast as well as just value contrast So there's there are all the forms of contrast in the world. So, um, you know, just a just a thought for you there But overall, I think this is a really great job. I like your execution here. I think this is is a super fun. So Yeah, well done. Love the oldness of the skin. Love the color under the eyes Great variation in that Absolutely wonderful work Okay, next up Casper feedback how to improve this model. Uh, sure So the the first thing that occurs to me is it's still rather lacking in kind of some definitions in places like She has this mermaid lower half and we didn't really do much with it. It's just kind of Blue Like it would have been a great chance to do again like a pattern a texture or something like that It has these little micro ridges in it and we're not really doing much with that So sometimes when the sculpt is kind of flat, we've got to add to it on its own Same with the contrast up here on her weapon or whatever this thing is she's holding Um, again, that needs to go farther more variation that especially if that's supposed to be some kind of like metal, assumingly Reflecting so and it's it's really not right now The other thing that jumps out at me is the hair see all of my previous comments Like it's kind of just evenly highlighted all of the top areas are light all of the low areas are dark That's not really how hair works right because hair is sat and it's creating almost more like metallic reflections So there should be a halo of light here a halo of light here And probably a softer one here And then this all should be more in shadow And you want both the low points to be darker and the high points to be darker And then you want both the high points to be brighter and the low points to be brighter as it moves through This, you know wave pattern of the hair So that's my uh, that's my advice those are the things that jumped out to me casper. I do hope that helps Okay, matt o' brian, uh, is the kingsman painter from kingdom death look for feedback on color composition and the base Uh, sure So with the base my biggest piece of advice for you is as always Dirt is not brown. I know we think dirt is brown dirt is not brown Dirt has all sorts of colors in it has reds and purples and greens certainly a lot of greens Because nature is messy and gets all up in each other's business and there's lots So you want to make sure you work different tones into That uh, that's the first thing I know. Which is that I that I know now as far as composition goes You have this kind of soft desaturated purple color as well as the then the off green Um, yeah, I think that works fine. Those are two great colors that work great together technically your tertiary color here is What would be yellow because you have gold but because of the sort of shading or the color you've used It's actually orange Either way, I think it's kind of in between the two enough that it works as a as a split complementary scheme So I think that's fine Composition wise. I don't have any issues I like the texture on the cape looks nice. It's a good job Very well done okay Next up jake up with the big old black dread dread lord on black dragon So and he used the warmer picture basically love to hear some general feedback strengths weaknesses Recommended challenges. We're going to go to this picture because I do feel this represents it better This is the one under a warm light So, um Yeah, this is good stuff. Like overall, this is really nice. I like the texture on the dragon I like a lot of the things going on here So places where we could continue pushing Would be stuff like your metals the metals need more variation things like the spear shaft and and that kind of stuff I feel needs a little bit more glazing of color and and a little more pushing of value contrast there control of the light The bone you could go a little farther on. I like you've got some transition there. We could go farther It it could be and we can have a Some different colors in there You could honestly that the it would be need to work in the same red tones that you've worked into the Underbelly and the mouth and the wings and stuff like that having a little bit of that soft Magenta tone glazed into those bones in the sort of three to four transition area would look really really cool Um, and then speaking of the wings. I I like the texture. I would pull some of that out a little more carefully It feels like we need a little more control over the smoothness of the light to the shadow I don't mind the hashing because they're meant to be like old leathery wings. I think that's actually okay But you still want to control some of the the smoothness of the actual blend there when you're transitioning Overcolors, so that would kind of be the areas. I would I would push you on but overall really cool, uh, cool mini Okay, Jim Norfolk girl in the dragon skull by first legion hoping to achieve competition quality in the future This is your sixth model so far so One welcome so glad to have you. It's awesome Two six minutes you're painted. Good job three forget about competition right now. That is not what you need to be thinking about That's like if you just started running And you just ran a half mile and you're up to being pretty confident at running a half mile And you said but ultimately, uh, I want to be in I want I want to complete the boston marathon in a really good time not just completed but in a really good time, right? So That's cool. That can be in your mind as a long-term goal. That's a thousand steps away right now, right? So not to dissuade you like go and and compete and stuff like that Yeah, there's no comp. There's no quality level for that. My point is don't make that your goal Make the fundamentals that are going to get you there your goal, right? so That being I I didn't I'm not trying to chastise you. It's just something that jumped out of me from your your thing I mean, I probably painted A thousand two thousand miniatures before I ever went to a competition. I wish I would have competed earlier And so you don't need to aim for that. I'm just saying like, you know, focus on the fundamentals first Now happily in looking at the miniature, which now we'll jump into I'm glad to say you're you're clearly making incredible progress I can see you've learned a lot From you know, sort of probably various educational sources Like the little the non-metallic weapon looks very nice. I would smooth some of those blends out Really work on where your kind of light placement is falling But on the whole I think it looks nice Your biggest challenge here by far is tonal variation. You're red. You're brown. Your skin are flat, right? They do not have enough either variation of value or hue as I've said many times so far. So as I've talked about the skin earlier in the video More tones more purples more pinks again go watch the You know the the skin tutorials that I recently did and you'll see a lot in there about adding more to it The hair is much the same way by the way Where we would want to see those halos of light. So that kind of thing That's so my main challenge for you, Jim as you continue along this path And I'm so excited for you because you're you're making incredible progress for your sixth mini. This is absolutely fantastic work I just I'm I'm shocked. I will tell you my sixth mini look nothing like this Boy, oh boy, did it look bad So I very much want to encourage you where you need to focus on is in pushing that contrast and understanding how those lights and dark certain And various sort of interference colors and hues are going to work together to create something visually interesting So check out those videos. I mentioned You can go watch the contrast video or the sorry the explanation video linked below and that should set you on the right direction Okay Tomas Looking for feedback on color selection and balance the reflective effect of the armor and the texture of the cloak This is really good work, man I spent a lot of time looking at this one So a couple things that jump out of me just to give you some minor feedback One what I said about colors in the deep shadows is the number one thing that I see missing here Um, so let's go to the black and white and then it'll really show it off. Here we go. Okay So first of all, we're running the full gamut of colors here and I am here for it, buddy I love it. This is how non-metallic should look in black and white. Yes. Yes. Yes Yes Great. I'm here for it. Uh Okay, where we have a challenge. I'll I'll just take a microcosm here. We'll do this chest piece right here Okay, this this particular his left chest plate Like the light Smooth enough transition like the light line falls away in a shadow. We should have a secondary reflection either here Or here or both Okay, because light is going to come down hit the ground come back up hit this edge bounce reflect here This would be lit All right, same thing light is going to come down hit this surface here You're showing me. There's a light reflection right here literally you've painted it on and yet it's not actually reflecting light Right like if this is this is reflected light. That's what you've created here, right? but That means light has hit bounced off and it's coming to my eye and yet There's no light here Okay, so when you create a reflection It needs to be it needs to go somewhere like you've told me the light is acting in a certain way So same you can really see it easy on the knee pad where there should be an underlight here because the light comes straight down Hit the ground boop. It's going to light the underside of that If you want to get some really good insight into this kujo did the gold standard video on this on painting Uh non-metallic reflections and understanding how they interact with various shapes So that's what I would point you toward the only other thing that jumped out of me is a minor note Oh the cloth tech the the texture on the cloak by the way looks looks great. I I have zero issues with that I think that's excellent composition wise again. I'm fine with it. I'm here for a man. Love the colors. Yes Dig it. Love the green to the purple. It's a very desaturated green. It's a great choice It's wonderful um The volumes on your sword are rather even So what I mean by that is this is the same size as this is the