 Hello everybody and welcome to another PMP end of month review. Well, what is this? Well, this is when we sit down at the end of the month and we go through all of the submissions into the end of month review event. Each month we invite our members to submit figures along a certain theme and then I with targeted requests for feedback, I then review them, provide that feedback pretty straightforward. It's a lot of fun, and I just want to say right up top. Thank you to everybody who submitted. So what we've got now tier is single figure this month. So this is for sort of normal size, not non-larger scale single figures. As usual you can submit up to one per month and you can, you know, ask to please give me some a quick, very quick short description of what you're looking for feedback on. So if you're interested in joining the PMP, hey, guess what? The link is right down below in the video. We'd love to have you. We welcome everybody from beginners to masters. Anyone interested in taking their next step on their hobby journey? You're welcome to join our positive hobby-focused community. So with that being said, let's jump on into this. So we begin with Robin and he said he's painting for display and possible very light gaming would love feedback on what to practice and improve. Tried to push myself to get more variation of hue into the skin tones, unsure about the back, and so on and so forth. Okay, so Robin, here's my basic feedback on you. I've looked all these over beforehand. One, we need more contrast on the not skin parts. So like the bone is very flat, the red cloak is very flat, the fur is very flat, right? Like I understand the lighting you're trying to create there, but it doesn't have enough distinction. If that's true, if the lights up here, then I need more of this in shadow. I need more of the individual, like if we're talking about display painting, which is how I'm going to judge this. The individual hairs need to be picked out within lines. The cloak itself needs to have more variance. Like it basically you have two shadows and then it just goes to a flat red the rest of the place. The bone is too flat. There's too much of just sort of a single kind of ridge color there. Like it's all highlighted very similarly. There's no transition in the actual bone. And then on the skin, it is the the best part and it's clear you did a lot of work. Part of the challenge is if we look at this picture, a lot of your shadows, your five. Remember one is always the brightest color, five is the deepest color. A lot of your shadows are too thin. They jump from basically five to three. You don't have any four. So you have all the muscles picked out and they're completely surrounded. And that's not what you want. There can be undershadows that pick them out. And then, but you're in your highest highlights can be relegated to the individual muscles. But something like the four and three should be connecting the muscle tissue on the top. It's kind of a weird thing to fully work through in your brain because you have to balance it. But effectively if you think about the abs right here, this shouldn't be a shadow running all the way up here. There should be like some of the mid-tone flesh tone connecting these two. And then the top of this abs should have the highest highlight and the top of this abs should have the highest highlight. So what's here right now you have it as a five. The shadow between the one and the one needs to be a three. Whereas the shadow below the four needs to be a five. So there's my feedback for you. I hope that helps Robin. All right. Next up, first manager pain entirely in oils. So says, you know, use it for gaming, but still trying to push toward a high tabletop standard. Maybe display. We're not at display. I'll say that. So we'd love feedback on the overall contrast and the skin and the highlights. I mean, there's not enough highlights. The contrast on this is way too low. We are at like, there are two levels of highlights here. I need to go up to a five. I mean, we're at like, we're very, very, very short. Way, way, way, way, way more contrast on the skin, on the bone, on the metal, on the hair, everything. Like we're just too low on contrast. And I suspect the reason is because you used oils and you did one pass. So oils want to pull everything together. They get very flat as they dry. When you paint completely in oils, you have to do at least two passes, maybe more. So you've got to stretch everything out. You want to go way over what you think in the contrast. Like you need to go super high contrast on your initial sketch with oils. Like, I mean, if this is where you would be with acrylics, highest highlight and lowest low, you need to be at like this on oils. Okay. Because once you blend them together, they're going to come down to this. So then once that's dry, then you go in with your second pass and you start feathering in higher highlights and feathering in deeper shadows. And that's really my main piece of feedback for you on this one. Everything is too drawn together. It feels like the oils just pulled everything in together and we didn't go back and pick it all back out. And you can see it, like I said, in the leather, the skin, the horns, the hair, it's kind of all of it. So that's my best advice for you. Hope that helps. Okay. Next up, Ivan. Go with this model is to make a competition level squad. So I'm aiming for a very high standard, but not impossibly high. How is the nonmetallic metal working out? Is there something you improve with the base? What are the tricks and ways to improve one's free hand for human size models? Okay. A lot of questions there. So how is the nonmetallic metal working out? Sure. Infinity models are often done in nonmetallic metal. And the answer is we're not really at competition level yet. And I'll tell you why when we go right here. Stuff like this being very rough, rough, too rough. Like I understand you want brushed steel. Fine. Cool. That's all good. You can do that, but you can't have spots like this. You can't have spots like this, like this, like this, like this, like this, right? Where the transition is so hard and scrappy things that look better are things like up here on the on the writer where you've transitioned through all of the colors. The other thing you've got to watch for when you're doing something like this, it's about creating light lines down the miniature. So what I mean is here, your light isn't happening in any like readable way. It's just kind of around. It's rough and it's just sort of around. Whereas what you would want on this leg is for like the light to not only respect the shape, but then to have to create a light line here. So this is lit and then here and then this side here and then this going down here like a more vertical this side over here and then this back a boot and back a boot here. So you're creating a shaft of light because what you're doing when you're doing nonmetallic metal is you're creating a specular highlight. Where would the viewers eye see the light when they look from that angle, right? And so, you know, that's kind of always the main challenge. So I think amongst like we need to get our highlights more in order. And then secondly, we need to really smooth these out. Like I get the brush deal thing. I like doing little hashes too. But you've got to still go in and glaze over top of them. You got to do a lot of different little tashes. It takes forever and to smooth it all down. Now, as to the base, you know, how much the base actually matters varies by painting competition. The biggest problem here is you have a road and it's just gray. Like I don't see many just gray roads. Roads have dirt, roads have color, right? Because nature creates color. You've got a sewer, that's wet, that's going to have green and moss and things like that around it. You've got places where water would run into rivulets. Hence, there would be things like brown dirt and stuff like that that came in the rain or whatever. And then, you know, dried up and left those, left the dirt stain there, stuff like that. Okay. So that's kind of the big things that jump out at me when I was looking at the piece. Now, how to do free hands on human size models. You keep practicing them over and over again. And when you do the individual one, you just refine and refine and refine and refine and refine and refine until you like what it is. I wish there was a better way. But it's that if there's ever a game that was just practiced. Boy, oh boy, is that it. So there you go, Ivan. That's my feedback for you. I hope that helps. All right. Next up, Jared. Any feedback is welcome. Just looking to refine a skill. So you got good old Omega red here. Yeah, Omega looks pretty nice. I like the placement of the specular highlights on the non-metallic. This feels good up top. Again, you're creating the light line. So this is what I was just talking about. So that that sells for me. I find the color transitions in your in his cables, tentacles, whatever, to be pretty convincing. The I understand you're going for the yellow hair probably, because it's a little more comic book style. That's fine. I would still work a little more blue gray or something like that into the skin. It feels a little it feels a little flat. So that would be my my main piece of pushback like Omega red skin is pretty white. I understand it's pretty comic booky. But when you're doing like ultra high variation metal like that, the hair is flat and the skin is flat. The red works for me. Okay, it feels like that needs to get a little more life into it as well. So that would be my sort of main area of feedback for you. Hope that helps. All right. So let's keep going. All right. So Alexis, hey, Vince, here's one of my killer boss. I think this is the best I can do for now how to push further, especially on the general what can I add? Sure. So a note on the pictures, don't take pictures like this. This is very bad. Like this is way, way, way, way, way too direct of lighting. There are many articles. I have videos. There's an article on games workshop website. Please take the time to look how to take proper photos. If you can see a shadow like this in the background, I cannot evaluate the miniature because it is being blown out and overexposed by light, right? You if you can see this directive of shadow, you have too much light on it. Okay. So that's like I in a digital format, well, where all I have is the picture, all I can say is please take the time to actually put in good pictures. If you want feedback, please make the pictures good. Okay. So now stuff that I can see. All right. The skin looks nice. It's hard for like, again, everything's overexposed. So some opinions may be off. The I like the skin the best. I like the pink and blue. I think that really works. The steel with sort of the green blue added, I think is also nice. I think that's pretty good. It's hard for me to really get into the detail, but you know, little stuff like the blade doesn't I don't really have a good clean shot of the blade, but it feels a little flat. Things like the red, especially like the hair, they need more depth than to go up. I'm not sure about the glowing eyes on the shield that doesn't sell for me as glowing eyes go back and watch my my how to do either OSL or glowing eyes video. Either one of those will explain that you need to go from brightest point to mid tone to dark ring to light glazed mid tone. Because it's just not selling right now. It looks more like it got hit by paint than it does like glowing eyes. So that's probably my biggest stuff I can tell little tiny things on figures like this where they have stitched together cloth pick out these stitches like paint the stitches a different stitch color. It makes a huge difference because it creates more tiny points of contrast and visual confusion. So there you go. All right. Next up Lyndon, a few pointers on your converted Bray Shaman. How can you take your pain to the next level? Sure. So it's a fun model fun conversion writing all the little birds. I like that that's a fun touch. You know what I see here is a couple of things when we're going from the reds to the yellows we need to draw out that that blend a little more. It kind of jumps it's a little rough. We need more contrast on things like the bone the