 Hello everybody and welcome to another PMP end of month review. Well, what is this? Why this is when we get together at the end of every month to review all the submissions to the PMP end of month review event? So every month we invite the participants in the PMP to submit Something into this event if they'd like for review has to be a finished project they have to provide nobody you can't submit more than one and You have to ask for targeted advice as to what you're looking for to take your next step on your hobby journey So we're gonna get into this and look at everybody's submissions. There are a lot as always, so we're going to be moving quickly At this point this month. We're still gonna do all of them We'll see how that goes as we go forward these take a lot of time But we'll see where we end up As I've said, we may need to get to a different thing eventually, but we'll get there for now We're gonna review all of them if you'd like to join us in your hobby journey beyond just this event Of course, we have our normal Facebook group and it's a wonderful group full positivity information exchange and fantastic hobbyist So whether you're just starting out or a master we welcome you with open arms as long as you're Looking to share and to celebrate the hobby. That's really the only requirements If you want to join link is down below Do please answer all of the questions that are on there if you don't answer all three you don't get in so there You go. All right with that being said, let's go right over here and take a look at the submissions for this month So first up we've got Robert Cooper Who's looking for some advice on how to highlight better? He says it's his next big hurdle. Sure. So looking at it Rob, it's yeah, I mean we were pretty flat here So I mean though when you're it feels like you're probably starting out one This is like a really really small thing. So you probably want to get some bigger miniatures honestly To practice your your volumetric highlighting on but what you want to look up is volumetric highlighting and it's pretty simple This is the easiest way to think about it. Look at my arm right now. There are lights directly above me. This is brighter This is darker. That's it. That's the whole that's the whole shooting match right there So when you're thinking about like a color green, this should be a brighter green This should be a darker green, right? I mean, that's that's the the long and short of it So as we're moving around the dragon like the lower parts of his legs here and here and his arms You know, these should be darker under his chin should be darker that kind of stuff We want to pick out these individual elements and make sure we're trapping those lights and shadows The secret of miniature painting is really all about taking control of the light And if you just look at other miniatures Don't just look at them see them Especially, you know go to like putty and paint or something and look at the way they express the volumes And you'll get an idea of like How those are being trapped. So that's my best advice Okay Next up we've got Marco It says he put all the skills and knowledge into this piece But he'd like to improve if this was a competition area, which areas would require work and attention. Sure. So Marco, this is a really nice piece. I like it a lot the Necron on the base is probably a little lacking because he's just kind of like this flat silver thing So always be careful when you include basing elements that aren't up to the standard of the miniature I would say the same for the rock like the rock. I do love the red dust worked in but the rock itself is still a little Bit just kind of like washed and dry brushed kind of feel now when I look around the it's got some nice battle damage I think that's well executed. Your volumetric highlighting is nice We need to go a little if that if this is meant to be non-metallic gold We're not going dark enough nor bright enough. So that's not really selling to me Like I don't have enough number one. So as always, I'm going to talk about highlights as one two three four five One being the brightest five being the darkest three being your mid-tone. So there's not enough one here We also don't go dark enough. We basically stop at three and a half and we never go darker You'd want to smooth out these blends that kind of thing If we're looking at the metals like this metal part here, this is actually rather flat So you want to make sure you take control the light with your basic metals Like I can see a little highlight down here, but then we didn't smooth that out So make sure we get those get control of those lights and in places like that. I like the texturing on the cloak I think that looks really nice You want to smooth this out some it's still it like you jumped from too light to too dark too quick It's also brown, which just isn't really how white cloth actually gets like, okay I'm wearing a white shirt is any part of that shadow brown No, right It's blue because bright how white highlights have cold shadows like warm highlights have cold shadows So in this case you're using a warm white So you'd want to drift more into like a great home to to to show a dark color, right? But yeah, I mean overall the only other thing that jumped out of me was the lightning needs to be more thin more precise It's really hard to do power sort of lighting. It's something I struggle with as well all the time So I'm not look I get it. It's a real pain You've got to get the sharpest sharpest brush you can you've got to get your paint mixed with some ink for some Flow improver or something and you've got to really get in there and just get these like hyper thin sharp lines So that's the stuff that jumps out at me. I hope that helps to give you some things to think about there Marco It's a very cool piece. I really like the color scheme very um sort of a very naturalistic military green I don't know what chapter this is, but it looks really cool All right, next up keys bringing us some shining spears Tried to pay attention to creating significant contrast or sufficient contrast to succeed as the true metallic metal work Let's take a look. So When it comes to the bikes themselves, I think they look nice Does the contrast on the metal work? So we need to really get in on one of these guys and I think that Go back out to exactly how I phrase this question sufficient contrast and does the TMM work, okay? so I Think that we still need to keep pushing the contrast the bikes feel better But that's largely because they have this big pattern Then the riders the hair and the pink feels good the turquoise a teal feels flat still as does the metallic Now as to drawing more attention to the face I mean that's gonna be really hard on a model like this where everything is a riot of bright exploding colors I honestly don't think it's much of a problem given what these things are and that they're gaming pieces I think you're honestly fine Same thing with the lightning that I said last time again just as with the last piece. It needs to be thinner It needs to be more controlled Today if you're gonna sell that effect So I do think keep pushing on the contrast, you know The gems are really working for me So those I do like and the patterning and stuff like that really does look great So, you know, well, whatever you laid down that with that that came out really well. So well done there Okay, next up Caspian Egyptian war clerics painting non-traditional swords the real hassle advice and that would be helpful Sure, so yeah, we've got like unusual sword shapes here And when it comes to this the key is to pick like we'll just take this one for example The key is to pick, you know, some edges and then start creating Alternations of light and dark when you've got a blade like this One of the things you can do is just sort of cheat What I mean by that is you can have this area here be light against the most dark that travels the flat of this area here And then this area gets somewhat lighter again And then you've got another bright spot down here in the middle meant to be a reflecting light bouncing back up Like maybe in this area down here and then this bottom part is very dark And then in the middle part you make the blade itself dark and you make this the brighter section of the middle one Kind of gives you a nice easy, you know Alternating two by one highlight situation So, you know, there's like it's you just need to find your edges draw them out I mean these figs don't look super sharp like well-defined precise Line so that can be really tough because you have to really create it yourself But that's kind of the way I would go about it. Just find some shapes in there and start creating the alternations between light and dark That's my best advice Okay, next up Kurt wondering how to balance the blends And shadows without looking too dark angel also any other tips on how to improve my true metallic metal Sure, so with salamanders, they're an interesting challenge because yes, you do want to stay within a certain tone The answer is you want to push up higher into yellow greens for your highlights As you're doing on things like the feet and then you get very soft And you bring in more of a black