same size as this is the same size as this And they're all equidistantly apart You kind of want to watch that sometimes you want to see if you can like Push those things a little in uh, so like some should be maybe smaller Some should be maybe bigger should bigger areas a shadow in between you don't want it to be like light doesn't work on an abacus Okay, so Uh, you want to think about variants in that as well. That'll make it feel more natural But overall this is really great stuff, man. I saw this and I was I dug it. I love This scheme this like purple and green scheme composition wise This this gets it. This gets a hard yes for me. I'm here for this Okay Great stuff, uh speaking of great stuff benjamin, uh beginning of his corvus cabal warband. Basically, uh, what do I think about the He's going through this very muted tone Trying to do color circles in his composition Hot shadows cold highlights That kind of thing. So yeah, let's let's get into him. I love these conversions, by the way These as we go through these these look wonderful Uh, my answer benjamin is for what you're going for. I think this is Great I I honestly don't know that I have much feedback for you assuming you're going for something on the tabletop that you're not trying to paint up to Like a display quality because I think these are really well executed. That's not that's not true I have one piece of feedback for you. We'll get there in a minute. I like the color. I think the magenta work I think the color circles are working. I am I Yeah, like yep. It's good Reflections on the leather work the edges of the feathers getting caught with these lights work. I dig it So my only issue with this is you're using a lot of old brown leather and there's almost no texture to any of it So if I was going to give you one simple piece of advice to make this pop pop pop It would be give me some hashing some scratching some dots Uh on the leathers. So I've done a previous video on doing leather. I've got another one coming out Probably in like a month. I think it'll be a little while But at any rate just it's you know adding that texture those hashes the scratches those stifling those dots That kind of variation to the leather would make it feel a little more authentic That was my only thing and it would also help break it up by the way from the smooth black cloth. These are great Wonderful additions of these of these simple colors. They created such visual interest if this guy was just like Sort of kind of the black blue and didn't have that magenta. It would be so much more boring. So that is a brilliant addition Okay, uh Blonde let's say let's let's hope i'm getting that right Uh, so he says two general questions one issue I run into a lot was the paint consistently leaving brush strokes how to thin your paint Oh, yeah, he found that in hobby cheating 122. That's right. Good good. Good. You found the answer Okay, two when using complementary colors to create shadows is there a difference in the result between mixing the colors together On my web palette versus layering them on top of each other individually. Yes, absolutely Uh, there absolutely is because every time you lay down another translucent layer You're building a stack of interfering color paint is translucent It lets light through the more different layers of paint are interacting the more Visual confusion and complexity is communicated to your eye and the more realistic and rich something seems So that's why just mixing it doesn't work now as far as what we can do here This picture gives the game away again when we look at the skin. What do we see all one color? right, so see all the previous comments I've made about Uh, tonal variation in the skin and I think that's what you want to focus on That's the area that jumps out the most of me the wings are good The red cloth is is nice. You've got a lot more action there We can see kind of how that breaks out with some lighter spots The wings kind of break out nicely, but where we've got a lot of opportunities still is with that skin Which is still very very uh flat. We want to work in those other tones Same videos. I just talked about go back and check those out Okay, uh, Joe, uh, finished a while ago, but still considered one of his best pieces Uh, basically add more dynamic appearances to rusty metal. Sure So one thing I would do is you mentioned you like scrape with silver don't scrape with silver Um Or at least very minimally like enameled steel When it gets scraped will not turn silver unless something really dug into it and got a hold of it and left a really deep pit And and basically insta polished it Because when you when you just when you wear away Enamel that metal underneath was never polished. It was just iron that was sprayed And so it's not going to have that super Shiny tone you can have a few brighter hashes If like if you're trying to represent an impact scratch where a single thing like a bullet hit and went through it and would have sort of force polish to the metal But as to rusting metal, um, my advice is so my best advice for you is to go watch my Uh iron jaws weapons video. It's like in the 103 to 106 range You'll see exactly how I tackle metals there in lots of different ways add different color to them I also have a rusted weapons video from much earlier on You could check that out as well. Both of those videos should be very helpful to you as far as, um Uh, you know kind of learning how the the basic tactics of stippling Windy use washes how to work color tones in how to still relieve reveal some of the metal Like it's a big question. You ask that needs a whole video to explain it Fortunately, I have two videos that do so so I would go check those out Um, but overall things I really like on here like the the tires and the wear and tear does look good I like how you scuffed and scratch things I think like especially around the edge of the reds and the Orange there in the front of the the trik and stuff like that. They look really nice So go check out those metal videos and that'll hopefully help Okay, uh rubris basically what he's asking is he was trying for different textures speaking a popular thing this month This month's thing is textures apparently Um How successful was it sure? Uh, well, so the first thing that jumps out to me is the one that sells is the hat The problem is the rest of them don't super sell to me so like the The if you're going for like so so let's break this down. Okay, so the skirt is velvet So, okay, some kind of crushed velvet Um, the corsage is black leather. Okay, and the blouse is white linen. Got it All right So the white linen is the one that you could basically just do almost without texture because it's going to be Linen tends to be fairly fine if you're going to do anything you would do extremely thin repeated hashes Uh crushed velvet or velvet has a stippled pattern to it. So go look I mentioned Uh You know people earlier that like, um, I mentioned, um, uh, yeah, so at any rate, uh The sorry I lost my train of thought there. Okay, let's start over. I've been going for a while here clearly. All right Let's, uh So I mentioned Nicholas Gareth earlier, right and, um, The uh The look at how he does his cloaks. Sorry back on task now brain stop per minute had to reboot. There we go The look at how he does his cloaks where he'll have like lots of little tiny stipple dots That's what's going to sell the effect of that velvet now on black leather black leather is highly reflective It's very you know satin Um, it's going to come up to this extremely bright reflective shine over a small volume And then most of it will be black. So working in about 40 percent of your space. You need to come up to a high highlight so these are like That's a lot of different textures to play with And I would go the my best advice is always go look at those items in the real world Like really go google images of that stuff and see them Don't just look at them. See them spend 10 minutes. Put a phone down Start your clock spend 10 minutes staring at that material really seeing it. Don't look away. Don't look at other things Don't get distracted See that texture Okay, and then figure out how it's actually working with the light And then you can come back and figure out which texture to apply how high to take the highlights that kind of thing Like you're right now your velvet has a higher tech has a higher reflection point than your leather Like leather is shinier than then velvet that velvet will will is you know, we'll have some reflection to it But a cat like I'm when you say black black leather I think of you know, like catwoman and her suit reflected darn near white light Right at the at the edges where it was where it was uh sort of shiny So I don't know if you're going for that level of brightness But again bright black leather will often be very shiny. I think of you know, trinity in the matrix or something, right? Uh, so at any rate there you go. Okay, so keep going Alex just minutes out last month. Can I feed back on this miniature? So, you know, basically says he feels good about the armor, but the gun doesn't look quite as good Yeah, the armor has some good variation in it So again much much of the same things I've been talking about. I like the the The color on it we could push into some deeper shadows in a few places, but for the most part, I think the armor Especially the blue is solid the red feels very flat by comparison, right? So in general what we often see people do with guns is push the edge highlight on the top And then push a shadow up to the top and I think that would you know serve you well here So if we had this being relatively bright along the edge and then a darker area up here transitioning down to lighter red Orange at the bottom that would probably help with your overall concern and make it feel a little bit more Make it feel like it has the same Level of contrast that the rest of it does and that's basically where your challenge is at. So hope that helps Uh, okay, uh florian, uh, so basically He invests a lot of time and feel lacks in some areas, you know, couldn't push himself or more of what your thoughts Yeah, so I mean looking at it. I'll say that the the thing that jumps out of me is that lack of tonal variation that lack of contrast Because it's I mean the black and white gives