black the sword the metals feel really really really flat the wood of the half the skin that is showing all these things need more contrast. So you know watching my videos on on contrast and stuff like that same with the birds by the way. But all of those elements just we need more value contrast. I think that the having the super bright color is fine. Your one thing that doesn't work here by the way compositionally is this thing being magenta. This should just be the same color as this when you think in color composition one of the easiest ways to think about is triangles or circles. Okay, so make sure you've got those different elements and you don't just add a spot color especially not of a true hue something saturated and make it alone like you've got red here if this had just been the same red to yellow you would have had the perfect color triangle we kind of ruined that with the magenta like this has no friend it doesn't need to be here so it should just be the same red to orange transition as the red to orange to yellow transition as the rest of the wings. So work on your contrast and and that's would be my biggest piece of feedback for you. Okay, next up James advice on how to improve minis without necessary just spending more time what core techniques or effects you think are bang for the buck fundamentals to improving any paint job. I've been using more black lining after minix videos and it helps I'd like to paint a single figure or small groups of models four or five hours per mini to a nice above table top span standard okay and yes photos do always show mistakes you haven't seen before yeah so I mean I think these models look nice and and yes they did does need more contrast right like I mean it is flat contrast is like the number one way to get more value out of what you're doing but it does take time now color composition can have other is another big way like if you just pick the right colors that work well together that can have a big impact you've used blue and orange here which is perfectly fine the other thing I would say is making sure that you know small details like texture or weathering or stuff like that can go a long way like you've got the leather straps and they're just like one layer of brown leather with maybe a lighter color around the edge I can't tell if that's just like where the contrast paint or something sunk in or if that was intentional um but like little bits of of more texture like I see you did a little on the the pistol holster you know getting that on the edges of that stuff having little scratches or cuts on the armor those kind of things don't take a huge amount of time investment you know there that you can actually do it to a whole miniature in about five or ten minutes but it adds a lot of visual confusion and and and just feeling of life to the to the model um so that's one thing I would say um if you're talking about your like sort of time to value ratio right um beyond that making sure that um you have the individual elements uh all having the appropriate levels of contrast like if you push certain elements very high you can allow others to be somewhat flat depending on the shine that they're meant to reflect um you can also if you're going to focus your attention focus on the face and the face doesn't quite have enough contrast it needs more the pupils could be a little larger like the the eyes are very small there like you can see my eyes right and most of my eyes are actually the my pupils right um or my irises I suppose um the but like pushing the face to a really high level people tend to just look at faces first so if your face is really really good then people won't notice the rest of it and they'll they'll forgive other sins um other tricks you could go for if you wanted to establish like a high contrast but not spend a lot of time is you could look at how Richard Gray does his space marines um you know he has recent videos and he's he's pushing contrast to the moon right but he's doing it very roughly and very quickly um so he has these models that he's painting in in about the amount of time you're probably talking about but he's doing it with both uh both in a rougher way so he is getting that texture I'm talking about but he also is doing it with uh extreme high contrast and it's fast so maybe check into that um so those would be my tips for you overall very nice many um I would I would have pushed the orange into maybe more of an orange orange but it's fine okay Dave went for a grim bright look not a fan of edge highlights we like tips on the red in particular as also not a fan of adding an orange or pink to red for highlights um sure so well we got to do something here Dave that's the answer so edge highlights are realistic like I I understand that but edge highlights that light does gather around edges if I hold my ring up in the light you and you look at it closely you'll see that there's light around the edge of the the metal and you can do it in a light way to establish more contrast the reason you tend to use edge highlights is because they have a vision of a strong visual impact now you can push the shadows on the red and just make your high red extremely visually saturated like extremely saturated red that's fine but then you're still going to want to put white underneath it and then bring red glazes over the top to turn everything back to red to get an ultra saturated true red and you want to use something that's extremely high red pigment so you can get away with that there's nothing wrong with that choice uh and then go with very heavy shadows right um I will say in that case something like edge highlights is really going to help because um red does actually highlight into pink or an orange so like I understand if you don't like it but that is realism is red or orange if you go look at a red car and really look at it there's going to be pink all over it but your brain has resolved it back to red because you're that's what your brain is there for it just makes images work right um most reds are actually pink in daylight uh because just that's the nature of the light how they interact with the light um but my advice would be like I think your shadows are fine but if you're going to go for a true red then use something like the white and then glaze over it with the red to get really really strongly saturated really intense really bright true reds and then maybe just on the upper sides like again edge highlighting around everything GW style is often unrealistic but on upper angles or especially upward facing edges light will gather there and a light thin edge highlight really will do an amazing amount even if it's just on the tops to show where light catches happen so that would be my advice for you Dave okay next up Justin uh trying to take it to the next level in my painting entering some competitions not yet with the expectation of winning we're just to push myself uh I think my model is having a tough time standing out sure yeah so um I mean we definitely so if we're talking again competition then more value contrast more contrast of hue like there's not in your blue there's not enough hue both value and contrast what I mean by that is your white is feel your blue feels pretty contrasty it's not for something that's meant to be metallic and like these infinity models are always rendered in this true metallic we also need to make it more clean more smooth um things still look rough in the transition which is always hard in blue because sky blue gets very chalky it's very hard to do that um you're also not in value you're you're not resolving enough variation of hue into things like the shadows so with blue you can bring purple you can bring red you can bring things like that into the shadows which make them more visually compelling um those little touches of hues in light shadows make the shadows feel different so you you want to pick a an overall color tone are we talking light highlights then we need cold uh sorry um are we talking uh warm highlights then we need cold shadows we're talking cold highlights we need warm shadows and so on resolving things more cleanly as well is really the number one thing i see here um so having more stronger definition lines between everything like the contrast on the gun is very low and looking at the pistol it's very rough right like these individual areas look pretty rough in their transition we've got to get in there and really smooth everything out and make sure that it has really really tough definitions between the elements like here's his jacket and here's his outer jacket and you see how this doesn't have a dark line between it that's that's why the image doesn't look as good as other things you see because connecting items create occlusion shadows and we represent that generally by some kind of dark line or recess shading or deep recess shading or something like that and that's what's missing from your work and it's also making it look not as clean as it could be so resolving those kinds of things will also be an advantage for you um yeah uh the other the only other notes you know as you push toward things like competition painting you want to make sure that you like this doesn't need to be red it should not be red this is just compositional stuff like you never put a red thing near alone like this is the only basic red element other than a few other tiny little hidden areas you never put that on the ground with this with all these bright pop colors red and green right because the challenge is the that draws all the attention away from your figure red always draws the eye it's the warmest place on the model and that's where your eye looks human eyes are trained to track toward color red and you have very little other red so when I look at the model straight on all I look at is his feet there's no movement around the figure right um the freehand still looks rough so if we're talking competition level freehand everything has to be pristine and clean and sharp so you want to make sure you go in and really like after you've drawn it you have to go back in with the blues and everything and you've got to clean all that up and it's got to be razor sharp uh so that kind of stuff uh hope that helps justin okay next up jim uh goal was to avoid using normal fire colors so ended up with this color scheme could i get opinions on color scheme osl and any other strengths or weaknesses sure so uh i don't mind the white to magenta to purple fire it's perfectly valid you do need to have another step there in between the white and the pink um like there needs to be a middle step there there's it's kind of it's resolving a little too rough and it needs more transition go back to my my lava uh blade video and you'll see what i'm talking about as far as that goes as far as how to resolve those individual steps like you can resolve them through stippling but then you've still got a glaze to bring things together now as to the osl i mean there's not really a huge amount of it here it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like osl like i understand what you're saying like this has a little purple glow this has a little purple glow it's not really resolving in the way i would expect it to do like with osl you my general recommendation is just don't do osl it's a very hard effect to pull off but beyond that when you do osl you have to pick the model the first thing you want to do is imagine you put a circle on the model and you say that's the area that the the light will shine on it okay so like if that's true if that's reflecting in that area then it's going to be the weakest around the edge and get brighter toward the middle and then the thing that's casting the light has to be brighter than any cast light by far in addition the cast light has to create shadows so if this is glowing purple this needs to be a shadow pretty deep on the other side of this okay when you create light again in a normal lighting situation almost nothing happens right like that's my hand that's the osl from it that's not a lot of light if i bring that near my face the lighting doesn't change very much on my face like a slight glow right let's see how there's a tiny bit of orange yellow on my face okay that's the kind of effect you have to fade out to and the circle of light there that i would