instead of a deep green for your shadows or like a black blue Create naturalistic shadows on the green through something like a Payne's gray or a dark sea blue or whatever deep blue like there's A ton of different dark blue black colors around so something like that And that will give you more naturalistic shadows But you rely more on you have more one two and three and you minimally use your four and five But you just use it to create the volumes. I think the most successful part of this to me is the feet I think you actually did those really well like this area down here I know that it's kind of just a little thing But I actually think these are executed exactly right like you've got nice darks defining everything you've go You pop up to a high enough highlight It would just be a matter of carrying this kind of a concept out to the rest of the figure more Equally rather than just on kind of the edges now as to the true metallic metal. Yes, I do think we need to go farther with it You know, it's it can be tough With stuff like the shapes that are here But my best advice with things like the gun These are good opportunities to like bring shadows right up top here to create then a highlight on top You know highlight the shadow to light again. It's all about creating contrast alternation light dark light dark when you have these kinds of leg pieces where the it's got this Metal edge around it, you know up top here should be quite dark It's quite protected with maybe a small light in the center to capture reflecting light down here should be very bright You know just start creating alternating patterns of light and dark like I said in the previous piece So hope that helps Alright next up long can ask about my placement of highlight and shadow in my current whip So again, I appreciate it. There's a couple people this month that did work in progress Don't do work in progress. This is for finished stuff. You have to finish the project to submit here That being said since it's your first time you've done it I'll I'll give it to you and I'll give you some advice But in general finished only you got to finish the piece to get here must be finished. Okay. All right Now as to your placement of highlight and shadow. I think it's fine I think that you need to pop up like where we're falling down here is on and like the problem Is it's very hard for me to judge where you are when it's work in progress? I don't know how far you are how far you intended to go all that kind of stuff now that being said We need to take more high highlights up to the top area here So especially on the the tops of hit the shoulders and these kinds of areas This should be much brighter now if we're just talking about the highlights on the cloak and kind of how those work out Yes, but I need more like you vary the the purple blue here, but we don't vary the red at all So if we're gonna do this We've got to carry some shadows down and carry some shadows down and have this like Naturally extend and create you can do these color transitions, but the shadows and the lights have to extend as well So there you go. Hope that helps Okay mark working on the glow effect from the plasma coils think it needs to extend farther have some glow in the shoulders and back Yeah, so I you know I looked at this earlier, and I do think it's a little too bright on the face I think you might need a little up on the backpack like right here I do agree with you and I tone it down a little bit on the face like have this normal color come in a little little bit more But honestly, I think it works You know, I was looking at this and I thought yeah that pretty much works It actually works best in this photo and I was trying to figure out why and I realized It's because you're not taking this picture in good even lighting. You're taking it in bad lighting, okay? So I We're going to talk about photos in the future. There's some other ones coming up here that we got to talk about photos with but In this one since you have this strong directional light coming in from this side. It's making this area reflect Okay, and when I looked at it from a distance, I was like, oh, yeah, there's light here and there's light here All right, and it looked right and then I went to the next photo Oops, sorry. I went to the next photo where it was turned away from the light and it looked too dark Okay, so sometimes you can do stuff like this like just make it shine a natural light at your miniature in that direction You can kind of get an idea The other thing you can do is the first thing you want to do is you want to define the outer edge Like if this is the glow what circle is it casting? Right, and then you just literally hold the miniature like that and back and forth And you look at like what areas if this is where my globe of light sits What am I touching? So yeah, I'd push it up a little more into those areas But overall, I think it's it's quite successful in the face. It really feels like yeah That's a good glow and it's green on green which wouldn't normally work But I think you actually did a really good job of it here. So well done Okay, next up James Lynch who I met down at hand con has a beautiful Salin ash army Looking for feedback specifically on the cloth and clothing. How do you take it to the next level? Other feedback also encouraged. So as I told you James in person I think your non-metallic metal your gold doesn't have enough one and probably a little bit of two Needs to be brighter needs to pop more needs more edges needs a little more ivory with some white glint or something like that That was the one thing I noticed there. That's my general feedback now. Let's talk cloth I think your cloth looks really nice. I think you have the right amount of highlights in there I think it has a good Variation like I had the good fortune of seeing these pieces up close So I did get a chance to look at most of this Salin ash army, you know Hold it touch it, you know be inches away from him I think there's a couple places where you could add a little bit more five a little bit deeper shadows But honestly my answer is if you're just going for like cloth just straight up cloth That's fine Where you would go if you wanted to take it up a level would be things like either texture or freehand or both Right so working in brocade patterns and things like that into the design or working in texture silk texture You know, so lots, you know thousands and thousands of tiny little Hashes little slashes on highlights and stuff like that which I've got a couple videos on That would be the way you could sort of take it and escalate it way up to the next level But you know that being said depends on it's clear you spent a ton of time on this army already It looks gorgeous You know, I I know you top three you might have gotten first place in the AOS thing So you're clearly doing very well When you get first place out of five or not sorry, I mean 200 some people. Yeah pretty good So but it's great to great to hear from you James I hope everything is well down in Australia and I hope to see you again in 2022 when can con comes back I can't wait to see what you got by then okay Mikhail one of his recent works tried to put everything you know into them, but they feel like they lack something sure What you take is the next step Yeah, so I mean the answer here is going to really be contrast. Okay, so you know when I was looking over these guys They're they're very nice. I like the patterning and stuff. I think all that looks nice I think the the glow on her eyes a little too strong. You want to weaken that a little bit It really looks like like it just we can get the yeah the leader shot here That's you've got a little too much of intense blue right here. That needs to soften out like that's it's reflecting way too intensely But when we're talking about next level, it's mainly on a contrast So when you do the patterns and stuff like we are here or you know things like that when you've got things like bone When you've got things like wood when you've got things like the flesh None of these have enough contrast all of these need to go farther So more tonal variation of value that's going to be the thing you want to you want to work on there Mikhail they look great. They're a really nice looking warband if you're gonna do another one My best advice is keep pushing yourself like this. I think you're doing great now You know work on adding in more variation of Value so more tonal variation. Okay more contrast. Hope that helps All right, next up Paul Allen Most recent completion was striving for realism on the griff drawing inspiration from Kestrel's So go to commit the cat metallics looking true so decided to focus on the bold colors contrast and glazing sure Does the base so and then his final question which does the base work? So my answer is not really. Yeah, I like the basic components of it. Yes, but the stone feels to just like Flat let's go back to that one. Sorry The stone feels just like stone. So this is stone with plants literally growing out of it And yet it's gray and white stone cardinal sin there This is a mortal sin of miniature painting Stone is not flat gray, especially not ruins. That's something that's been sitting out