it away All the armor is the same gray the hair here is the same gray This is the same color right like the places where we That that's it. I mean, that's the that's the whole shooting match right there So what you'd want to push on is like on things like this, um this Whatever this thing is This thing is his headpiece, you know darker shadows here in between Separation lines of darker color in between the individual pieces Brighter tips toward the edge where it's bristled out and catching more light Much more, you know shadows and variation on the purple of the armor again. See the Uh, reference video below and that'll really help Same with the sort of non-metallic gold here. It needs to run well more contrast and and really push that out. So That's what jumps out of me Okay, scodster, uh zombie unicorn, uh, would like to know if the model is coherent and fits the base. Sure. That's a fun crazy project Uh, yeah, I mean, it's sort of a weird riot of colors, which I think is is fun and interesting Um Yeah, for for what it is. I think it's fine Um, I think that overall it looks dead. It looks like a zombie unicorn. That's kind of like got color leaking out all over him Uh, I think probably where you could stand to see some improvement and it happens here Is in things like the bone so that like the flesh Has some some nice variation. We could smooth it out a little more But stuff like that in the flesh in the muscle or sorry the the bone in the muscle. I apologize Uh Like the the bone here is all kind of very samey colored So having some more deeper shadows colors browns deeper tones in there And again, you could use other colors. You can use some of your actual real hues here to shade it down if you want Uh Same with the muscle having a little bit more bright sort of almost pinkish striations and points and the hashing and things like that I think would go a long way. So That's what jumps out of me. But uh, yeah cool cool crazy project. So, uh, that's really neat Okay, uh shaky first 90 millimeter miniature working on glazing and faces Uh, so yeah, any advice to be appreciated It's it's going to come down to the same thing. So, uh, what I noticed in looking at him is is one so your eyes are kind of off center there Um, but the the answer in anytime you go upscale is more see the previous comments I made about the bust, but I'll give you some easy examples Um, the face needs a lot more color like again, you know, it needs a lot more of everything more highlights more shadow It's still very flat and in something of this size You have all the room to work there You can get the red and the cheeks like look at my face and how much color there is in it right now Right, how much different like the shadows here and here and here Right under my eyes this bright light spot that's reflecting across my my bold shiny head But also here on my eyebrows on the tip of my nose, right these lines here cheeks That kind of stuff, right All that, uh, same with the red in the cloth, right like you it when you get to this size It's not just it becomes a lot more about not just the Uh value contrast, which is important and should be pushed a little farther here But it also becomes a big deal about texture when you're in something of this size the texture would be visible So like this cloth for example is made of something It's you know, what is it made of and so things like stippling or hashing textures or stuff like that same with his his actual Uniform right like bringing out a lot of those textures will go a long way toward selling the The miniature especially in a big scale like this. So There you go. Uh, I hope that helps Okay, timothy, uh And basically here here he's got his putrid blight king Looking for any advice or additional improvement. Sure So it's going to be two things jump out at me about this one when we're doing An alternate skin tone like this, which I think is perfectly fine and fun of the green We still need to have our same tonal variation coming up to like again. I would use some kind of pale Weird, you know pale flesh for your highlights because that'll feel appropriate and sickly But also then having deeper shadows bringing in some purple tones in the shadows something like that As this is nergal when it gets to things like the metal and the Like so the bell and the steel and things that he's got These should be portrayed as weathered because they are portrayed as weathered the sculpt told you they're weathered right by having these big pits And points where this they that literally is coming from being rusted out and stuff like that So we need to work in those brown tones orange tones stuff like that On the copper we want to work in that vertigree the turquoise the blue green Stuff like that to make that more visually compelling and interesting and richer. So there you go Okay, uh sam king Basically looking for a couple things how to create enough contrast in the middle shadow areas such the stomach area without going As bright as the highlights in the foreground areas like the face the wings in particular how to fade Still allow without watching Uh, and how the texture on the bow came out. Sure So on the wings my best advice is go watch any of the videos I have on wings Because you can just stipple the living heck out of them But you want to use a relatively dry paint or you can use a wash But just work most of it off there and you can stipple color out or stipple wash in to create shadow But in general wings get brighter towards the center where it's stretched and then where the Flesh kind of bunches up. It's near there. It's darker where more light is passing through they Become brighter now as to the you know, sort of mid tone in there The key is yeah, you just want to like it's a it's volumetric highlights, right? So the This top area should have more of the highlight color in more spaces than the chest But you can also control that by pushing shadows deeper So this area of his torso down here you can't see I'm off camera But you know down here under his sort of chest cavity You could push the shadows deeper as well If you can't brighten the brights then deepen the shadows, right? And that will also get you there having a lot more darkness here under his tail, which is very That that this whole area here is very hidden from the light, right? So we could create some much deeper shadow areas here And that would really sell the effect of again by making all of this darker. This would seem brighter We don't have to get there just by brightening, right? Uh, so now finally on the bone. Yeah, the bone sells to me. It's good good striations good structure. I like it You know, it's good. Yeah, I like the texture in the bone. I think you did a good job There you go Cool stuff sam very nice Okay, uh This is such a beautiful piece. I really love this, uh, joseph ansony ferundas Uh, so basically he said uh, he called this piece the sadness dedicated to all of our loved ones Who are no longer with us? Uh, and it's really wonderful. So I just this is a really cool piece 3d model an oculus medium and printed on his elugu mars, which I assume is a 3d printer I don't know enough about 3d printers um So and and you you so you name some things here like I'm I'm not 100 satisfied with all the picks now Things like the grass tufts. I should have painted not just stuck to the base The gray robot needs a lot more blending to smooth it out and I think some environment color should be reflected on him Things like the ground and the bushes not just the ambient light um, yep, that's exactly the uh Like literally that's exactly the feedback I would give you So you already know all your next steps. You don't need me to tell you So instead I just want to share this piece with everybody because I really think it's still wonderful like in the heart shape as it is With this nature contrasting this here's another form of contrast using the robots amongst nature And this one robot with this little owl Uh, very sad at his robot friend with this flower to remember him. I mean, this is like This is such a great piece man. Like yes, you could do all those things you said and should Okay, so perfectly fair but compositionally and just like narratively The way you have the little robots head hanging and all this stuff. It's just it's just great It's just absolutely great So yes, do all those things but this is such a wonderful piece joseph. I really want to thank you for sharing. I this This is great. So thank you okay Reinhardt, uh after painting valdor a few months back, uh, this was his next adventure Looking for cheats on the true metallic metal the basing in the face with uh with roguldorn here Uh, so let's start with the uh true metallic Uh, yeah, I think it looks nice Uh, let's see just taking it all in Yeah, I think it's good. I think we could um, yes, this is the previous guy. There you go for comparison So I think it's good I think we could have a few more bright spots of silver in just a few places to really pop kind of the high Highlights of the gold out where it's catching the light as I always show like, you know When I whenever I like I've got my highly polished my ring here And you can see there's like this light spot right there where it's hitting the light that's right above it, right? Just a few pieces like that. Overall, though, I think the shading is really good here I think you've nailed that you I've seen you do a lot of work on this I think you're you're there a couple of these elements might use some darker lines separating them But on the most part, I think that's fine The face, uh, I don't have a super zoom in on the face. So it's a little hard to tell Uh, but I think maybe it could be probably smoothed out a little bit I think is what's jumping out of me. I need a little bit closer zoom up to tell you for sure Now as to the base itself Uh, the other marine down there with his like the the helmet and this the broken guy here Um They look like they could be a little bit smoother in the application of their paint As opposed to him. They look kind of rough As far as the colors and stuff go, I think that's fine. You've worked in some red tones A little more green down here could help as well just to kind of offset against Him you do have some green tones up in the armor, which I really like So just some more light green tones