have established would have been lightly on my cheek and then in my hand and nothing more because i'm in a bright lighting condition which is where models normally are unless you paint them to be in shadow and you didn't hear there's there's you know there's plenty normal light sources on this guy so that's my main piece of feedback for you there uh hope that helps all right next up uh daniel where do you think i should focus on improving the most could you please critique the model in general don't hold back okay sure uh that's fine so i think it looks really nice um i like the shield i like the general color scheme that like green to blue sort of vanguard color scheme is a really nice touch um your scales are individually separated the um where are we gonna get to there we go um things that so i like all of that the areas where i would improve are the metals are still pretty flat um like i see that you did do some work on some shading so that's good keep pushing that uh you know maybe looking at it more maybe not as flat as i thought it's hard to tell with the lighting push it more like bring a little more shadow bring a little more light to it but i take that back your metals are going the right direction it looks like you're doing some stuff keep going so then the the the sort of i don't know Caucasian skin colored skin i guess for lack of a better term this this color here this feels pretty flat and then on the scales themselves they don't have any life to them what i mean by that is that color transitions cool but there's not enough texture there um and then the last note i would say is make sure that your individual elements like the jewelry and things like that again are separated by nice dark lines it doesn't have to be like a black lining but you know you look at like the arm compared to this bracelet there should be an occlusion shadow there between it right like when you look at my hand look at this look right here see this is my shirt this is my arm look what's right here what's that that's a shadow see that everybody see the occlusion shadow in my in my in between my hand and my sleeve right that's what you're capturing with black lining and what will make something look very unrealistic is if you just go straight from bright color bright color no shadow in between it just it reads as false instantly like your brain is trained to see that and so that would be one of the pieces of advice i'd give you there damn all right next up brian converted this to run as a branch wraith cool conversion where i'm really struggling is on the lighting in this particular case if i fade the clothing from a dark to a light color going down i have no idea how to make it look like light is coming from above if the lighter colors at the bottom sure it's the traditional spooky ghost problem when you fade out to light so the answer is you need to do both so you need to stop thinking of it like you're fading that's your total volume okay to the inverse pyramid concept all right start at the top the broadest areas of the miniature we care about the entire cylinder of the miniature right and so you're going from blue to a brighter color that's your general transition great that's your broader now we need to go smaller into the detail so as i go down the top of this fold the top of this fold this is going to be in bright blue this is going to be in bright blue this is going to be in bright blue i'm going to push deeper shadows in here when i get down to this area i'm going to take whatever this part of the cloak is the normal period area that would be highlighted this edge is going to be super bright this is going to be super bright this is going to be super bright green right so whatever color you happen to be in in the spectrum it needs to be the brighter version of that and by the way this isn't like you're letting yourself trick yourself okay wear a dark shirt with white pants there you just went from dark to white at the bottom is there any reason why highlights still wouldn't apply as normal no of course not right like the part of the white pants that are facing up are going to be bright white the part that are down below are going to be gray easy right you as the cylinder would have the same color transition that your model has right so the same rules apply doesn't matter if it's brighter near the ground it's not as though like volumetric highlighting means that you know suddenly the model has to be bright dark or something like that that's that's not what it means right it just means in general light gathers around the top the uh so that would be my advice for you only a couple of the things i notice is again the golds look pretty flat so maybe you'd want to go in and maybe pop some of that out with some silver highlights and stuff like that okay next up tossos uh looking forward to the review sure well this guy's very nice uh it's a great figure i think he did a really nice job with him everything looks you know very clean uh i like the real i like the transitions in the red quite a bit those feel very natural good catch of like a soft warm light so that's selling for me um the tinted metal up here doesn't sell for me because it feels like the steel it's just been covered in like a a thematic blue contrast paint or something like that and there's no real life to it there's no directionality to the lighting we just kind of tinted it all blue i would need to go i would need to see darker shadows higher highlights more lighting in a non-metallic way um to capture that same with all the gold the gold all feels very flat um the creature itself needs more shadows and its muscularity um there's a little bit of very soft shadows but i'd want to see more of that i'd also like to see the individual feathers and fur and stuff picked out as well as free handing some individual little tiny uh elements onto the um you know a fur around it to sort of blend it in final note is whenever we have these sunken in details in banners which i absolutely despise but when they happen it's just a good idea to darken them that it's a you're you're really just wasting an opportunity here if you want to go super try hard mode then you edge highlight the top edges of all of them as well but that's you know annoying but at the very minimum these should be darkened like more than they are like take them way down so they're shadowed because not only does that then say why they put those there like assumingly they put letters or words or something on their banner so it can be red so blue on blue isn't going to do that you know somebody five feet away from this guy can't what's your banner say what i can't read that right he's he's putting it here for a reason so um you know that would be my my big advice there make it dark not only does it make sense in the world and there's a similitude to it but it also then it gives you another instance of light to dark contrast it'll sell so there you go all right next up Connor uh okay uh push yourself to the limit for this the best thing you've painted so far i'd love some tips on smoother transitions um sure so i mean uh it looks very nice uh i'll say i really like a lot of what you you've got going on here now the part of the trick with smoother transitions is just you know lazing down at the end like the end of almost every road when it comes to getting things smooth is glazing and like when i look at the reds and the roughness there or stuff like that or the some of the skin roughness or like especially this black to gray yeah it's you know maybe you start with a little wet blending maybe you do a little feathering maybe you do a little um you know glazing whatever the story it's gonna be those things like you you have this great rough style where you're setting in high values i like that that's nice that's good like understanding value is the hardest part and you're pushing it to a high enough contrast we then just got to bring it together with either that glazing or blending or something like that at the end to really get things together um the um so that would be my main piece of advice there for you and that's going to really help with things like this little glow effect you're trying like when you have a hard layer like this like that's not a glow she just has green paint on her on her calves right if but if we have a soft glaze around that where it blended into the skin that would sell the effect so um that's my best advice for you Connor hope that helps watch my achieving smooth blends video if you haven't already that'll that'll help get you in the right place all right next up Miguel uh so just another boring ultramarine that's fine you know ultramarines are fine i would like some general feedback to guide me to the next level specifically in the highlights volumetric and edge in the base also tried to follow the mars base yeah base looks fine good stuff no issues there um highlights are looking good it's coming along um yeah i mean i think he looks really nice um things like the i assume you mean on the armor things like the gun are really flat so like a lot of your other elements the the leather actually is way more uh contrasted than the than the gun and the sword so i would work on that um you can push your highlights even farther through individual light glints so if this if that's your general level of highlight that's fine but then it can still be good to just like do some thin areas not an edge but like a very thin area like on the top of these circles here like a light in the center of this where the light is really strongly reflecting you can sell a lot of value through very small volumes of highlights so like here you'd need like maybe a little slightly brighter area doing like like that i mean we're talking millimeters okay and you'll be amazed at how much suddenly it makes the contrast pop the other thing i noticed when i'm looking at is that he doesn't quite have enough dark in him so i'd bring down bring in a little more five your highlights are are very comfortable to me but your shadows are lacking in most places i'd love to see a little more purple deep red even black whatever you can pick whatever you want but glazed into those shadows i think things in like the red gun and the steel and stuff like that could also benefit from that as well um but yeah this is a really nice looking piece man i mean i the the the the gold is still flat so you know keep working on that i've got lots of videos there take that to the same like right now the challenge you have is the blue has more contrast than your shiny shiny metal so your enameled not completely full metallic blue is not has more shine in how you've rendered it than the gold that's a challenge right that's that's where i could see the opportunity to improve so there you go all right next up pavel painting for one and a half year thought it's time to bump my skills and try to face the mask from the very same model painted by bohun i think i'm kind of close to this effect i would love to hear any feedback on how to move further with my skills what's next sure yeah so i think this looks very nice bohun's was a very nice version of this i think you did pretty well in rendering that off of what he did and by the way that's a great way to improve i just want to take a moment to like let me just give everybody permission copy me copy any other artist you see out there try to look at what they did reverse engineer it and then do it yourself it's actually one of the best ways to improve um and when you're writing this is actually a writing prompt you you start with somebody else's story you write you use their first paragraph and then you write your own story off of it right um these those prompts are valuable for a reason because they set you on a path and help you refine your skills against an established benchmark i really like the blue uh the cross hatching i think you did a nice job of pulling that out the horns feel a little less interactive than they could be they're not they're not quite showing the value contrast i would expect so a little more thin lines a little more pushed contrast on those i would really like the the horse body itself feels really dark i like that you're going for the fur texture you seem to be using like the fur video that i had and i'm i'm i'm picking up on that but i think maybe