in nature for Months years decades centuries being this broken down it has plants going on it Should have greens. It should have browns. It should have reds. It should have mud on it It should have you know, like that kind of thing. That's what makes something feel old and ruined Now as to the bird. Yeah bird works for me. I think word looks good Like the Kestrel colors like the gray and white feels naturalistic. He did a good job His face is like really eye-catching, which is what you want So all that works for me. I don't have any issue with that at all. I think the bird looks fantastic The metals on the guy are on the on the cast and his armor are very very bright I think we do need to take some control of the light there by having you know We need to get some control with some inks and really glaze in some shadows or something like that, right? Really take control of that light. There's some areas on this that are more successful than others like this little lightning area Here is still staff. I think feels better than some of the other areas So I think just work on what you're doing with your contrast and your true metallic metals and push yourself there And that would be my best advice for you But yeah overall cool piece. I like it Okay, next up Duarte What makes for a more attractive photo the darker infos or the white background? I like black background So I mean it's but in the end it's up to you Overall color composition and do the wings seem detached from the rest of the model if so any suggestion on how to Correct it. Yeah, sure. So I mean the wings are fairly neutral colored They are very detached I mean we got to talk about lighting here, buddy like The black that the problem is if you're gonna do a black background You have to have like this is way too direct of lighting and way too much shadow So let's go to this one because this is like you have a much more even lighting set up here If you're gonna do a black background, you have to flood the area with light diffuse non-targeted light now Okay, so let's talk about this Yes, the wings are Very different than everything else, but I'm not sure that actually matters because they're so neutral toned I mean your color composition wise here. I think you're fine. You're not really using a lot of colors You know my biggest challenges I have with I mean, this is a mostly neutral piece or very desaturated, right? You don't really have any colors that pop except for your your candle flames And the candle flames are one of my biggest challenges with it It feels too that like we don't Ferrari red is not part of a candle flame It needs to be a small amount of white yellow little bit of ochre Mostly a deep orange and then into a little bit of a whole red or deep red black brown at the top That's candle flame color. There's no Ferrari red and candle flames The Though I think my main challenge is not composition. I think composition wise you're you're fine I think you're in a good enough place We need more contrast across most everything like the black is too flat the skin of the the arms in the face of the The character himself are way way too flat We definitely need color there and then the bone that construes the the mount is again too flat needs more contrast So we're way too much in the mid-tones. So I think my composition you're fine now We just need to push the contrast. So there you go. Hope that helps Okay, next up Juniper finished his vampire after having multiple varnish mishaps and finally success in AK Ultramat Sure I mean I still trust AK Ultramat that that company made me very angry and it was a bunch of nonsense of what they did But you know, they still make a really good product. It's it's it is what it is. I don't know I I can say I probably won't support them for anything else but that I'm mostly looking for feedback on the red armor I aimed for it to be fairly desaturated and the TMM where I tried to use some non-metallic techniques for shading with inks Yeah, sure So I think so this is you have bad pictures. I'm just gonna say that straight out Juniper This is a very cool conversion. I really love this idea this conversion You did taking this storm cast character and turning into this vampire lord. This is a cool idea. I like the red armor I think it looks really nice. I actually think the red armor is very successful It probably needs a little bit more contrast mainly through shadow So you need more fours and fives, but the color tone of it is nice. It's great. It's a desaturated red It doesn't smack you in the face. It feels like a like an old worn vampire armor So I actually think that's really successful. These photos are bad. Okay. I don't like if you can see a shadow like this You have too direct of lighting You should be like you should not see a shadow coming off of a miniature in any way if you can your lighting is too Direct it needs to be diffuse you can diffuse lighting by literally taking a piece of You know a four paper or whatever and putting it in front of the light Okay So something like that now that being said I'll do my best with our lighting conditions here and The challenge of doing it in poor lighting is it's not really gonna let me evaluate your true metallic Like I can't see anything in the top there and this is overblown right too much light not enough light I think the red is successful my general impression and I could be completely wrong Given what's going on is that you're aiming the right direction with the metallics We just need to push it a little bit more with the glazing and kind of smooth things out That's what jumped out of me, but overall. I think the red is an absolute success Again, maybe push a little more shadows. You can kind of see it in the black and white where a lot of it Is in that too gray spectrum But the metallics, yeah, I it's a little hard to tell because there the blade kind of looks all white There maybe you've got some color, but it's out of focus. So it's just it's kind of hard for me to tell man. I apologize So indirect lighting I Gotta beat a couple people up for photos this month. Okay Jacob All right, Audi finish the first of my many gets for tabletop standard as I want my army ready decent pace Mainly want feedback on is the robe in the hood Still new to paintings. There's a lot I can learn. Hey, I love that attitude It's very tough to tell again, we have very direct lighting in a very small photo so I mean if you're going for tabletop, I think it's fine I like the little red hood little red cap with the little white dots The robe itself seems fine goblin robes are the least important part of the whole thing So if they're pretty they seem pretty stock standard When you got 60 of them together what what you can see is like weapon tips and hats and long noses I like the addition of the pink to the nose. So yeah, I mean, I think you've got a good tabletop standard If you're looking for something speedy Seems good to me So that's what I'll say Okay Lucas love Vincent. Thanks for the offer first large mini. I'd love to hear one two things You liked one two things you didn't like sure Okay As well as how to make the face more of a focal point So yeah, let's take a look Things that I really quite like about this are Overall, I think the colors used are really interesting even though you've used a lot of different colors like we Honestly have purple green yellow blue and orange on this piece So that's quite a riot of colors with some red on the base. So we're just spinning that whole color wheel Yet I feel like they're fairly in balance like at most of the viewing angles. I honestly feel like it's it's pretty in balance So I enjoy that compositionally I think that the gold I like it needs to come to a slightly higher highlight But I like the texturing and the way you painted it. I feel like that sells for me. I'm a buyer on that. Okay Now the green scales feel like they need something a little more especially on things like the feet Especially as the feet transition into the toenails and the hands into the hand nails Those feel very flat his face has a little does a little better But again, like the green doesn't really transition into the purple super smoothly That's kind of where I feel like it's falling down the armor the cloth all of that sells to me The scales feel like they need a little bit more variation a little bit more smoothness and contrast The other thing that I don't love is the sword which is ironic because you did a beautiful job glazing it But it just doesn't go far enough for me It's really in like two three like that's all you did You didn't push up to one. You didn't push down to Four or five so I feel like some more contrast on the sword It doesn't have to be completely even you don't have to it doesn't have to go like, you know in this complete Even pattern that's another like watch out for that you have like one two one two And they're very exactly balanced and in the same length all the way and all that kind of stuff But I feel like we needed more dark shadows in here There's nothing this guy feels like he's in a dark swampy environment and yet there's no shadows reflecting off of this He's getting just like the sword would be flooded with light from all directions to be reflecting