here because unless this world is super dry There would be rain and hence there would be some kind of moss or some some kind of organic life growing I like the red tones and stuff worked in so I think that's good But yeah, that's my feedback Okay, Daniel first diorama and made it for an online painting competition Trying to achieve a night atmosphere with the ghosts entering into the light from the shadows feedback on the lighting effect would be appreciated Sure. So I think this is a really cool effect. This is obviously some malifaux figures I have all these I painted all these I want to start here saying I like the the Pattern you put on her. I think that's really nice. I think my biggest piece of feedback is probably just Uh, refinement is your your big challenge. So I think the light Works except that she is not shadowed enough in the appropriate places So if she's under such a strong light like you're capturing this bright light coming in like this From her then some areas here and on this side of her face and this side of her nose And this under her arm and the side of her leg those would be in deeper shadows. So there'd be more Um, cold tones there to oppose that shadow Um, that's the thing that jumps out at me the most beyond that It's just refinement, right like uh, some of the blends need to be kind of smooth down Things like that, but for them for the most part, I think the effect which is what you're really going for does it sell And yes, I think it does Uh, so There you go. Cool stuff Ah, good old pandora Okay, so Matthew young, uh overall feedback appreciated, but he's got a specific question What's the right color for the blue orbs? The answer is orange Because you've used copper and you have this very orange color and so setting blue against the blue there like you did Doesn't actually help it pop off any if those things were orange They would contrast and they could be a very saturated orange like that's a saturated blue And they would pop off a lot better Beyond that the biggest piece of feedback I see is you want to make sure when you're working with Metallics like this that you have nice dark lines getting in there with a good ink and making sure like especially I see in places like the arm and stuff like that You've got nice dark lines separating these elements same with the highlights the metals need to come up a little more Be shiny. We want to take more control of the light. You can go watch the like how to do True metallic uh metal video that I did uh in an amatalic style Uh, so there's many of those on my on my channel. Um, but specifically you can go watch like I think it's 73 Something in that range And uh, and that'll help you out. So cool stuff Okay Uh next up chris first submission getting back into the hobby after a couple decades out looking to push himself to high tabletop standard Hoping for general feedback in areas to improve on sure So like much of what I've said this time the the answer is very simple It's going to be in tonal variation I started purposely on the color so we could go to the black and white This is all gray. This is all gray. This is all gray. This is all gray Right like a lot of this is just the same color When you switch to black and white if it's all the same color you haven't gone far enough right Go back and look at the black and white of the very first Uh model that was submitted that orc, you know, who also has a very sort of green and purple thing going on different places but you know different kind of color layout but similar color scheme And you'll see what i'm talking about and that's going to be my big challenge to you I think what you want to work on is Just working your your your blending and your contrast to really pop that up You're working with purple here, which is a tough color We can see a lot of the edge lines go watch my exploring colors purple video and that'll help you out as far as understanding Kind of what that What that you know how to get your purple smooth because that's what's happening here Purple is a very difficult color to work with and it gets Blotchy and is hard to smooth out so watch exploring colors purple And uh, also go watch the attached video on increasing your contrast and your tonal variation in value Okay, bill robertson first mini where he really pushed himself in a long time uh Consistent light source and non-metallic metal having a critique applied from the perspective of competition painting Sure Okay, so competition painting. All right. So first thing that jumps out at me is cleanliness um things like the Uh, this is rough right here And here and here here You know like all this stuff needs to be super clean when you're when you're working with Competition painting like you want to make sure all these lines are really sharply separated with dark shadows and stuff like that Okay Now as to the consistent light source, it's like same with the face The individual elements of the face aren't really we're not respecting all the volumes as sharply as we could be there um So the non-metallic like the non-metallic doesn't sell for me And part of the reason because as we've got this sort of this doesn't really feel like light. It feels like he's hot Okay, and that's because of things like these horns are just bone This is just this color these skulls are just this color Like if you're going to do an extreme light source like this like on him, you've told me this is a Very close bright light almost like he's standing in a torch Okay, and it's casting this yellow glow on him. Where's the yellow here? Why isn't uh This in heavy shadow that's in like a deep brown Right and the other side here in bright yellow Right. Well, I have that kind of thing So The why is the the red over here still quite bright and saturated red when if it's outside of light it should be desaturated Okay So those are the kind of things that that jump out of me if you're talking about competition We when we're going to do a bright directional light source like this It has to influence everything the non-metallic has to turn yellow It's not going to look steel colored anymore if we're in like a torch light It's going to look mostly orange and yellow All right, same with the horns same with the fur And the shield and the skulls and everything it's going to it's going to impact all of that If we're in this orange yellow light Then that's going to be the tone and it's going to set everything like with the strength that you gave me here With those highlights This guy is five feet from a torch and everything is that color Okay So as well you want to think about the shadows that work there now as to the non-metallic metal The color is true, but then we also need to make sure we're paying attention to things like reflected light So let's say we've got a strong light source right here. It's going to come down It's going to hit the ground here bounce up what happened here This would not be dark if it's metal. It's reflective reflective means it's reflective meaning against catching all the light At a higher level than what other stuff if this was like cloth Some dark cloth. Maybe I'd buy that Okay, but this light's going to come down right here and go boop boop and hit this this spear And I should see reflected lights here I should see a yellow light down at this tip where if this is coming in It's going to smash right along that edge, right? So Uh, yeah, that's my advice bill. I hope that helps That seemed harsh. I hope not. I hope I didn't make you feel bad or anything like that. Certainly not the goal But if I was evaluating it for competition, this is the kind of stuff. I would give you feedback on so There you go. I hope that helps give you some direction Uh And and thoughts for for exploring this because I think this is a really good thing to explore This is awesome that you're going this direction and trying this stuff. I love it. You're taking big swings And that's how we learn Okay Uh, all right paladin. All right paladin Buddy, I love this community. I love you for submitting this. You cannot write me this kind of a novel my friend 80 submissions. This is too much. You got to boil it down for me, man Like again I get you're going for something complicated Uh, but This is a lot Okay So like Yeah, this is a lot to take in man. Like you've got eight questions in here And then a lot of explanation to unpack it So instead Like your your questions down here are relatively straight thoughts on suggested ways to tweak the scheme How is the tonal variation so far anything else stand out to pay attention to? Okay, I appreciate you're trying to make it directed and clear enough But we've got a brevity is the soul of wit. Okay Now let's talk about the color scheme So I get what you're going for uh with this kind of almost sort of reflection situation of the light Um The thing that jumps out of me In that regard is i'm not sure the yellow Works here uh I understand the need for balance And that's we've got a lot going on here The challenge is this yellow here in the shield Right where they're all kind of together worse. Yeah, there you go There's the shot of them kind of the theory of them all lined up as it were right um I feel like it will work if we desaturate and smooth things So like I'm not sure if the yellow is meant to be paint on their shields or something else Um, if it's meant to be actually just paint on their shields the challenge is you made it look kind of like light And so it's kind of throwing me because it feels like it's some kind of reflection slash Anti reflection there, right? And I feel like if that's the case it should be more smooth um The uh yeah, so The shield lames and dark central boss pattern colors combo designed to try for a frazier wilcox esk A related swaying effect when there's enough of them I'm not sure what any of that means Okay, uh, don't know how well it'll work. Let's just look it up. Shall we all right. Let's figure out what he's talking about Frazier wilcox swaying effect The color dependent frazier wilcox illusion Holy moses man Oh where they feel this thing feels like it's moving Even when it's not like if you sort of your eyes look aside Yeah, it makes you feel like it's moving for a second Okay Got it. All right Uh That's gonna be nearly impossible to achieve. I'm warning you right now because You don't like what