in the final glaze it got a little too dark maybe we need to come back in and build a little bit of that highlight back in there's not enough tonal variation on the uh horse body so that's kind of my individual thoughts overall this is the list looks really nice i think you did a good job bubble okay next up arturo uh all right it's a sculpt of the mountain from game of thrones except i don't actually play war games i painted like an iron golem uh writing another iron golem arcane fire burning inside them to provide power and automation excuse for interesting light effects sure all right let's take a look uh so yeah this is fun um again so some of the things i mentioned earlier in the non-metallic metal is good i don't mind a small volume you're again using like the hashy line style of brush steel that's fine um to get the darker metal you still do need to go back and smooth that out you know we don't have to increase the volumes but we need to smooth the white to blue the blue to blue gray and the blue gray to deep sea blue or dark black right like those still need to smooth those transitions that would be my number one thing the sword itself doesn't resolve bright enough for me so like i can buy he's in dark black armor but the sword would seem to gleam because it's actually like highly polished bright steel not black iron or something so it should have more light to it more reflection and more again like watch some of my recent non-metallic metal videos about using and creating light triangles and repetitive and different sized light triangle stuff like that that's gonna really help you out um now i do like the inner fire effect that that sells for me um i think you you did a really good job with that there um which is which is impressive because that's actually a really hard effect to sell so um so i'm i'm appreciative of what you did there but you did a nice job of creating the right the brightest light and then dark and then just like something very soft around it so you you followed the basic uh run there so yeah good stuff i'd say some refinement and smoothing and you're you're on you're on a good road there okay next up nathan uh painting for just over four months now uh model is base coat wrightland flashed no oil and then dry brush highlights direction for judgment is on the right path um i mean that's a pretty simple work stream if you're going for something sort of like grim dark and simple and dirty sure i mean if you're looking to if like if it depends on what you want right i don't know that there's a right answer to that question if this is what you're aiming at and you want that kind of quality then sure yeah you're fine you can keep going like that right but in the end the if you're trying to improve your quality then you're going to want to move away from doing things like using washes and stuff like that extensively and and trying to and you want to be placing shadows and placing highlights and things like that i have a lot of videos on this i would recommend to go watch them but if you're looking for like a gritty quick grim dark thing sure it works for that so it's a tricky thing because i'm not sure what you want to improve on nathan or the direction you want to go um once you watch this if you want to hit me up in the comments i'm happy to discuss with you more but does it work sure does it look good eh it looks okay you know like again it's fine for what it is if you're going for just like yeah i want something cool and gritty and grim dark on the tabletop then yeah you're great you're fine keep going right if you're looking to push into a higher quality then it's not really the right road to use that kind of a workflow so it's not as though there are good or bad techniques there are good or bad techniques based on your end goal so hope that helps all right next up jen uh oath of glory paladin uh kiyoti for my not regular enough dnd game not going to display quality i know the fur is a little chunky feedback on the skin hair face and the osl on the shield sure so the skin is too flat uh as i've said many times more contrast more tonal variation more variation of value and hue skin especially female skin often needs to show a lot of soft broad transitions uh to to sell the effect so you want to work in not only super high highlights to show the satin nature of skin that is to say especially a uh a warrior woman like this who would be you know out fighting and she's clearly in like an action pose so she's gonna be sweating and so in that uh situation your skin actually gets very reflective like you know go look at like an athlete uh like a beach volleyball player or something or whatever you know they have they're like glistening because they're so sweaty it's out in the bright sun and you know and then but they also have like a lot of deep shadows because they also are in bright light and as you're running and pumping there's a lot of a lot of blood so you're going to see a lot of reds and deep shadows in the skin from the cast light and stuff like that so the skin definitely needs more work um more contrast i have lots of videos on painting skin i would recommend you check those out um so the hair and the uh hair and the osl okay so let's do the shield here um the shield doesn't read to me as osl it's a nice effect i'm not sure what's meant to be glowing nothing about the shield glows to me um again i have videos on glowing effects but to repeat myself again bright central thing cast like light around it that bright one around two dark three soft two in a fading glaze around it's the simplest technique right but that's that's what a glow is okay um so that's i like the effect i think it looks cool very eye catching it's not osl but that's fine it works for me um i think you're trying to maybe catch some of the light on the edges of the wood but that's that's not what that looks like to me um and nor would it necessarily glow like that because that's a shield pulling away from it the light is going out so it's just not really a place where you can sell an osl effect like that really um again same with the my same advice with the face would go for the um would go for the rest of the skin only even more so you need you know more color more smooth transition stuff like that um now on the hair um it needs more deep shadows more individual of the elements picked out stuff like that but again it feels like you're going for tabletop it's made to be play with the hair is actually i think the strongest part it does you still got a lot of good colors in here and you're picking out a lot of the right areas so you know if you're like a tabletop standard it's fine if you're going for higher quality then you would need to work in more shadows more strands more highlights and more specular highlights into the hair because hair is very satin so uh there you go hope that all helps all right uh i don't i'm not even try with that first name i'm just going to say daniel oh yeah okay cool greetings from taiwan i'm daniel uh black templates marshal for the black template codex i'm aiming for realistic looks for most of my work so worked hard on metal glowing non-metallic metal leather textures for the tab or in free hands uh sure even though i worked on the details i think it doesn't have a focus point or eye catching part i'm not sure why sure all right let's take a look at this bad boy so um that's a fun it's a fun detail you tried to pull out there it needs to be cleaned up i mean that's part of the issue okay so why doesn't this have a focal point because there's too much screechy scratchy all over it that's not directing the eye in any reasonable way that's the challenge everything is so heavily textured and so rough that your eye isn't resolving to any one place okay um it's also like really bright everywhere the axe has a super bright point that goes to white the armors have super bright points the skin has super bright points like everything is going to a really really really high value and so it's hard to resolve that like we don't respect the overall volumetric highlighting that draws the attention up here so if it was just like the top armor and then the face you know if the if that was there then sure if the the face i don't have a problem with you're really pushing the value and trying to draw attention there the issue is that then we have a lot of like other things going on there's nothing on this pig that is muted right everything is just like intensity and ten cities and and that's the problem right what we need is some softness we need more soft shadows like everything's so rough everything's so visually confusing there's too much noise visual confusion can help hide sins it helps make things look more interesting but when we have this much it then becomes overwhelming right so that's why there's no place for my eye to land and just smoothly travel the texture and the the scratching and stuff like that is now overwhelmed the rest of the piece okay um on the gold non-metallic metal that's not really selling for me there's not enough yellow there's not enough deep sort of ochre color to it not enough sort of either brown or black brown or whatever in the shadows depending on if you're going for warm or cold non-metallic metal that's a challenge that that's there overall it's a cool piece um with the i like the little kneecap attempt that's fun it needs a little more uh resolution like what you can see here like look at this piece look at this piece right this isn't as clean so when you do something like this you keep pushing and keep cleaning and refining get those dark black edges around it like your face doesn't have the dark like see how he has these dark black edges around everything here that's so the face stands out you don't have those right that kind of little stuff so make sure you're getting the whole image of what it is um overall very cool piece um you know it's it's really nice like he is he is grimdark in the extreme but you want to make sure you you uh are still smoothing some of that stuff out like don't let the texture completely take over um resolve the highlights in a more direct way okay all right next up clayton uh painting for a year and ended this for a competition at my local hobby store when uh dominion launched i painted this in three weeks and the best i could manage i'm after um you know feedback on what i did well and what needs to bring work um okay so it's it's nice there's definitely some more work we can do here um i like the gold i think that's working well for me up here the wings are way too flat and boring and what i mean by that is it's just like brown white black we have all this beautiful texture all these beautiful layers between the wings and we're just doing nothing with them just nothing okay so that definitely needs a lot of attention like i have a video on painting detailed wings um the steel here needs to be smoothed out a little bit the white is very flat i need to resolve more grays and things like that in there to to bring more value contrast into the white you can also use soft blues um to again bring more variation of hue in as well both types of contrast are quite valuable so those that's kind of what i would say they're contrast on other elements like the red the red is all very flat the paper tad the the whole of sacred toilet paper is also very flat so that's the kind of stuff i would focus in on if i was you um just again pushing that contrast on those other elements um you know as you think about painting for competition the key with painting for competition is every piece of the mini has to go to the highest level possible right that's the nature of competition painting you had said i did it and i had a limited amount of time that right there tells me it's not actually competition paint i know you entered into competition but competition is i don't paint to time i paint to quality time be you know damned as it were right like if it takes me five months then to get it to the quality level it needs to be at that's the amount of time it takes so you know that's the essence of competition painting right is that you paint until you're insane or you die or you finish it that's it um those are the choices so that would be my feedback for you i hope that helps okay liam first 75 millimeter scale piece my third