that brightly So it just doesn't feel like up here on the hilt it feels like we got down dark enough But we didn't anywhere on the blade So there you go now as to the face being a focal point I mean doing what I talked about with more contrast more smoothness pop the purple in the nose up Have the eyes be more of a defined color that kind of thing I think would would draw more attention to the face. So there you go. Hope that helps Lucas All right next up Fabian custom nergal demon prints looking for some general feedback But also on the wings are they too boring? Yes, easy answer. I mean if you let me so here's the thing. I always say if you Had the wherewithal to ask the question you asked the question because in your mind You knew the answer so you either you know the answer and you're looking for me to absolve you Okay, I am not if you had it in your head listen to the voice You don't need me you have your own inner painter inside of you And when they tell you mmm Does that feel right? We've all had that moment listen to that voice. Okay, so yes, the wings are flat. They need more They need more contrast. I have multiple videos on doing wings. So I would recommend looking into those Now as to general feedback the problem with the the body itself is again It's all very flat like it's from a distance. This guy just looks like sort of a study in yellow brown Maybe going into a little bit of red. We need more separation of elements like More colors glazed in like if he's all meant to be one thing That's fine Then we need to have like colors if he's meant to be nergal then give me some green some purples glaze in something Give me more shapes. Give me more Variation of hue here and use that to define your volumes, right? A lot of things here are just too flat and too lacking in contrast So that's gonna be my main feedback and advice for you a cool conversion though I don't know what this is from but man, is this a creative original thing like this is super neat. So Yeah, it's like a super cool idea. I dig the heck out of it I have no idea what you built this from but it is a very unique interesting figure Alright Adrienne first Post hey welcome glad to have you Try to improve something every time one thing that bothers me still is gloss varnish You can't see on this photo. Well, when I varnish models This makes them somehow dull even if I use gloss I've tried many brands and ends up like this every time I paint metallics using alclad two paints that are very shiny And it's always despite when they end up after varnishing. Okay, so these guys look really nice Here's my best advice for Adrienne. Please for the love of all that is holy stop varnishing your metallics You don't need to even with gaming pieces. This is just this thing that's out there Plastic miniatures are tough metal paints are tough You know, I mean like unless you literally grab your miniatures and rub them like this Okay, or you have some plan to really really get them into a position where they're gonna get worn and torn I do not varnish my my Metal minute like when I have metallics I varnish in the middle with all my mats I paint all my matte colors first and I varnish and I paint all my metallics I've never had a scratch and I play with my armies, you know every weekend and take them to five tournaments a year so That is my first advice alclad two is a beautiful metal paint and you can tell here these guys really pop My biggest advice for you if one I can see this a very zoomed out photo I mean they look really nice love the colors love the execution swords look wonderful beautiful variation on the swords By the way, beautiful That really sells for me. I'd push up the contrast a little bit more on the shoulder pads You have wonderful contrast in the metallics that really sells of course Those should be the things that pop the most I would work on the contrast on my blues a little more Bring that up a little bit give us a little more action there I think that's really the number one thing that jumps out of me But hopefully with the varnish trick, you know And if you if you're the type person that you do the alclads and then do the matte paints last just don't varnish these guys I promise they'll be fine You don't need to worry about it Do not varnish metallics. It's just going to ruin them Okay Patrick painting figures for a little over a year now 54 mil Norman warrior I would like you some feedback on shading and the flag because it doesn't give me that feeling It's made of fabric Sure, and then as well some general feedback. So a couple of thoughts here one we definitely I mean the same thing I've said many times we need to have the contrast a lot more so He he is a very flat figure when you're painting in the scale 54 mil You have a lot more space, which means two things Contrast of value needs to get upped and contrast of texture So there's sometimes where we say that oh when you paint larger You don't need to worry about contrast as much because the light will do it for you. I don't believe that You have to take the lighting into account to make it look realistic You have to create the lighting situation and bigger figures allow you to do that So for example, his steel is just all one flat color on his his chain shirt here, right? So like I need shading that is in here and light reflections up here and stuff like that Same with the shield same with the pants same with the jerk and same with all of that Now the other thing and what would answer your flag question is you need variation of texture Okay, so as you go up into 54 and 75 millimeter You have the ability to add texture because you can see it It would get to a scale where you can now see texture more clearly So what that means is things like hashes stippling dots Scratches wear tear and like on things like the leather and the jerkin and the wood and the sword scabbard and the shield and the flag We need to see those textures in there and that's what'll make it feel like cloth But at the same time the first one where you have more naturalistic shadows and highlights created if you then add in the texture As well, that's what's gonna do it for you Now that's a lot of stuff if you're only a year in okay, so I don't want to hit you with too much My main advice would actually be to focus more on contrast first get your contrast down Understand your volumetric highlighting understand your lights and shadows and then Work your way to textures eventually. Okay, so hopefully that helps Alright next up Jake bringing us another lunar wolf. We talked. We saw some of these last month Two things you did well and two things still need to work on this might be a format that we just go to It might be it might actually be like a one thing you did well in one thing because that'll really let me You know discuss so but we'll see for now. We'll stick to two Yeah, so things I think you did well love the Love what you've done taking into account things like the dusting and the and the weathering the sort of powder No, my goodness, excuse me, I hope that wasn't too loud So I think that really sells We've and I know that you know part of what you said with last month was you were going for You know something tabletop this needs to be replicable. You're not looking to take this to an ultra-high level got it So that's how my advice will be structured Um The I think the battle damage looks nice I think that's you know you break them up a little bit more in variation So one of the things human brains do is they want to make everything the same size Every one of your chips is the same size and every one of your scratches is the same length Now I know they're not exactly the same length in millimeters But they are that is the same size as that is the same size as that is the same size as that is the same size as that is The same size as that is the same size as that for all practical purposes like you're varying like this Right. This is your variance. That's not variance if you're gonna do scratches One needs to be like that and most need to be like this and then you got one like that That's variance right so you should have one like go in the whole length of his leg and then a couple little ones And then you know that kind of thing, right? You also need to make sure your dots and your chips are of different sizes So I like it. I like your coloration. I think that looks good I like your random patterning the general patterning is good. We just need to vary the size and application Okay, it's a hard thing to do because your brain why likes regularity. It wants to do the same thing However, that isn't what we can do. Okay So Now on to the other thing I like is I like where you're going with the axe I think that actually looks really cool with the sort of fire coming down You know again If it were if you're going for a higher sort of you know and stuff I'd say eventually, you know, you could smooth out your blends But honestly, I like the execution on it again for something fast and more tabletop focused to capture some light like that and a little Flamy piece I dig it. I think that's really cool. Makes that dude stand aside or stand apart. I think it's good Alright next up Dave 20 year old dragon ogre It's a shag off actually, but