makes that effect sell is that you can control the viewing angle in a two-dimensional image, right? And here i'm not sure that that's really going to happen Now that being said the color scheme of like the purple blue and yellow is fine Um, it will work The and I like some of the bright contrast and things here Honestly, what I would do is I would kind of not worry about trying to achieve a like Uh, a crazy eye effect, you know and just go like let's just nail the fundamentals here. Okay um Don't shoot from half court when you want to increase your free throw percentage Uh, so because what I really see is the opportunities are is if we smooth out the yellow to purple on the shield And make it look reflective in that way like you did with your sword That's actually a really cool effect I like that idea of that color scheme being sort of the reflected light On the shield and then I would actually bring some purple back down in here on this side as well Kind of smooth this out make this more of a transition make this more of a transition that kind of a thing Now as to the yellow piece then in the center of this thing, I would honestly still Probably more turn that Probably turn this into the the mauve that you've got the sort of Purple-ish tone. Yeah, I think plum is probably the right answer Um, I would turn that into the plum and I would get that more desaturated because the yellow is so bright again Of yellow is a very powerful color. We need to be careful with yellow Don't put yellow in a place that at the bottom of the miniature where it's so dominant That people like your eye is just going to be drawn here toward the bottom I understand part of this is covered by the shield, right? But it's still there. It's still drawing a lot of attention So the my my basic answer is This would look better in the mauve And make yellow kind of your pop color make it a thin band here I like the gem put it a little bit into the blade put it a little bit to this thing on the top Good nice pop color, especially up at the top drawing attention around here Asus because when the shield arm is here, then you'll have this nice triangle of yellow light Drawing attention up to the top and I think it'll work fine. So Yeah, that's going to be my my big advice for you I not to smash your dream to my friend, but you know, that's we're we're trying to We're trying to fly when we should still be walking. So that's my best advice Okay All righty next up Dave Kindenburg So basically looking for feedback on the non-metallic metal and anything else you see uh, sure So I I did look this over. I love the armor I love the the non-metallic metal steel all of that is selling for me. That's working The gold is not it's the same thing. I said back at the beginning many people I've said this so far Gold doesn't go far enough doesn't have enough one and two and it needs a little more five as well more contrast Your contrast on the steel is great your contrast on the gold needs to go farther The other thing that jumps out of me is just the hair like she has this big beautiful hair See everything I've already said about hair so far in this review, right? It should still have a halo of light It should still have directional lighting stuff like that factored into it, which it does not right now so There you go. Uh, hope that helps Okay Next up, uh, Tristan Uh, okay, so Basically, he's like advice on when you paint and highlight and true metallic How do you place your highlights? Well without the shine of the metal messing you up The key is you use matte inks to really control that light and make sure it's in the right place um, and you Uh, you what you use a lot of back and forth techniques So we're going to see it when we go into this picture here. You can see the line Right in these lines What you want to do is you want to use a lot of stippling or wet blending or stuff like that or glazing back and forth You can use 10 different blending techniques. It doesn't matter But you keep working it back and forth over each other so that it gets really up in each other's business and gets smooth right And you introduce matte black ink to create your deep shadows and gain control of the light that will Stop the reflections from being out of your control So that's that's the best answer Um, I've got a couple different videos on this some recently So I would go check those out watch them again, and you'll see how I kind of tackle the various elements of it Um, actually if you go watch like the um The shading true metallic metal and a non-metallic style revisited like maybe 165 I do it with gold But it'll show you very much what I'm talking about in a wet blending way Okay Farron ogreid miramadan and just overall advice is appreciated mainly on the tmm. Sure Uh, so Uh, the answer is more variation in it. See the same video as I've mentioned already So 73 for and the one I just mentioned like 165 Um, that's going to be your your answer there Do avoid this kind of direct over exposed lighting like if I can see this shadow line He's hit with too much light Right, so you want to filter that light point it slightly in a different direction If you've got coffee filters in your house, just put a coffee filter over whatever this light is That's all you need piece paper paper towel like you've got the tools Just so that way the light gets softer Now, uh as to the other feedback and things I noticed the horns again look kind of samey Again, we want to pick out those elements make sure they're visually distinct same thing with the hands and the fingies Um, those look a little bit kind of like they're they're just kind of fading A darkness it's cool having a color scheme on the ogre that fades out gw did it I know travarian did one But he still worked highlights into the knuckles and stuff right it needs to come up and do a highlighted version of that alternative color Same thing with the face the face should be the center of attention We don't have enough highlights and things in here drawing our eye in So popping up the highlights on things like the top of the nose the bridge of the eyebrows the tops the cheeks That kind of stuff is where you want to go overall. I like the color scheme I think the sort of pink to white scheme is really cool. I think you've got you executed on that really nicely So I think that looks great Okay, jamie foster, uh working on the use of color nuances here to add them to the faint Cogs and cloak feedback on whether the color variations are working. Sure Uh, so let's take a look Yes, I think they are I like that that in there. I can see the the hints of purple I think honestly where we have some opportunity is in stuff like the hair Um working in some color like that Maybe a little bit more into the skin Maybe a little bit more into the sword that kind of stuff The contrast on the cloak and the the additional colors. I think work well So I think all that's successful. I like the little bit of purple and stuff in the cogs The steel still feels a little bit flat As does kind of the skin and the hair feels like it could have a color worked into it as well So that would be my best advice for you, but overall this is super cool Very neat fig need execution. I like the extra colors in there. You're going the right direction Okay Nolan feedback on tonal variation blending skin face details. Sure So the answer is well first off we need to you know go back and watch my how to paint eyes Because we we need to make sure that it's dark Around the eyes like she's got that surprise look because that doesn't isn't there We want to make sure we're still We're we're a lot farther on the tonal variation is the answer The yellow is still very flat the pink is still very flat Take a picture of this in black and white like you've seen some other people do Like take a picture in color and then go to your phone and switch to mono So it's black and white and you'll see that this whole thing looks gray Okay Like we definitely need to push that a lot farther if you look at again go watch the attached video Go look at some of the ones where I've talked about them having the right amount of contrast and tonal variation the skin And in the cloth and you'll see kind of what that looks like. So Uh, but but yes the answer is we definitely need to be pushing that contrast up higher Especially on the pink the yellow the skin that kind of stuff Okay, uh, so, uh Oh boy, uh maché I'm gonna take a swing at it and say that's it Uh, he's doing this piece based on hero, which I know exactly the scene you're talking about. I love this scene Uh, even though hero was like lesser crouching tiger hidden dragons And I would rank it behind that and house of flying daggers, but you know, that's okay, whatever Uh, still an awesome scene. Um Questions are is the composition visually interesting is this painting style interesting and appealing does this diorama succeed as inspired by So let's take a look. I want I want to get to the big zoom out shot There you go. Okay. Nope. That's we'll leave it on the video and just have that in the background. There you go. That's fine okay So The number one thing here is the water is a little too still So like this these ripples have been kicked up, but I'd love to see slightly more ripples like water's never this still Even on a still lake like this in in the movie. There'd be like slight variations in the water Especially where she's kicked if she's kicking away with the size There'll be little ones kind of going out in front of it Um, I think that you also didn't need this much space So diorama type of thing you're always wanting to tell the most amount of story in the least amount of space That is the goal. So this should be cut and this should be cut We need about like shave two inches off of each end of that that okay um Now, you know, the other things still apply of Basically things that I've said already like tonal variation in the skin in the dress and stuff like that I think that all works Compositionally, I think it's great I think the blue and the the cold sort of wintry theme that she's in against the water very much sets an environmental tone And uh, and that sells So I think that that's fine. We just need to push the the variation In all aspects in the contrast up to make the piece more visually compelling. So there you go. Hope that helps