miniature painting with non-metallic metal feedback on the face and the nmm in particular sure this is a really nice piece liam i like this a lot i looked at this i'm i'm digging the heck out of this it's a great piece um great 75 millimeter piece um i really enjoy some of the non-metallic colors you've worked in here the shield is a little on this side's a little like it's okay like we're just kind of going for this banding light and all the bands are kind of the same size that piece doesn't sell as much to me but i really love how you've resolved the steel i think the face works i see enough variation of hue and value there i really like the the weapon up here and the different color transitions we're going through that's all selling for me i quite like the shield you know the steel these things are resolving for me in a really nice way you're really capturing these colors very smoothly i wish i had a more more zoomed in picture like you're a note on picture taking for a model like this this is probably too far away um i know you're trying to capture the whole base that's fine but like give me a higher quality one that's closer up that way it's easier to look at but i i think this guy's a triumph man uh i think you're absolutely killing it over here there's a there's a smew few very small areas of feedback i'd give you like i mentioned the banding around the shield think about how you'd vary that how the light would be catching other things stuff like that but it's solid as so good stuff great job all right next up joel painting a little practice goblin away from home and had to pack likes only brought black white red blue and yellow exercise and mixing colors no basic materials just started painting some flags that's on yeah that's fine that works perfectly fine focus is on working on non-metallic metal and texture um yeah so the um i see where you're going for the texture it's fun um i would say that the skin you know you've got you had red right yeah you got red because you got a red there you couldn't have resolved red without it um so you know like the skin is an opportunity for for more colors to be worked in but i'll focus on the items you want the non-metallic metal blade doesn't quite sell for me because it's too sketchy like the lines are a little too much you know i need to see some glazes and actual transitions between that you can start with those lines but then they have to come smoothed back down right so um that's there what was your other item i'm sorry the non-metallic metal oh and texture yeah the texture still pretty minimal we could go a lot farther on that the the blue feels okay but it's a lot of the same texture just like we kind of went hashy on some stuff there's no dots stipples scratches hashes dots you know that kind of stuff around that varies the texture and shows me some different things also your your metal scratches here aren't super working for me they're inverted like i understand you're probably trying to show metal underneath where it got scraped but the dark should be the top always and the light should be underneath it um your eye just expects that otherwise it just looks like a little worm that's crawling across the top and the black underneath is his occlusion shadow so that would be my main feedback for you there brother hope that helps all right roan first attempted a dark skin tone on a model uh overall i'm pretty happy with it but i think it's not contrast enough and looks kind of flat what colors do you use to add contrast and shadows to dark skin tone well so i have a video on this and i would recommend you go watch my dark skin tone video because that will give you the long answer but the short answer is on darker skin tones you you establish in normal like caucasian flesh tones is as the highlights you use you work through oranges to create variation of hue because that oranges the sort of base color from all skin and uh and then you work down into like things like purples in the shadows and stuff like that which already looks like you were doing a little bit of here so that's that's a good instinct but yes there's not quite enough contrast and that's how i would push it so check out that dark skin video and i think that'll give you a lot of good ideas on how to go forward all right apollo i'd like some feedback on my yellow armor non-metallic metal and freehand all right so yellow armor looking really choice i enjoy it it's bright it's kicking it's got some nice highlights on it i'd like to see a little more shadows maybe pushing into a light brown kind of rusty type color like a light rust that's minimal i like it overall it's it's punches like a like a mac truck i love it um but yeah more shadow more five and four your three two one looking great um the gold non-metallic metal i've seen this sort of this exact style looks generally pretty good i'd branch it feels like i need some more glazes of yellows maybe a little more reflections in the a couple of points of light catches it like the gold doesn't have the light catches of the little specular lights that are catching on there like little dots of white and stuff like that it's not quite enough yellow quite enough three pushing out i understand you're going for smaller volumes i'm cool with that it can sell you still need to kind of take a yellow glaze over it to make it feel like it's still gold it's just shadowed gold when you're still resolving kind of true black it's not selling enough it sells better on the i don't know the circular thing up top this because there's because it's broader you accidentally pushed more yellow into the the angle of the thing and that resolves better for me uh so that that looks good um yellow armor gold non-metallic what was your other one uh oh free hands yeah yeah sure yeah so let's take a look at the icon i dig it uh you could do another little pass with your black and really really sharp brush you just kind of smooth out that circle still a little rough i can tell it's a little bit uneven it's the you know you want to prove your great artist paint a circle in one try right and um that would be my only thing that i would grab there but yeah overall it's good logo i think you did it very nicely um yeah push a little more highlight into it like you've got this white up here the top of the finger should be resolving a little more gray because they're sitting in light like your free hand is ignoring the light you don't want that to happen you want there to still be um you know respecting the shadows there all right next up uh messeq messeq i'm not sure okay beginning of your painting journey i know everything is ahead of me what should i focus on the most now um i mean this early in the journey my my my friend and i saw your you shared one from your son as well later you know you're you're still at the it's not the point where i can really give you a lot of feedback like because it'd be everything right but if we're going to talk about what do you focus on immediately clean brush application brush control and understanding like highlights and shadows understanding value of contrast you know that's going to get pay the most dividends for you as you go forward in your hobby there's a lot of videos i've got on the channel check those all out and and you know it just couldn't kind of take you through i've even got a playlist specifically for beginners with a lot of different information in there so that's kind of where i'd recommend you look all right kim uh first submission here painted an empire army to a pretty basic table top standard several years ago uh any feedback is greatly appreciated particularly on highlighting in my lack of brush control sure so i mean you know in the end brush control is a thing you earn it's not a thing you do it's something you get by practice over and over again and uh setting your hands the right way and holding your brush in the right way and having the right amount of properly thin to paint on your brush and stuff like that um your metals feel very flat go watch my non-metallic metal or true metallic metals in a non-metallic style video i have probably five of them so go watch any of those um you know do yeah cleanliness is going to be a thing for you to focus on i can see some of the you know some of the areas and then you want to think about stuff like weathering and stuff like that to add these different areas to add more visual interest to these different areas they're really kind of flat when you get these big metals a little bit of weathering can go a long way so i would focus on some cleanliness i would focus on bringing more contrast into the metallics through controlled application of additional colors shadows inks things like that as well as the highlights and then look at things like weathering and which will add very variation of value so there you go all right patrick uh painted up a mummy for the month of october tried to feel like he's in a tomb environment while working my basics um sure so um you know mummies are classically hard to paint he looks very nice i mean it's still really rough like some of the sash it doesn't feel textured it just feels like just rough like with the paint you want to be a little more controlled the the hash lines the difference between that by the way is the size of the hash lines in scale those kinds of things your painting would be hyper hyper hyper hyper thin and and tiny right so you've got to really get in there and smooth them um on the skin with the sort of green again you know that needs to be smoothed out more it doesn't look like this kind of figure isn't doing you any any favors but again more value contrast and as with all green skin more variation of hue as well working in other colors especially into the shadows reds purples etc to make them more visually compelling so um the the wraps do feel appropriately dank i like the greens and stuff you worked in there so that works fine for me all right uh adrian close my first year of miniature painting i thought sick volt will be a great experience for my first non-metallic piece i know my boy was i right i appreciate some feedback on my nm and highlight placement overall sure so um it's nice we got to push farther um my strong advice with this would be go take a look at somebody like andy wortles artwork he did a non-metallic version of this guy and so on right the challenge here is we don't have we're not catching the secondary reflections um go look up darin latham's blog so raza miniature painting and look up his old sigwald um and his he has a whole article on non-metallic metal if you just search for like darin latham blog non-metallic metal you'll find the blog entry and you know he talks about primary and secondary highlights and a lot of the colors and so like that part of the problem is you're not coming up high enough you're not distributing your your highlights in quite the correct way the trick is if you used if you took this miniature and held it under the light that's not how it would look if it was metal because you're holding under like satin primer metal is way more reflective than that so the highlights need to be broader they'll be catching in different places they'll be more specular to your eyes they'll be secondary reflections and stuff like that so non-metallic metals are a really complicated journey to go on i have several videos on non-metallic metal i'm sure i'll do more go check out my videos go check out that blog go check out there because we're just we're not quite there we don't have enough value contrast the highlights aren't quite the right places because sadly like a value sketch like that really isn't going to completely nail what you need to do when you're thinking about the placement of secondary highlights so there you go all right next up uh bartas feedback on my converted butcher uh any feedback on the indigo flesh thoughts on the blood splatter um sure uh i like the flesh could push into a little bit deeper shadows actually i think is the issue i like where your wounds are you push into that magenta i think that's good i think my only i like the highlights not quite enough shadow um blood spatter yeah fine good different layers it sells there's some couple big chunks when he's got that much spatter you may want to think about actually building up some texture in some places