yeah, well, I guess shagouts are dragon ogres, but whatever I know the kit. Well, I've got a couple of them. I love them Can't bash some tiered and wings on which by the way looked great. I we haven't got I looked at this earlier I absolutely love this conversion. This is gorgeous man. You made these fit together so well I mean these it feels like this was the kit you everybody's gonna see what I get in this First time using snow, which don't think quite pulled off Sure This was a turning point your skill push feedbacks most appreciated. Yeah, this looks really great As I said the conversion alone is absolutely wonderful. I really really enjoyed This conversion like you really nailed it. You knocked it out of the park with integrating these two pieces together It feels like this should be the kit Like really legit So yeah, well done on that Now, you know as to the stuff I like your contrast of value on the skin where we're missing is the variation of hue So of color in the shadows We have our one two three really nice But we never really go to a four and five on the muscle structure on the volumes We never integrate the reds the maroons the crimson's the Purples that we would want to see into that flesh to make it feel alive So we want to keep pushing the color like that That's the number one thing that jumped out of me that if I was gonna tell you what to work on next It would be that if you want a second small thing It's be careful with large big shapes like the wings that feel very airbrushed You want to still go in and make sure that you are picking out individual areas creating some naturalized texture on Big things like these wings, you know, which like I said, I mean I can I know you use the airbrush on them Because I can see the effects of the airbrush, which is fine But you want more variation here. These are all just like the same. It's all just the same, you know So either use the airbrush more to your your More to your advantage by bringing in some glazes of other colors near like the bone pieces are going and actually highlight out the little bones that are in between the wings or Take so your paintbrush and make some long stipple lines and then glaze over those and like you can do a hundred things, right? But the point is is that you want to be doing something like that to create more visual interest in those Okay. Now as to the snow. Yeah, it doesn't quite work. It's a little too clumpy I have a couple of realistic snow videos my advice be go watch those. I think the one you want is like I Don't know when I return to it 92 or in the 90s. Maybe is when I return to it. So check around somewhere in there Hobby cheating 90 something Craig Lewis did a lot of new stuff like sculpting obsidian like blade and having this Marvel look on this Marathi looking to improve more in every aspect sure That's not quite as targeted as I would like but I'll see what I can do for you Okay, so the number one thing is when you have that the jumped out of me was the conversion works like good integration of the wings I think that works fine and you managed to blend in the the pieces rather well So and make it feel like a naturalistic transition. So that sells for me The number one thing I actually noticed was up on Marathi in this area where we want to be paying attention, right? First of all, I wouldn't do this with this blood effect. It's just kind of too far Like if you want a couple little dribbles coming out of her mouth, that's fine But like having it run out like that everywhere. It just really Covers the fig in a negative way to be honest. I mean, I know we're like yay blood and it's super cool Yeah, it's just not as impactful. It just makes you look messy Now the thing that jumped out of me was contrast. Okay, so the wing effect is fine It's kind of it's it is what it is I would still pick out the feathers like you need to go in and actually make something happen with the texture on those feathers But the contrast here that needs a lot more attention is in her skin in her outfit and in her headdress, right? Like her headdress is just basically gold. Her skin is just basically this color and her outfit is black with a little bit of purple So more contrast more volumetric highlighting is really what we need to see. I think the conversion is really cool So I think that looks nice. We just need to make sure that we we're still pushing that contrast up So if I was gonna tell you one thing to work on Craig, it would be push that contrast So with her skin integrate those soft pinks those crimson's those magenta's those even soft purples on the gold bring in Give me some chestnut tones some light purples some shadows push me up to the silver for the highlights create take control of the light and really you know really grab it, okay on the On the dress itself show me some deep blacks show me some purple You know into into a sort of lilac highlights or something like that. They're very soft or very small volumes just something like that So there you go, Craig. Hope that helps Okay, next up Alberto hyvins I've tried to apply your previous advice now I appreciate any proven that you can suggest for this one. Yeah, so It's good. There are two main things that jump out of me. This is really nice. Good clean fig looks really nice It's interesting figure Number one is what I've been talking about already We need more of a tonal variation in the skin more variation of hue and a little bit of contrast So again, we're getting there. This is better. We're going the right direction. We need to keep pushing it Integrating more tones. There's a lot of there's a lot of cool larger-scale female works around that you can Google even more male works that you can look at and see how they've integrated different hues and contrast into that skin There's a lot you can do there bringing in additional green tones red tones deep purples deep reds mixed with deep greens to get a nice subtle realistic Desaturated brown lots and lots of options. So that kind of stuff the other thing that jumps out man This is the hair. The hair is a real opportunity. We're passing by We need to get that into You know more naturalistic highlights So again, like I always talk about if you want to understand how to do Highlights just go Google pictures of hair dye boxes like Vidal Sassoon hair dye boxes and look at how they light the Woman's hair in there because it's always photoshopped It's perfect lighting like it's perfect lighting in the studio and then they correct it with a computer to be the absolute perfect highlights So it'll show you exactly the halo of light the ring and exactly how it's created And I think that's where our opportunity is to to improve there Okay to create more variation in that hair because that's kind of a it's a big piece big part of her face We want to make sure we're catching that out Alright next up Nako tried his best also tried not to use any white instead all the highlights are done with rack our flesh and the sword just yellow Love it. Love it Okay, so I feel like we could have on the non-metallic gold. We should have integrated more into a pure rack our flesh We're not going high enough on that and pure rack our flesh would be enough to give us a bright highlight So we need we need to push a little bit more there in some places Sword works. Although in general, I would avoid making the tip the hottest part. This is just like a classic Sort of thing I see a lot where people just take it up in one direction This is always more boring have the hot part be in the middle and the edges and have the tip be black And the bottom be black and this be hot It will look you will be amazed how much better it will look simply by literally moving it down This is the easiest trick of the eye instead of going one direction Make the eye move two directions as we go toward the highlight and you will blow you away. How different the feeling is, okay? Now other than that I like the blue armor I think that's well executed on we do need to pop up the highlights on things like the backpack and the very top Parts the shoulders the highest parts of the overall volume of the miniature It needs to come up a little higher As well, we probably need to glaze in a little bit more shadows But overall I really like the execution on some of the on on the gold other than the shield I think which you've got some parts that really stand out really nicely, especially the iron halo and the pieces on his backpack I think that looks good the soft scratching on the leather I think looks really nice the the bottom of the cloak by the way looks absolutely wonderful with the red You've worked up in there stuff like that that I'm a buyer on I'm a buyer on that a hundred percent Yeah, really good stuff great There you go. Hope that all helps Okay, next up Matthew. I'm looking for advice on how to improve corroded breasted non-metallic metal So, okay, Matthew. Here's my honest advice. Here's my simple answer. Don't I Know it sounds like a jerk thing to say, but here's why I say it You have to master non-metallic metal and really understand how volumes work and lighting works and really have Convincing NMM and then you can start working on polluting that with other things, okay It's a really