Okay, great, uh Gurgley Great, great. Yeah, sure. Why not? Here's the breeder of the awarding nemesis the opinion on the red osl It's coming from a light source in the front of the figure like an emergency spaceship. Yeah, sure Okay, so here's the issue. It doesn't go far enough like you have this second green thing here I understand but like let's look at him from the front. This is a light in front of him, right? and None of this or here. Is it all touched by that light? Now, I understand it's a weak light This part here like why does this not have some of the light on it, right? Like this we can tell the whole story from this image, right? Because everything that I can see right now if this is if with this photo is where the angle of the light is coming from Then everything here should have some infusion of this color into it Even if it's weak But then it would still be any kind of highlight would be in that orange tone not in that cold blue extremely soft ambient light tone Okay So like light doesn't just hit this angle and stop It would bounce up off of here like see all this this would bounce down Light bounces off of everything. So you need to kind of like look and see where is this light going to softly diffuse? Light isn't we think of it like a lot of times when people learn osl They think like what I'm trying to do is this is my light source I'm going to make a beam coming out of it and if it hits this thing then this is lit If it doesn't hit this thing it's not lit, but that's not how light works, right? Light is softly diffused over everything it bounces off of every surface So when it's coming from an an area you want to think of it more like it's easier If you think of it like a wave, I mean light is both a particle and a wave But if you think of it like a wave crashing over something and flowing around it to some degree, right? Very hard lines will create shadows But then that's when we put in secondary reflections of the warm light because it bounced off of you know Nearby skin or something like that. Okay So when I come to to this piece, I think this here area is more successful. You deepen the shadows I think you could go deeper honestly because this is a soft ambient light Barely lighting something against a Something bright so like this could be more in shadowed Is my answer and really rely on a subtle very weak blue light back here as bright as this is It tells me this should not be having this effect Okay So there you go. I hope that helps Okay next up uh, Amy brings us the uh A chaos rhino Said very new to this level of free hand feedback on how you can improve it Feel the capture of the second edition chaos codex Sure So first of all, Amy you mentioned like I could have done a couple of these things Uh, yep, you could have My I'll say to you what I say to everybody Anytime you think that something is a case that you've got a gut feeling that something's there Right, you're usually right. Trust your gut now Okay, that aside, right? Uh, let's talk about your edge highlights You want to go back with the black and thin some of those out some of these are a little too thick So you just go back with the black. It's the when you're doing this kind of like edging It's not just a key of of applying it. It's applying it and then applying back the other color To make them nice and thin. Okay Uh, now as to the actual free hand, I dig it. I dig all this free hand Again, probably some of it needs to be cleaned up like I noticed on some of this We feel like see how this isn't kind of quite A straight arrow and and things like that just a little tiny inconsistencies You just want to make sure you're going back pay attention to those things and really just You know making sure each one is clean and sharp now this thing on top. This is really cool Uh, this is great. You did a great job of capturing this from the codex. I mean this looks fantastic Wonderful interpretation of that original codex image onto the top of this thing So I think this is great. Um, it looks like you were real clean real sharp here So I really like how this one came out. I think you nailed this Okay All right, but yeah, great job So I think that you know, like some of your hazard stripes They aren't kind of as clean as they could quite as clean as they could be And that's just a matter of again going back and making sure very So that final step of sharpening those lines and making sure they're all nice and clean Okay, uh First time you joined the event. Well, welcome. Uh, did you best on this mangler's quag? But I find a lack of visual interest feedback on how to pop it up. Sure So I think this is really nice Like I think you did a really good job with this mangler's quag The elements that jump out to me are like the teeth. Let's actually here we go We'll do this with the black and white This lower when you did really interesting teeth this top one. They're really boring I'm not sure why that was maybe we just didn't want to do it because it's a lot of bones um, but I think the squig himself I like the color. I think that really pops with the blue lips I think one of the ways you could do it is having a little bit of blue as your shadow color on this bone Like work it in there work it in here. Um, you could push the highlight up in this area of the face even a little bit higher Uh, to really make sure that that's interesting and visually compelling Uh, but overall I think this is really good stuff. I I like the lower squig More than I like the top one. It feels like this when you win all the way on Like I the yellow feels a little brighter down here The texture on the teeth the texture on the lips and stuff like that. I I like that a lot um But I think that's probably what I would say things like the leather you could do it add a little that they're holding onto That strap could be a little more textured something like that, but uh, but on the whole I think this is good stuff Yeah, I don't I don't I think you've got a good amount of pop in here So I think the bone is a big opportunity Um, maybe adding a little more of like the yellow into the goblin's cloak back here Uh, so that like he has some some Flames or checks or daggs or something and I think that could those could be other little touches that'll make it pop out Okay, next up Sean Rogers Uh cypher lord, uh, trying non-metallic metal glazing and getting good contrast Sure interested in feedback on the flesh and the overall balance of the scheme Uh, so the flesh is flat. I mean that's that's the short answer So like we can see it from here All right, we just there's a little bit of shadow. You're not you're not totally flat But we need to go farther So we go back to this one. This is a nice way to look at it We need to see those soft red tones purple tones stuff like that more in there a little bit more of like I understand You probably want him to be a little more pale. He's not exactly like super tan. I'm good with that Um, but those soft tones like that can worked into those shadows is really gonna help make him feel more alive Okay So uh now overall composition. I think he's great Uh, I think your non-metallic metal is looking pretty sharp The helmet needs to come up a little higher, especially on the the light catch points like the top of the helm When we look here, we need to get into a little more of the white, uh, just very lightly Uh, but on the whole I think this is coming together really well Sean So yeah, I'd say pop that flesh up a little more push it and get in a little more Uh add in a little more tonal variation through variation of hue and you'll be in a good place Okay robin winter, uh support girl guard, uh So basically uh done his practice for every heavily corroded metals and bone looking for critique on the metals And how to make the models pop a bit more Sure, so I think we could add in some more like this guy doesn't have a rusty weapon But just adding in like you've got you really went all out with on some of these where it's just like This is everything altogether You don't necessarily need like the the copper corrosion color and the rust corrosion corrosion color I know like Darren Latham did a video where he used both of them But the key is if you're going to do that they have to be very much in balance So the dominant color should be the rust and then you should be using the teal just in like the low shadows or something to just Basically add as reflected light visual interest in the shadows These upper spears. It doesn't feel like they were done in the same way Like this one doesn't feel like it has anything going on at all So I would also say that with the rust you want to work in a lot of different stuff. Again, check out the videos I mentioned earlier The iron jaws video will be very helpful again 103 to 105 or the earlier rusted weapons video Rusted corroded weapons. That's in somewhere in the early somewhere in the first hundred. I don't know There's a playlist And I think that'll really help because what you want to get is a larger variation of tone throughout there That is to say like Some soft browns then some stronger browns that some deep browns then some brown oranges Then some bright oranges around the edges and where rust would really collect Right. So the key is to have a like a logic to it Right like here it just it's scattered, which is appropriate. You want it kind of random, but there's too much teal There's not enough rust in the pits where it would be those are pits because they've rusted and fallen out That's how pits get in metal There was a flaw in the metal water got in it corroded. It turned to rust. It felt flaked off That's where that pit comes from, right? So that would be the most corroded area, right? So there you go. Hope that helps cool stuff Look forward to the future submissions Okay robin decided to give his his uh, is the intro bit of arrest playing with escaven looking for uh Feedback on the skin tone Okay All right, and how to predict that and how to get the lighting going on it. Sure So this is a weird figure And you know for the most part like I do hate this rat over so much. Um For the most part, I think it's okay. Uh, I like I don't think you're I don't think you're bad Actually, that's that sounded way too harsh. Sorry. I think it's good I think you could go farther and where we're actually lacking is the