as well like that is just they actually have viscera hanging off of it you know um little pieces of brain matter and things like that but but the spray pattern mostly works for me i'm okay with that a little bit more scattered middle red like it feels like we don't have enough middle red like blood that's dried for a middle amount of time like the old dried blood is really scattered everywhere and the fresh stuff is kind of really localized and that that's the only part of it that feels off to me right like they should be both distributed in some kind of way like sure the dried blood is going to be in more places but the the uh the um red blood is not going to be just in like sort of one place right so i also think about splatter patterns you know your dexter splatter patterns like if he's swinging and then coming up what you would see is like a as it would go across him like that right as he would drag things up so think about that kind of stuff but color wise yeah good all right alan uh doing some sisters for kill team first time doing anything sci-fi just wanted your thoughts on the black power armor overall composition yeah so the black power armor looks okay needs a little more contrast i would say the same for everything on here so continue pushing that i have some videos on painting black armor i have many videos on painting black armor so go check those out uh compositionally she's fine like the cream with the red and the black it's a very standard sister's color scheme i have i have no issue with any of your composition that all looks fine we just need to keep pushing those like the the contrast on this is not near high enough on basically anything so we need to go look at that i have black armor i have painting red and stuff like that so check out those videos and that'll get you in the right direction yeah she looks good it's she'd definitely be a proud member of the army the hair is my favorite part i think you did a really nice job on the hair alan so well done all right syrian first time posting master of possession only painting a few months looking for some general cnc i'd love to push my painting as much as much as possible sure so much of what i've already said many times and this is going to apply uh you know more contrast more variation of value and hue especially in the bone and the black armor and the red all those things are too flat watch any of my videos on contrast go watch travarian's videos on contrast you know we've both done a lot of exploration of this concept now let's talk about your fire um because that's the peace feedback here i'm going to give you very specifically that fire is not fire fire doesn't have red in it okay here i'm going to prove it to you right now show me the red okay like a torch burning doesn't create red um ferrari red real red should be nowhere near your your flame when things with you it should go like a white hot white yellow to a small amount of normal deep yellow to a medium amount of orange because most of the fire is going to look orange like that and then you can have a tiny amount of deep red brown that goes into black show carbonation right and i mean this is pretty easy to see like just google campfire right like where's the red i'm not seeing it right it's there in the toy because that's what it looks like when you paint red it looks like a toy right but when you look at these fires you know if you're trying to capture like the carbonation to smoke and stuff like that then you can use just a little bit of soft red but it needs to be like a deep red brown black and transition into the carbonation into the smoke right like this kind of stuff where you're getting into the smoke okay so that's going to be my specific feedback for you hope that helps i also have videos on painting fire where i go over all this all right john first time posting i planted a skeleton lord to work on weathering effects and osl sure so the osl is okay the eyes glow okay that it comes out way too far his eye glow would not be casting out to this if it casts the light out this far it should be way brighter and everything else would be way more in shadow if you just had the glow right around the eyes it would sell more because you've got a bright central thing and then a dark ring we just we went too far with it um now as to the weathering uh this fig doesn't really look like it's doing you a huge amount of favors it's a very soft fig as far as detail goes the weathering looks okay um you know look into the weathering videos i have they're not weathered in a reasonable way like weathering has to be random but it has to be applied in a random way that would happen by the dictates of nature and the usage of the thing right so um that's what i would say there like the the blades would be not weathered they would be brighter because he's chopping people with them and so they would have steel scraped away and they would still be metallic the weathering would happen in the non areas it would be a lot darker we'd need more deep browns and the shadows you know oranges to make things pop stuff like that that happens along edges wherever water collects you know things like that so that's my advice to you go go check out my videos on weathering um everything's there so you can you can check those out okay Konstantinos first time posting i'm painting a non-metallic metal custodians army for a high tabletop standard that is a tough two that is a tough two things to put together let me just say that right now like high tabletop means using metallics you go into non-metallic metal to sell non-metallic metal it has to go to a very high level which means you're almost naturally in display painting but okay uh looking for some tips on how i can paint non-metallic gold on larger models such as dreadnought spikes and tanks yeah i mean that okay so the challenge here is this isn't non-metallic it just it doesn't sell because there's not enough color there's not enough contrast there's not enough variation right like you you've got the basic basic colors down but you're going like maybe two to four and there's not enough actual gold like ochre in there to sell it right and and that's the challenge like when you try to do this kind of thing in a tabletop way it just doesn't sell because non-metallic has a very very very high floor okay like i'm not trying to crap on your dreams i'm really not but if you want a non-metallic army then you prepare for a display army where each fig takes 20 hours okay i'm gonna make this real for you if you want a non-metallic army that sells then it's 20 hours min perfect that's the buy-in and that's not great looking non-metallic metal that's like passable okay and and that's because to get non-metallic it's a matter of properly balancing the colors having all the edges highlighted they all need to go to white you have to have the right highlights in the right places everything has to be an especially on a model like this that's all gold you know and and that your your point is well reasoned on the bigger models it's only going to become more of a challenge right because they have all sorts of complicated highlight situations so you know my like i have lots of videos on non-metallic you can go and watch them my best advice for you is to really think deeply about this as someone currently painting an all non-metallic army right now i am doing that and it takes me about me who paints a lot of non-metallic over a very long career and has painted thousands and thousands of figures okay it takes me about 20 hours per fig 15 if they're a smaller fig to make that effect sell and it's not perfect non-metallic metal like i'm not competition level non-metallic it's just passable okay so i would really think deeply about that i'm not normally one to like crap on people's dreams or yuck you're young but it's it's like saying okay what you're saying here with this kind of a project is hey i'm training for the olympics i figure i'm going to put 30 minutes a day into it no you don't get to the olympics on 30 minutes a day those are those are those are not those don't connect like that right so things like that to sell just require a immense amount of effort that's why like using true metallics but then doing them in a non-metallic style that you can lower the barrier way way way way way down and still have something that pops and looks awesome right and still has that effect so it's not just a big gold nothing like if this was me and it was doing custodians there's no way i would ever do this to attempt this army and non-metallic i would do this army and i'm in metallic in a and true metallics in a non-metallic style so because right now like it doesn't sell you don't have enough the main color there's not enough one there's not enough highlights there's not enough shadows the highlights aren't the right places like i'm not i don't want to beat you up right but that's the problems um so i'll i'll let you deal with that as you will constantinos it's it's tough it's a tough thing you've said you're gonna do and that's your first time posting too so i'm being a real jerk but i'm sorry man i i gotta give you the straight story i don't want to send you down to head road all right carlos uh painting silver that looks like silver uh every video on the subject treats like steel and it's not base i've tried to go for the look of cursed city tiles but i don't know how it clashes with the model um sure so i think this guy looks nice um yeah he's fun i will say if you're talking about i'm not sure what you mean by silver that looks like silver um like the metallics here i would watch some of my videos on metallics you said all the videos i mean my videos don't i very much treat silver like silver and steel like steel i'm not sure the purple super works for me completely honestly because i don't know what that reflection is meant to be capturing or what's doing there's also like it just goes into this bright silver and there's no higher highlight it doesn't pass back into shadow in any way the skin looks nice that's the part of it that i think works the best for me the hair is flat um the gold is okay i think part of the problem here is we're using metallics that just aren't very good like there's lots of really big flake in them and it just kind of destroys the effect and makes it look rough um like i can just see the pigment from space on these guys um so you know that's that's a challenge perhaps um but i like the shadows and highlights you're doing on the gold i think they need to be smoothed a little more but that's my i like that part quite a bit the skin is my favorite part even a little more purple a little more red than there is what i would say but it looks really good the sword basically doesn't work for me because i don't know what it's meant to be doing it's not reflecting the ground i don't know what sky it's reflecting i don't know what color i don't know what's motivating that purple it's just kind of there and it doesn't go dark enough to be a shadow it just feels like purple like it feels like purple light reflecting on steel not a purple shadow so that's the challenge hope that helps all right joseph push my grim dark skill as far as i could go open any critique i want to know what i need to do to push my next model to a new level so he is very grim dark um a lot of rust a lot of things like that i mean if you're going for grim dark you're pretty much there it's very rusty he's very rusty crusty goodness right what do you want to do have more like if you're trying to take grim dark to the ultimate next level then what we need is more things like dripping goo and blood you know and used in things like that and the bone needs more contrast right so it really pops out as this as this thing that stands out right um so having little areas of extremely high contrast where where there's just the slightest bit of cleanliness little scratches and dashes in the armor that catch light on edges and stuff like that more tones into the vertigree to show all the different types and the layers of rust that are there that's going super into the grim dark so those kinds of things is what i'd recommend for you joseph i mean it's it's a you're already very grim darky but you know you can you can it's a super grim dark model so just think about how you want that