complicated technique. It's not an easy thing to do All right, so like but that being said if you don't mind failure and challenging yourself and continue learning then okay So the way you integrate corrosion into non-metallic metal is by placing it in the shadows It's effectively a trick of secondary lighting you use Corrosion in place of secondary highlights in NMM So you should have your high highlight your two your three or four or five and then you come back to two Four three two, but instead of climbing back up into your highlight colors You climb through browns into brighter brown and then into orange This has the advantage of usually being placed where the light isn't striking because the light would be reflecting Where it's still brightest so it feels naturalistic now why those areas that aren't being reflected upon or happen to be the areas of highest rust is usually a bit of a An artistic license now that being said when you've got things like pits and rust those are good chances to break it up Don't make them also universally orange like you did here. You want some that is brown You want some that are running out So you still want those high highlights, but you've got to shrink the volumes way down on the reflections Okay, and you want interruptions of them scratches things like that things that make it look worn places where suddenly You know rust creeps in or something. So it's this really careful balancing act. You have to walk There's probably a video in this at some point in time doing non-metallic metal Corroded weapons. That's a very specific thing, but I know exactly and it is very challenging But I hope whether that advice helps you out Alright next up mark part of a larger collection of models from a war cry war band but Try a few different things here tattoos or something. He's never done Can't help a feeler's room for improvement another aspect You're struggling with is how to make the sculpted furs look really good So here I'm just gonna probably direct you to two videos mark So the tattoos look nice You need to sharpen them up So I direct you to my sharp thin lines video as well as my tattoo video Which is in the 60s or something watch both of those Because in the tattoo video you see that one of the keys to integrating them is one go a little bit darker more The black on this and to make sure you have the flesh tone glazed over the top So they feel integrated into the skin. They need to be sharp They need to be strong and then they need to be glazed to be softened. They have to start strong Now as to the fur again, so I have a couple different videos on painting fur And how to make those look realistic. I would direct you to the most recent fur video I couldn't tell you what number it's in but these war cry models and these chaos models Really fit that style of fur very well It's a technique that's very hard to explain But it has to do with making fur clumps and patches and then highlighting and criss-crossing them And that's a very naturalistic pattern-looking way that if you've looked at like my recent chaos wearers or chaos nights that I've done They all use that technique So I would direct you back to that video and that will put you on the right direction. Okay? So hopefully those two things help Alright Next up Kyle Relatively new to painting. This is his 12th model Mostly alternating between bones and whiz kids Mostly looking at improving any atrocious mistakes. I mean my best advice is there's not much I'm gonna be able to tell you at this point like it's your 12th model Keep painting keep learning keep watching stuff and practicing Improve your contrast improve your brush control like the stuff you need to work on immediately your 12 models And that's basically nothing like I don't mean any offense. Okay, but I've painted 3000 models in the past seven years, you know like It's a difference and It's not that you need to My point is that like you want to do you're you're still learning the muscle memory and the brush control and all the basics And that's really the stuff like telling you to focus on techniques would be the wrong thing to learn at this level Right, it would be like if you're just learning math and I said, okay So now we're gonna talk about calculus. Whoa, we haven't even gotten through like addition multiplication Division yet, you know, like let's slow down here. So my best advice is it looks good It looks like you're painting relatively cleanly So what I want you to focus on is your brush control getting more models under your belt and pushing your contrast I've talked a lot about volumetric highlighting and stuff like that start thinking about how to increase your contrast of value lights and darks Okay, and I think you're you know, you're coming along Certainly if you've got that if you've got the bug, I'm very excited I think this is a super fun model. I don't want to see him kill that pig though. I hope that pig is his friend And you know bones models and whiz kids models and stuff like that are perfect to learn on my best advice if you really want to practice on Understanding your your volumes and really get that contrast down Pick up like some of the whiz kids the troll or the smaller giants or stuff like that Like not the really really big ones, but just kind of the smaller stuff They have great exposed flesh and musculature and those kinds of muscles are a great way to practice Really understanding volumes because you can go Google a million image of just muscle bound warriors on the internet You know, you can go look at for Zeta paintings or you can go look at Elmore paintings You can go look at anything like that You can go look at putty and paint or all the people who do take it to a super high level You can look at how they define the muscle texture and then you can start practicing it But building contrast and brush control is going to be your real real thing you want to work on this level Understanding your paint understanding how to thin it Understanding how to apply it and understanding how to create contrast. That's the road. You need to go down Okay, next up Abe Know where to improve where to practice up to display competition quality Sure, so I mean my my first thing I would say here is if we're talking about you know Sort of display or competition The I wouldn't use a fig like this. It's a bit sort of overwhelming and cacophonous And out of balance. So like just that's just model choice doesn't really do with anything else The second thing I would say is the red itself feels Flat like I don't know what to I don't know what to make of it Or how to my brain can't really resolve it because it's not responding to the light in the same way as other Elements on the piece it feels very flat even whereas things like your sword and these other parts are like really responding to the light Now as to the OSL. Yes, I think this is way too bright and yellow like this should be an orange I think the OSL works over here on this leg I think that actually looks pretty cool I think over here if we just took it down to an orange and had you know more basically blue here going up into an orange We'd be in the right place. Okay Um lighting wise we're a little overexposed here again because I've got all these shadows like we're way overblown If you have like zebra stripes you can turn on your camera to see overexposure like when you go to the black and white I can't even see detail in the arm here or in here or in here, right? If that's happening, you're overexposed, right? So just pay attention to stuff like that so we can actually see what the real colors are This the gray stone needs to push into again more contrast more controlled texturing probably Um the sword looks good. Although if you're gonna do these little hash lines, they need to be thinner And like I'm not sure what you're aiming at by trying to capture there So like in general, I don't love the hash line technique unless they're gonna be really small really tight and really close together Like I would like this sword a lot more if it was just those blends going up and down That would honestly sell me a lot more than what we did with all the low lines So those are my thoughts a overall it's a this is a you know, it's a crazy fig I Have no idea what this is that guy is really an unusual figure and you know, so keep pushing Okay, next up Sergei want to share his work need fresh eyes because can't see his mistakes Sure, so a couple things jumped out at me when I was looking at this one one The white beard feels a little too white needs it feels like it needs to have a little more Variation like and let me tell you why this is flame again get rid of the Ferrari red from the fire too much yellow Not enough orange or ochre orange and deep orange way too much red like that's not how fire looks But the thing that really jumped out of me is you've reflected this light Here on to him like you have areas where this yellow light is having an impact It's reflecting on his hair is faced up like that. Okay, if that's the case then this is a relatively dark scene But it's not a dark scene. It's a very bright scene your rock is painted as though there is a ton of other light source your Green over here, which is completely shrouded