highlights. Okay So you asked where to place the highlights? I mean, it's a volumetric highlight, right? So Your light is coming from some direction. Let's say above And that is going to mean that the brightest lights are here on top of this muscle and here on top of this muscle And here on top of this part of his head and here's part of his ear, right? like it's Hold it up to a bright light and that'll give you a rough sketch of where the brightest lights should fall I think you've got some good reds and tones like that. I think we honestly just need to push the highlights up That's probably my best advice for you Uh, when it comes to the skin getting those actual higher highlights in there So I hope that helps Okay, next up, uh Uh, Jonas, Jonas. I don't know. We'll say Jonas. We'll say Jonas Uh Try to focus on texture in the cloth and making the plasma more interesting But also appreciate general feedback if something else comes to mind. Sure. So we had looked at the main guys before All right Plasma is definitely brighter. It's good smooth it out a little more a little more light blue things like that Uh, the robes look a lot more interesting and textured this time So my next challenge for you is going to be on the metal Your your steel is still rather washed and flat, especially around the weapon We want to be focusing more in on restoring some of those highlights Adding some different tones to it would also help getting some colors in there You could work some blue tones into that metal It would help balance out the bright plasma reactor and things like that So that's going to be my next challenge for you But I think we definitely met it on like the plasma and the The leather so I think that's looking a lot better. So yeah, great great and great Implementation of that feedback Okay Tebow, Tebow, sorry. Sorry, Tebow Uh, basically this is he was supposed to be in attendance at his first golden demon and this was going to be his unit. So What could you improve and perhaps, you know, prepare them for further down the road? Yeah, it's a great question. So I think these guys look good. Um, I really like them I think you did a really nice job with them So the biggest thing I'm going to say for you is just smoothing and refinement So like on his helmet in some of these blends here on the copper is where I noticed it some in the silver here Um, I think you know where we go from the purple to the blue Uh, some of those are a bit stark the armor looks fantastic. I love the texture I love the implementation of the corrosion. I think that looks really nice Honestly, my biggest piece of feedback for you has to do with just smoothing out those blends We're finding it making sure this silver pops up all the way. Maybe he's adding some some Uh, other colors down in the shadows of the metal. Maybe working a little bit of brown into the deep shadows Right that kind of thing. This is old born rusted stuff. So it shouldn't necessarily make sense that it has real bright to dark just gray only like Fear gray only weapons. They should have a color and in general that'll be clean equals and clean and cold equals blue Dirty and and old equals yellow or brown or cp or something like that So work that kind into the tones there, but overall this is great stuff. I think you really nailed it on the armor Uh, I think the color scheme itself is fantastic. I love the purple to the blue. I think that's that's Freakin great. Uh, we just need to smooth those two together some Okay Mart's new painter has been enjoying the hobby Uh, love some general advice on the miniature Sure, so he is rather small. Uh, my first advice is probably grab some bigger things to paint It's really tough to learn on stuff this small. I'll be honest Um, now as to what to fix first off make sure you do Other than the metallics make sure you're matting your stuff down reds are naturally glossy I can see the gloss You generally want to make sure things are matte pick up some ak interactive ultra matte varnish That'll really help a lot into getting that done To make sure your elements are well separated. So I'll give you an example here on the ear We just kind of ran red to here and green to here, but there's no dark line in between There would be a separation there make sure there's a nice dark line there Those kind of things make paint jobs feel paint jobs being matte And paint jobs being clean and well separated between light lines and dark lines is what makes paint jobs feel clean, okay The next big piece of advice for you. I have is just on tonal variation. It's the same thing I've said many times in this review Where if anybody ever played a drinking game where they drank every time I said that they would be dead So please don't But you know again popping up taking the skin adding more tones You want to run that full gamut if you watch the attached video? I've got it'll help you out understanding Exactly what I'm talking about there as far as light and shadow and how to get that that extra contrast in the mini Okay, lee first post in the pmp monthly review felt brave this month So converting over the sisters of battle Uh, and so he says he knows he needs the blue and gold of the wings to have more tonal variation. Good excellent Uh, all of a sudden realized the wings were so distracting until I fully assembled it. What would you recommend? Uh, to turn them in manamina muppet pink purple into something less red than destroying first of all manamina Okay, anybody out there who in your head went to do do do do You're you're a good person. All right, so the answer here is thankfully very simple lee By the way, I love the color scheme. These are great wings to put on top of my I also use different wings for my Seraphim, so I'm down with that But the uh, I didn't use these but these are a great replacement So, um The answer is thankfully pretty simple. You have a primary light up here going in a shadow and then a secondary reflection Let's play around with that a little different. Let's move the darker part up here Okay, so push your dark up leave your pink in a smaller area because this is the eye catching part Let's bring that darker purple up a little bit And then let's take this and bring the lower part out to like the same blue as her armor So fade from this dark purple into the sort of blue steel here not actually metal paint, but you know what I'm saying this kind of color Down into a white at the tips So then she's haloed on both sides By this blue white and then you have that bright tone just kind of in the middle It'll make it much more in line because you shrink out the bright magenta. It'll make it much more in line with the magenta on the Clothing that she's wearing the actual like robe and will help bring the whole thing in balance But overall, I love the conversion. I think she's super cool. So great stuff All right, greg a source tester generally happy with a few exceptions Still going figuring out glazing with miniature ghost hints over Alcohol gold going for a quicker scheme, but one that still pops on the table Sure So I think that if you're if you're having trouble ghost hints can be really tough to glaze with Over there. So you might also want to look into some dollar roundy fw inks. Those could really help I think my biggest piece of advice for you is make sure we get a little more texture onto the edge of the scales You can do that with like a quick very soft as I mentioned earlier a dry brush Take a nice makeup brush work almost all the paint off Just give them a real nice light light light touch lots of strokes Lots of strokes that you want almost no paint on there and you're just going Okay, there we have our color. That's how long it should take you Okay, stuff like that. I think would be really nice But overall, I think if you're going for sort of a quick fun scheme tabletop standard, I think you're you know Yeah, this this will work fine for you So there you go. I hope that helps and good stuff. Hope to see more Okay, adrian Looking for general feedback trying to get sort of toward a more competition level job Sure So I'm going to say the same thing. I've said a couple times which is we need to focus more on defining the individual elements Because a lot of this just kind of bleeds together So like the the the lines and the shades that are separating everything is kind of messy at some points You see how like you're see this line here how it's kind of fat and here right here here Here right we don't want this kind of messiness that makes it overall seem more more cluttered We want to have nice sharp well defined dark to light to dark Same with things like around the eyes around the hand around the sword now Looking at the black and white You can see that we've still got a lot of room to run on tonal variation on the blue Like you're you're doing better. You can see here, right? So let's go here on the side This looks a little better, right because I can see some here But we've definitely got more deeper shadows we could put in here We don't need to run all the way to non metallic or something But we can still push that contrast a little more you have this plate here in the middle like Oppositely defined for some reason. I'm not sure why that if light's coming from one of these directions It's going to come from one of these directions. You don't need to Like you you out clevered yourself there Um either the lights come from here the lights come from here We don't like it's not sometimes we do that on a sword But that's because they're they're at completely different angles, right? And so one is hitting the reflecting light from the ground and one is it's catching the light from above I think that the the biggest distraction here is kind of the purple peachy tone that you've got It doesn't feel like it's well defined, especially with some of this is the sculpt working against you by the way So like if you're going to use that it needs to be very clearly Boxed in to where like in the eyes, for example, I would need a dark line around it on the sword I want like dark lines separating that pinky purple from whatever the sword is made of right So make sure those elements are all crafted to be Individual and separate and I think that'll really help make the paint job look more clean and sharp. Okay all right Christopher first time submitting welcome, uh, so