to be um i would also say with your vertigree you're very much in just like a turquoise color you want to vary that more as well you want turquoise you want blue green you want true sort of like nilik or gospel aster type of color those kinds of things as well all right brand entry into the mini painting contest in the intermediate category and put on the overall presentation for competition sure uh so the dress does not read a sheer because not enough is coming through um you need more skin it has to feel like a more skin tone i have videos on painting sheer cloth of a woman in a dress so go check that out uh the there's not enough contrast like the stone and the the gravestone and stuff like that doesn't it doesn't there the skin itself is very flat it's still very rough by the way too which is strange like you and i don't know if maybe you got a bad prime or something like that but it looks very rough um the um so like with the face you want to just a lot more contrast of value and hue across both the face especially but all of the skin and then the blue dress as well if it's sheer then there should be a lot more deeper colors that are captured in there right where if it's not showing the skin underneath then it's going to be an extremely deep shadow right so that's kind of my feeling on all that hope that helps uh matt's submission for the october review going for some heavily weathered armor on this and despite being a bit flat i'm reasonably happy with how it turned out i feel like the skin is missing something but i don't know what all right so let's talk about that skin so um yes the skin is missing variation of hue uh and a little bit of value it it has you've got some nice purple and red in places but it's not it's not especially the value it's not following any reasonable shade pattern so we still need to bring the shadow into it it also could with this kind of skin it behooves you to do things like texture with things like the boobos where you've got the yellow those need to have red around them they need to fade it's it's sickened skin it goes from like you know uh slight skin tone into slight purple into a red into a blistering red into the yellow right like that's the kind of stuff that needs to happen it's going to create that variation of hue and then on things like under his flappy flaps of his big bulging breast fat you know there's got to be like more shadow in there because it's it's a very shadowed thing right like shadow light right and we didn't capture that shadow anywhere under here that kind of stuff so we just need more value contrast as well so there you go hope that all helps all right next up uh matt different matt a couple of simple pointers on this guy going to be painting the dismounted version so i thought it'd be a good opportunity sure so uh let's see if we're going to zoom in here um yeah i mean i think in general my main point is going to be more contrast pretty much the same thing i say to almost every review because it's always the case that nobody has enough contrast um the bone is very flat the green is very flat the magenta does not have enough life in it and the gray skin does not go far enough or integrate enough other colors so variation of both hue and value as per normal i would work in some other colors into the gray skin things like more purples or blues it feels like you've got a little bit in there push that farther push up into higher highlights the model on the mount feels especially flat like the mount himself like the bone is very flat the the sort of turquoise skin is very flat so yeah that's the kind of stuff i would focus on if i was you matt so hope that helps all right uh hank hanky hanky i don't know sure uh okay for this figure i'm looking for my tabletop standard hero do you have any tips where i should put more time in the future to improve readability contrast in the battlefield sure i mean for pure tabletop quality it's he's okay you know i would focus more on a clean paint job part of the problem here is like this cloak is way way too still messy like we didn't bother to get down a good base coat there so that's problematic things like the the fur and the feathers it feels like we could have done some dry brushes to bring out more contrast there um the metal itself feels pretty like it was like you washed it with some bright or some color and then just did silver all over the whole thing um a little more contrast in the steel which you could get through quickly through just a quick wet blend would be a good way to go and then finally make sure you keep your paint job clean like i can see some red spot there and stuff like that right so that's kind of my advice for you when it comes to you know getting it to tabletop quality good tabletop quality focuses on cleanliness and punch so when you've got heavy textures you know get out that dry brush and go to work and bring out those textures it's a few seconds of work and it adds a lot of readability and contrast to the miniature all right next up stew uh all right so this i love this shield made in dwarf i think she's really good this is such a great figure this is like my only dwarf i've ever seen sculpted i like i think she's awesome um stew i think this looks really nice um i like the shadow uh on the side of the face from the where she has the shield up i think that's a nice cast shadow like you're capturing that set into shadow well um i feel like the other side of her face here on this line could like here could be a little more highlight we need a little more color variation of hue in her face a little more rosiness to her cheeks which doesn't need to be wearing makeup but she's you know there's there's red in people's cheeks um i mean i'm not wearing any makeup in my face has a lot of red to it right um especially under her eyes and that's just it more color and tone under her eyes here you want to like set this into a little more shadow bring this into a little more red and then highlight this area up as well so you create a single highlight that goes down because that part of her eyelid is going to catch light and be like a shadow reflection well sorry so it'll be like light small shadow light shadow like it's just boom boom boom creating those back and forth i could see a little more texture in the dress i like the axe and i like the way you've rendered the the axe light and stuff like that i think that looks really nice um the hair looks good that we could push the stranding on it farther it's it like you've you've captured kind of the the highlight fairly decently but i feel like it like i like this this light right here i think that's nice but we could go we need more individual strand work i think is what i would say but overall she looks really nice man i think she's a you did a great job rendering this fig and you should be pretty proud she looks fun she's a beautiful fig so there you go all right mic first to have a painting something at display comp level if you were a judge of the competitions what notes would you have for me sure okay uh the lightning looks pretty good we need some sharper thinner lines that are still in somewhat white as well running through the center of the blue lighting is really hard to render on a sword it takes a lot of back and forth work i like your blue glazes i like your areas where it's hitting i think that looks nice we need more thinner thinner hyper thin lines um going down to the guy here uh yeah i mean he looks good overall um some of the things aren't rendered to the same levels as everything else that's the issue you spend a lot of time on the armor and i like a lot of it looks i like how you're resolving a fair amount of the highlights and trying to capture that but then i've got things like the gold all the gold looks quite flat it's just kind of there and existing um you know at this point again like i've said before your red you took this red to like an incredibly high highlight into the yellow the red is more highlighted and has more value contrast than your gold because you're just you haven't you just have this flat kind of gold um it just it doesn't have enough silver and it doesn't have enough highlight it doesn't have enough reflection right like that's gold it's very bright it's very life giving i also don't like this gold color you you've chosen here i mean it's sort of a personal taste but it's a very flat dead gold it doesn't match the life of the rest of your piece um the uh so those are all things that would stand out to me on it the piece is very clean as near as i can tell so things will look look nice like i like the rivets like stuff like that stuff like these areas here aren't rendered well enough like this little box should have texturing and stuff like that on it as should the grenade um as should this this whatever this thing is should be doing something more than what it is like it looks very flat and boring and uninteresting i don't even know what it is and you know it just it needs more rendering um that kind of stuff with the face down here of the dead i don't know whatever that bad guy is the dead bad guy um i like him i like his face a little bit of cleanup especially on stuff like the teeth uh i don't quite love how exactly that resolved out there like that looks a little weird might be the picture but a little more like bruising or stuff like that into the head because it did get sliced off by that giant sword could be good resolving the individual levels in the sword hilt so shadow highlight shadow highlight shadow highlighting each piece of leather wrap would be another thing i would catch uh overall this is a very nice piece just keep pushing all right next up uh took your advice start and try to try something new instead of constantly facing the gray tide um any tips on signature demonet white skin yes go watch my video on painting daemonet skin that would be my best piece of advice again you've overexposed to this so i'm just i'm going to send you videos like it's very hard to me to judge but here's the things i can see go watch my video on painting daemonet skin go watch my video on exploring colors purple and how to paint purple because you're like what we need to do we don't have the right transitions here things are really hard in their lines i love you stepping out and trying new things good that's the first step we didn't quite hit it but that's okay you've got like you've got a good value sketch that's good you've got a good value sketch like you took it to the right value now we've just got to resolve it also when you take pictures indirect lighting again i have videos on taking pictures there's an article on gw's website please take proper pictures it makes things my life a lot easier okay chris uh first gw model inspired by october aside from any issue that stands out to you two parts love to get feedback on face and eyes which try to make pop more uh and the second is the true metallics and weathering the blade and the gun sure so the skin needs to be smoothed down a lot it's very roughly resolved so like it feels like there's a lot of i don't know maybe dry brushing or something going on here i'm not sure like everything is really really rough i don't know why everything is so very rough um because that's my main issue right now i mean i'm just going to say that right out of the gate like i don't know if you're not if you're working in like extremely dry paint are you not thinning your paints are you not mixing in the appropriate amount of water i'm not sure but it looks really really rough and that has that doesn't like you don't want your model to look like it's just been dry brushed all over the place right um and if you're going for stippling or something like that and that's why it's really rough then you need to glaze those all that stuff all together i have videos on painting orc faces and skin um so you know my best advice for you is look at how i paint orc faces and skin go watch those videos you need to integrate reds pinks things like that to create more life in the face and draw the attention the problem with an orc face is you're dealing with a bunch of bright green yellows all over the thing there's nowhere to direct the eye so through the integration of reds and red pinks into the face especially in the ears the nose the eyebrows the lips you draw