from this is painted as though There's a ton of other light your white beard is painted as though There's a ton of other light Everything else on this figure is telling me this guy standing in daylight The base the walls his weapons his other arms his other pieces everything says I'm standing in Noontime daylight and yet then all of a sudden this torch Which if I struck a if I bled a torch in this room right now, it's not this is not as bright as daylight by the by in my room Um It would not have any effect right like if the lighting condition in here would basically not change I mean it would get all smoky and gross in here, but that's about it So like if you're gonna do you cannot create light without creating a shadow, right? But there's already a dominant light this light can't beat that light So if you're going to do the torch thing and have that torch light you need to bring everything else way down Okay, and create this lighting halo here And that needs to define your lighting everything else needs to be like maybe a soft blue light or a moonlight or something like that And it what caught me out was when I looked at the white beard It looked just really white and it didn't have the deeper shadows I was expecting given the torch standing there So that's probably the number one thing that jumped out of me sir. Okay, so I hope that helps Also, avoid this yellow cast on this down here Torches do not reflect this color yellow. This is like a cold Like lemon yellow. That's not torches. Don't reflect the lemon yellow at best. This would be like a soft orange yellow glow Okay, next up. Um, Zach been a while since posted for review. Um So this is hobby growth project looking for advice on making whites pop more have started working with golden acrylic and liquid Texanx and white general advice on things you can push sure So, I mean I was looking at these guys. I don't have any super close-up shots So it's a little hard to tell I mean the white feels like it's good What you're going to need to do if you want it to pop more is create more contrast So like I noticed on things like the shield you're using, you know an ivory against a white Well, that's never going to pop if you make the edge of the shields dark Then the white shields will pop more, right? So like I don't know exactly the color scheme you're going for but you have a very flat toned color scheme I mean the white stands out against the blue because it's You know, it's a much different color putting like a soft bright ivory against a cold white That's not going to be a lot of contrast, right? um So, I mean if I was really going to do this I would say Um one try to pay a little bit more attention to the faces inside there those felt unfinished But two the thing that jumped out of me is I feel like this would be so much more impactful If things like the edge of the shield and a couple of the pieces were more dark In some way that could be changing them to an actual hue that could be changing them to a darker version of the actual thing I don't know. There's probably lots of options out there But that would then make the white stand out way more to me and create a much nicer dark light dark contrast there, so Hope that helps Okay, next up sam So effrayl stern went for a satin matte black armor and velvet on the fabrics Would like any tips you would offer in general maybe some more on white hair Yeah, so I think the armor like I understand the satin matte thing you're going for on the armor It does feel still a little too flat is my honest answer the Texturing on the inner part of the robe looks better than the outer part of the robe And that's probably because of like Just the nature of what you have access to here But this one feels just way too rough Like if you want a stippling texture, we've really got to take that stippling into control The inside sorry. Let's go back to This one there we go. The inside feels like it works to me. You caught a good highlight I like the vertical hashing. I think that's okay The outer one doesn't work. It feels too rough too sort of chaotic Um, like I can't get a I can't get a bead on what texture you're actually aiming at there The armor feels like we need to up the value just a little bit in the high highlights I understand you want it to feel more matte. That's cool. I would still bring it up a little bit more It is still some kind of you know mildly reflective enamel Um, so it makes sense that something would show as to the hair I think it works fine enough She has a really weird haircut because the way it's flying and flipping around So honestly, I don't fault you for not being able to create sort of the perfect halo Like you can do when they have their bobs Um, so yeah overall, I I don't see any problem with the hair. I think it's fine So there you go All right, Emily, uh long time already crafty type person but fairly new mini painter. Um always aiming to do my paint best paint job What do you think is the most impactful change or improvement I can make in my painting? Sure So, yeah, I mean, it's obvious you have come from an artistic background. This is a really cool pox walker. Um, so The best thing you can do is to look at more contrast of either value or hue I think we've got some We've got some good beginnings here, certainly. Um, but we need to continue to work that down So one of the things that's and it's more hue with this guy than it even is value He feels like he needs more colors integrated into him. He's very monotone Um, he's basically brown, right? I mean, that's if I had to sum it up In fact, if I really would sum it up, I would say he's he's completely yellow So if I had to use a real color, um, because everything on him is a variation of yellow in some way Uh, and so my real advice would be look at how we work in other tones You've got a little bit of reds and stuff around the the boils I think that looks nice like all the wounds and boils and stuff look good But you want to have some maybe soft greens or purples or things like that more softly glazed into the into the Muscle structure and things like that and that'll probably help a great deal So that would be my big piece of advice But welcome and hope uh, I hope that helps Stephen, uh, all right. Thanks for your feedback actually helped over the last few months Uh deliberate practice on trying to get smooth blends on skin Try to push with unusual and or contrasting shadows first time using the airbrush than something Uh, other than base coat. Sure So it's good. I think keep working at it. I like the variation on the skin I think this looks nice. We can go deeper with the shadows You I would use a little bit deeper green in the shadows than that like this would be that would be a good Kind of just outside the shadow color, but needs to come down into a more darker Uh Likely warmer color in the actual shadows themselves. Okay, um, so that's where I would kind of go there Uh, but overall I like the variation and sort of what you're doing there I think that that works for me We still need to work on picking out some of the detail and texture That stands out on things like the suckers that aren't doing anything or aren't a different color I think the airbrush blending on the tentacle. Yeah works fine. No issue there But again, don't you know using the airbrush or using whatever isn't an excuse to not start picking out that detail This guy has a lot of beautiful detail like all these little sucker pods Need to be some kind of color and stand out They should be standing out from the the piece they're attached to right when you see an octopus Um tentacle it has like the suckers are very sort of bright white against the soft pink of the octopus They really stand out in this big contrasting way And frankly even if they didn't it would still be the right choice artistically because it would make it more visually interesting So there you go. Hope that helps All right next up Joel uh So this is a historical figure Trying to integrate warm hues and the highlights and bluish ones in the shadows created daylight lighting situation Does it sell also the last time I entered I got a critique for not integrating enough colors into the flesh Does it look better this time? Yes, so first first things first. Yes the to your last question 100 it does love the blue tones in the lower part of the face love the red tones in the cheeks In here love it on the hands. Yes a hundred percent great great stuff We need to like probably smooth out just a few areas a little more Like he's some of the lights and shadows aren't placed exactly where you want to like these These come in a little too far. This cheekbone actually would come down here So this this shadow shouldn't be extending quite that far The red should be more wrapping up around the backside of the cheek But we're definitely going the right direction. Keep experimenting with it. And again my best advice Go watch makeup contouring videos. It is the best thing you can do You ever want to know how to integrate colors into skin male skin or female skin By the way, there's plenty of male makeup contouring videos as well But go watch those wizards work They are masters of color and contrast and in a way that Miniature painters will never