looking for uh, some feedback on Uh, getting this guy. He's just looking to paint up. Uh, it says paint to a display standard. Okay. That's still very high but all right, uh Still have them usable in games. Absolutely. What can you deliver a practice on? Sure. So I've got an easy answer for you I look these guys over earlier. So the easy answer here is, um The your texture on the shell on their carapace looks great Where we're let down is with the skin the skin and the brain is far too samey Um, and you can see everything you need to see in this black and white picture Again, I love when people submit to me the black and white because it makes it so much easier to say what I'm talking about This is all the same color That's it. Like it needs something It needs more value contrast and As a point of reality when we go back to the color it needs more variation of hue, right? So red tones purple tones. It's still a fleshy sack thing same with the the brain ultimately, right? Uh, so that would be my my next thing I would absolutely direct you toward for working on there. Okay All right, ryan, uh ryan had a lot of questions. Okay Trying some osl The fingers weren't carved out. How do you handle it faces? Uh, sure. So let's have tackle this in order osl I would go watch the osl video again because like Part of the trick to this is It's going to cast a roughly even light. It's also going to cast a shadow Generally, you don't want to try to reflect a heavy osl over red It's not going to sell real well. You want it to reflect over something neutral. Okay, so that's just number one You're not you're not doing yourself any favors basically two, um Uh How do you properly osl fire on top of red? You don't glaze it's you build in each of the points of highlight like the yellow and the orange Strongly with paint and then you bring in the cloth through the red glaze back Okay, but then again, you also need to then shade to something cold away from the fire So that red needs to integrate like a purple color which we'll be bringing in blue Right and have heavy shadows all of these went okay When you cast a light you you create shadows This would be darkly shadowed. This would be really darkly shadowed every line here Everything has belt under here all of this all of that would have deep deep lines of shadow in it right Now as to the eyes again same thing. Yes, you should never see white on either side of the eye Eyes don't work like that. Okay this you can see that because i'm surprised. Whoa When I look at you normally Okay, you cannot see the white on either side of my eyes Moreover, there is a lot of darkness around my eye not just because i'm tired and there's all these like rings around my eyes But also look at this dark line around my eyelids right That's what makes eyes not look like cartoony and surprised You know lots of darkness you want eyelids you want that defined and you should not have any white showing above or below Unless you're unless you're trying to do something very specific like somebody looking down like that right How do you do fingers black line you've got to build it back in you've got to paint free hand lines back in between The fingers it shouldn't actually be black it should be like a deep purple or something But that's what you want to do and you want to recreate the shadow to highlight like the bottom of the finger Is going to be darker and it's going to go up to the top, you know, what does that look like paint that? right okay Faces so basically like um Yeah, I mean there's just a lot to faces I have several videos that include me painting faces. I'll certainly do more in the future Um kujo has a great video on painting faces. Honestly, that's what I would direct you kujo Did a really really great video on painting faces that I love so you could go check that out if you just search for kujo painting faces you'll you'll find it and um Yeah, and that that'll probably help you out But the key is again Like just google real images of people's faces and look at like the color as I talked about earlier, right? There's a lot of highlights here. There's a lot of reds the the traditional old master way was this is yellow This is red. This is blue on a male figure on a female. It's this is yellow. This is red And there's a t-zone here that's hot like faces are a huge Huge thing But you want to create more value more red in the cheeks more shadow more shadow under the eyes around here that kind of thing now um As to the what to varnish Ultra matter for the whole thing you don't you don't want anything satin over an osl effect osl needs to be more matte than anything else because if the light reflects on its own then it's not osl anymore Right that light that's reflected is going to interfere with where you have told me the viewer There is light part of what you're trying to do when you do osl is you're creating the light You're telling me the viewer this is the where the light is If I pick up the figure and I see a bright white reflection from the light above it right here That's where the light is not where you painted it Okay, so there you go. Hope that helps ryan and gives you some stuff to think about there Okay, uh long First review submission second finished painted miniature. Oh, welcome. Okay, great Uh overall color scheme Yeah, I think that the overall color scheme is fine, but you need to balance that more so going to the yellow here is cool We just need to do the same with the ghosts again Anytime we use super bright colors like yellow those have to be in balance anytime we use those highly saturated colors They need to be up top there. So like bring the ghosts faces up to that same yellow It would snap this piece right into into focus By the way, you know, what else it would do draw the attention up here to the head where you're trying to get attention Which is your number two question. How do you get this back in attention? Well, there's a couple things One you could have glowing yellow eyes So that could be another place we could put the yellow That would certainly draw the attention back up and help to balance it, right You could brighten this up with a little more white or ivory under the sort of leather you're going for And then and have the osl you do both All right, but you need the deep shadows. So again go watch my video on glowing eyes if you want to see how to do that Um And he's mentioned that you try to do the smoke as I guide like sort of as a wet blend Uh, but the wet paint does not stay in one place and kind of mix mash flow on each other It's too thin then you need to work thicker Um to get that wet blending then is the answer if the paint is moving that much it's too thin So there you go. And then how to make a clean paint job the answer is uh Again as I've talked about many times a separation of lines. So if uh, here's an easy example. Let's go into the photo itself See how your brown comes down here. That's dirty See how this doesn't have like as much of a dark separation between it as it could That's what makes it look dirty, right? So each of these elements needs to have Like where the ropes go in this should be generally dark around it The ropes should have some light right here on it coming out If each of the elements feels deliberate also by the way as I mentioned the other thing that makes a clean paint job is a matte paint job Yeah, I can see a lot of like satin here where things are still glossy That makes things look unpolished because light starts bouncing into shadows Like you hold it up and there's light in a shadow and it just looks weird and your brain goes Something's wrong here when you mattle that stuff out. That doesn't happen. Okay So the clean alternation of dark and light, you know, make sure your paint job is nice and and Sort of, you know, cleaned up for just paint mistakes like that and then run this up to be dark And then we have the edge of this cloth light Everything's matted Boom, that's going to go a long way and it's going to feel like a more clean paint job So there we go long. I certainly hope that helps With that that brings us to the end of the month. So that was a long one Um, we'll see how we get on with the months to come I don't know if I can keep doing 80 or 100 or whatever this ends up as in the future So we'll see We might I might need to have like Some kind of way to alternate this but for now, it's cool. I do enjoy doing this very much. It's just it's also extremely exhausting Um, just I mean like physically tiring not like in any negative way Thank you so much to everybody who submitted beautiful work. Everybody who submitted is absolutely brave Uh, it's you know, it's a big deal to have your stuff get evaluated publicly And you know talk about and being and asking somebody to help you find flaws That is a measure of bravery Uh, so very well done That is excellent way to take it. That is an excellent way to take a step on your hobby journey And I certainly hope that I've helped you do so You're all wonderful. You're all wonderful hobbyists. Thank you to everybody Whether it was your first or second mini or your thousandth or two thousandth You know, I I want you to really uh Give yourself a pat on the back and raise your hand up Go go go jedd nelson from the end of the breakfast club. You did it excellent work this month Uh, so thank you very much everybody. Thank you all very much out there for watching Uh, and as always if people who watch this have more questions or comments or things like that Feel free to throw those down in the comments below if you want to join again Link is down below. Please do answer all of the questions so we can improve you get in here I like doing this once a month But as always the key is for you to give the your The feedback is if you remember this community, please do give feedback when questions are asked be positive Be helpful be respectful of the fact that everybody is on a different point in their own journey And and help them take their next step whatever that is Uh, that can just make someone's day. This community is built on positivity on sharing and I want to make sure we all keep that And I see so much of that every day and I love it. So please keep up all the great work Thank you everyone. Have a great great great rest of your uh, your month and uh, stay safe out there Bye everybody