attention remember human eyes track toward red so you draw more attention to the face now as to the uh weapon i have a video on weathering orc weapons because i have a lot of videos go watch my how to paint orcish weapons video um you know the scratches are a little too big it doesn't resolve enough deep shadow the part that's highlighted isn't quite there and you'd want a little bit more brown and stuff like that into the into the rust weathering to capture like where the blade isn't striking and where water is collecting that's where it's going to show you and show sort of that brown color so there you go all right uh our arvin mon okay this is what i paint last month kingdom death miniature and 30 million are triadting texture simple free into the cloth clay peas with this one but still just wants some general feedback sure she looks very nice um she's resolved in a very clean kingdom death style um so i you know that that all is fine with me uh i do think i like the i like the cloth dots i think that's fine some of the little elements like that stand out to me are things like the the toes not having enough shadow resolved and it's basically you're missing a lot of four and five from the model there's not enough deep shadows i like a lot of your highlights but a lot of your elements just don't have enough shadow ironic wouldn't a world like kingdom death where it's all about light and shadow like in between the toes there's not enough shadow like look at my fingers right look at how dark the line is in between my fingers right now look at her hand her fingers and her toes right it's nothing like that right so capturing that a little bit more in her cloth you know in the lower parts where maybe the texture is more hidden deeper shadows things like that is the main part that jumps out to me i think the texturing in the cloth looks really nice i think the tones you're using like the variation of hue in the skin looks good i like the pink stuff like the sort of pink element to it i think that works for me so good stuff there all right uh wendy i'll uh first time post i love paints earth elemental open to critiques and what i can improve sure so um nice looking earth elemental um like the wood a lot i actually really like how you've resolved the wood my challenge is the stone is pretty bland um i have a video on painting realistic weathered stone i would go give that a look um because you without my my issue is here this guy is literally a rock trapped up in nature so there should be greens and browns and purples and reds and stuff like that in the stone resolving other colors like when stone is there's very little pure gray stone in the world because stone exists in nature nature leaves a residue and organic elements and it has color to it and hue moss and you know those kinds of elements so go check out my video on painting a realistic weathered stone um that's going to give you a good a good take but i really like how you resolve the the um the trees i think those look really nice i'm i'm digging those so that part of it great absolutely fantastic we just need to punch up the skin with more variation of hue or the the stone skin yeah you get it all right jacob general feedback on this figure this is my first attempt at non-metallic metal gold is it working uh okay uh it's okay you don't have enough one and two there's not enough highlight to it there's not enough specular light catches so again go and check out my videos on on non-metallic metal gold you have to run the full gamut one through five control the volume is make sure you have the right tones like non-metallic metal super complicated right it's the thing you got to keep trying you you've got a good like two three four five and it's smoothish but there's not enough edge highlights there's not enough white there's not enough light catches and specular highlights where where things are are going to just dot or reflect towards your eye stuff like that some of the pieces i talked about earlier like this leg there'd be a light line here and you're mostly capturing that but it doesn't go near bright enough doesn't have the edges highlighted for things like that so that's my main challenge there um now as far as taking all the elements the same level i think you're doing better i can definitely see that the more focus and everything fur cape still seems quite bland there's no not really doing anything to to spice up my life there but that's kind of the only place that i really see that most of the other stuff you took to you know pretty much the same level of detail so you keep pushing things like the face could go farther the hair could go farther you still want to draw attention up here on the fig so that's kind of my advice uh saying hey back after the submission yeah sure super cool here i i painted this guy as well um the non metallic gold doesn't work for me for the reasons i just said in the last review if that's what you're going for it's not enough white not enough high highlight that kind of thing what does work for me very much here is the sort of black leather armor it could be smooth a little bit saying but i it's fine uh like it's rough but you know i would thin out those edges and do a little transition in between the two we need to smooth things down bring them together soften the edges and then things like that the brown cloak being rough is fine because it's meant to be this really rough leather texture i think the triumph here is the face i really like his face i like the different tones you've integrated in there captures the highlights well i think that's very strong so well done all right next up rich okay uh looking for some feedback on this overall piece for a couple things yeah so like much what i've said here not enough contrast i would focus on cleanliness smoothing out the paint the glowing eyes aren't glowing eyes watch my glowing eyes video if you want to see how to do glowing eyes but again brightest light around to one two three two go watch the video and that'll make sense um but like you know more contrast in everything the tubes the armor the cloak the cloth uh both light and shadow is lacking here i like the does i like the base i like the brought the sort of dirty sand up onto the cloak and up into the the skulls and onto his feet and stuff like that so that works fine for me but yeah i mean our our main challenge here is is clear it's it's it's a contrast game we got it we gotta take that a lot farther and make sure that the individual elements are rendered in a clean fashion so cleanliness and contrast the old cnc all right michael uh painted this for a local store competition where you drew three colors and had to use them predominantly on the model included a pic with the three colors i drew yeah this is fun um yeah it's a it's a neat rendering of it with just those like getting technical gloom oh my god like that night honk gloom or whatever what up what a pic man um yeah this guy came out fun like again you're in a lot of direct light for a simple three color model yeah it's fine i assume the purple had to be you had like access to that for for just the sword or whatever so i mean you didn't really have a shadow color so yeah i you know it's three paints you can't do a lot with three paints sadly um especially three weird paints like this two two very bright colors so honestly given what you had i think this is a tremendous success i think you resolved it fantastically okay brice uh 25th miniature i painted uh sure so what did you do well the um well let's take a focused picture that's a good place to start but i like the way you're trying to resolve the the red cloak now what do we that that looks good you're trying to put in texture you're trying to put in contrast you need to push a little farther but it's nice now what do we need to do more well a lot so we're not resolving all the individual elements there's not enough shadow there's not enough contrast i would like i said earlier man you're you're at a point here where you're just starting and what i would do is watch some videos on contrast either for myself travarion has a great win that kind of thing like honestly go watch travarion's two blood bowl uh tutorials um the one where he like his first blood move to i don't know i think he did two different blood bowls like what about the the initial human and orc and then we kicked him up the next level that is the video you need to watch um i have a bunch like this as well but but the specific place you're at is where that's gonna that's gonna give you the answer of where you need to go now the you know one thing i'll say is never just paint like you have to paint every individual element like these are leather straps this is a glove right this is some other material like things all have to be painted they can't just be all sprayed gold and we call it today right so that's kind of the thing i would say there like the model doesn't feel finished so there's the issue all right valent uh with your termigant um you are absolutely right as you said there's not near enough uh contrast on this like it needs to go a lot farther also don't do a huge base like this for a tiny little guy like this it's too much base for too little thing there is a golden ratio problem with that um like it's too big for the base that's that's the issue you it just ends up looking messy and like the base is hard to resolve with my eye and what's going on you want to stay within the confines of the base and the reason that that base tends to work is because it fits that golden ratio pretty well that one to 1.7 and it you know this like giant piece shooting up and all this other stuff is just too much but yes a lot more contrast in the red the purple everything like keep going again that that has to go a lot farther all right uh jasper uh so the non-metallic metal same things i've said basically every time here not enough contrast doesn't go far enough we have primary light but we don't have the secondary reflections there's not enough specular lights light catches things like that um and so like we've got to take a lot more value contrast a lot more contrast of hue and and really push it i have lots of videos on non-metallic metal um you can go watch like go watch a richard gray video where he's painting non-metallic because he does all the time watch how he does his primary and secondary lights look at how far he pushes everything but that's where we need to go i mean our contrast is way way way too shy on this another piece when you're in it like archion who's normally on a mount with this fig like be careful of posing figs like this it feels like okay what do i get with this oh he's about to fall that's what looks like me he's gonna slide off that rock and just fall like the lord of the apocalypse is going like whoa we're gonna have a scooby-doo accident right because he just looks unbalanced his toe is someone hanging off the edge like he doesn't look like he's in an action pose he looks like he's about to slip because his legs aren't braced like you would brace to stand yourself on that he's because you the the fig wasn't meant to stand in that direction if you're on a rock you're going to stand like this right he's leaning forward in a way that just like his center of gravity does not work in the way you've placed him humans are sort of again subconsciously going to recognize that it just looks like he's horribly off balance so there you go final piece from mezzik's son four years old well done buddy keep painting he's looking fun if you're starting with this at four you've got a long great road ahead of you keep at it fantastic job well done keep it those orcs get a whole get a whole army of those guys on the table but you're doing well buddy you keep at it that brings us to the end so there you go overall I do hope you enjoyed this thank you so much to everybody who submitted thank you to everybody who had the courage to submit this month single figures always a really big month I appreciate everybody submitting but as always if you want to join us you can down below find the link go ahead and click that remember you have to answer all three questions next month's category is diorama I look forward to see what people come up with but as always thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time