understand they they are light years ahead of us On being able to take any volume and completely restructure it They can make their cheekbones look four inches different than where they actually are Right, that is an incredible skill. So that's my number one thing. So that works now Um, yeah, honestly the rest of it, you know talking about the naturalistic shadows You know historical stuff tends to fall into a lower contrast range for the most part And yeah, I think it's largely working. There's probably a little bit of stuff I would smooth out. I'd still probably bring some shadows down You may want to think about some final glazes of a soft shadow color So if you're going for like cold shadows, then take some panes gray and thin it down And when you're all done with everything all your camo patterns down everything's there Just softly glaze some of the shadows in a really controlled fashion It can be a great way to create universal environmental shadows While still preserving your overall work So um, I think that's probably would be my best advice for you Hope that helps Joel All right, Sam, uh So one on the rosary beads one of them slightly blue white But found it very hard to do on the cloak highlighted with hashes towards a gray white and then glazed over the red Any advice on how to do this without coming too pink? Um, yeah, sure. So let's talk about the cloak first because that's the easy one The anytime you put white under there, that's what's going to happen glaze or make your hashes with flesh tone And do you and then go over it with a couple layers of red and that won't happen So you use like a sunny skin tone that will keep in the red second advice is take something like a red ink So something like uh, like a Vallejo gaming red one of a big go-to favorite of mine Thin it down into a glaze multiple coats of that and you'll get it back to a pop in red Okay, then it won't matter if there's white underneath now as to the rosary beads Which we had to zoom around here to get yeah, there's way too much actual blue Like if you're going for that kind of pearlescent type of feeling Two things need to happen. You need to highlight them like globes Okay, which a globe highlights in a specific way which is light Into I mean if you just highlight how to if you just look at like how to highlight a globe Okay, of course, of course. I wouldn't get it. That's all right. Uh, let's talk about like globes globe Shape in light Okay, that's fine. It's gonna I currently googles about my friend, but anyway Look at like kujo has a video on on this So go check out kujo's video on highlighting the different uh the different types the key with a globe is it's like this This is the globe It goes one two three four five four three Right, that's what you need to capture. So it comes back to that crescent highlight on the bottom Now doing that and moving your blue up and then having those additional lights on the bottom with the white would subtract out the amount of blue Okay And that's going to make them feel more like they belong in that white pattern with just a soft influence of blue So there you go. Hope that helps All right, patrick recently participated in a store challenge, which we were asked to create something out of a curated bag of bits Uh, I'd be interested in some feedback regarding compositional elements in particular though any other pointers are more than welcome Yeah, I mean, I don't really know what to give you feedback on for this like it's a really super cool challenge Um Compositially this came out really neat. You did a fun thing just with random bits You made something that's compelling and feels like it exists. So I dig it um I think the the the ruins you talked about that came out really well I'm glad that that you use that hobby cheating that works out fine I mean, I think given what you had to work with. Yeah, you created a very nice vignette that sells to me. So Yeah, no no feedback. I don't know what you know, like It's good. It's good stuff Okay, um bartas looking for some feedback on the flesh and this is his first larger model in oils Yeah, so I I did some spent I spent some looking at this. Oh also. He said Crete on the eyes on the slime slime looks great slime looks fantastic came out wonderful eyes look good A little bit more hashing toward that around the slit Okay, so even the yellow needs to be a little bit more hashed bringing the orange slices just a little bit deeper And then come back to a light on the out very outside. So it needs to go darkest light Darker darker out to light on the very edge. It's a weird thing, but on alien eyes like that Think of like the um the eye of sauron Okay, and you'll have the right idea now as to working in oil paints. Um, it's good I like all the colors you're getting bold with here, but we it's clearly we still need to work them more together So my best advice in looking at this it still feels like they're not as smooth as they could be Which tells me that we're not spending enough time with our dry brush After the application really smoothing things down and bringing them all together So I have a couple different soft dry brushes that you can use to really Bring all those oil paints together and create something really smooth even on a texture That's probably the number one thing that jumps out of me, but I I love how easy Uh, or you know, how great all these different colors. Yeah, you made and I this feels like a Fantastic model to do with oil paints. So hope that helps Okay, next up Raphael Um overall feedback on any tips if the cape sells the transition from blue to purple and it's highlights with dark bits So I looked at this one earlier and yeah, the blue to purple works. I think that's a nice soft transition I got no problem with that. We need to go higher on the highlights though Like again, as I've said many times show this whole thing more contrast more contrast is usually the key Um, it's very rare that that's not my piece of advice Uh, but yeah, I mean we need to just take it a lot higher We need to get that that cloak needs to come way up into a higher light And the shadows need to come down into a more soft gradual gradation into a deeper four and five So contrast is king. I think that's really what you want to work on here But the transition works. I think it looks very nice. I think the purple to blue looks great. So well done Okay, ray cooper, uh So red dragon just completed general feedback on the whole model specific feedback on the flame. So, uh, don't have this Blue in here. I don't know if you were going if you're in your head It was like a blue flame, but it doesn't look like it don't like skip that that oven light thing Just make this be white red or sorry white yellow It's like right here. There should be a tiny amount of like just pure white hot into white yellow Just small amount of ochre into mostly orange red into then like some bits of of deep red black brown Like I mentioned earlier fire is very specific. I have multiple videos on it. Go watch those videos First thing that jumps out of me is you've got to pay way more attention to textures and volume So again more contrast top of the arm top of the arm is much brighter than the bottom of the arm Top of the arm is not much brighter than the bottom of the arm, right? These things are all the same color Second thing is you worked a lot in red Always always always always give your skill get yourself some matte varnish ultra matte varnish testers dull coat whatever When you're working with red red is naturally very glossy. You do not want this kind of shine It's not helping you any does not make a fig look good Okay, so that needs to be matted the heck out like Absolutely matted out and then from there my number one thing is contrast The unit of it's just some dry brushing to pick out the scales But the belly's too flat the scales are too flat the bones are too flat like we've got to push that contrast up Okay, so more more more contrast on all the elements So there you go. Hope that helps Okay, roger first time posting Uh Kind of all over the place in terms of style technique haven't found yours yet, but I think I'm kind of zoning in Um Two things you did well and two things you should improve on so Here's one thing you should improve on for sure, which is taking photos. Okay This is not like buddy. Come on, man. What are you doing to me here? Does this the photo you want to share of your mini? Okay, so I'm not trying to be mean I'm just saying like you had to take this photo and know this wasn't good What is this shadow? What is this direct light? What is going on here, man? Okay, so like there are articles on gw's website on how to take photos Let's please folks read it. Give me a good photo so I can give you a good review. Okay Because there's way too much direct light here to actually tell you what I think of this mini I mean, that's what's hard when it's this overexposed or out of focus or whatever. It's hard for me to tell you what I like so What and and as far as style goes it feels like you're still early in your painting journey Don't worry about a style. That's not what you need to focus on right now Style is not something that you develop after years necessarily. Okay But you want to focus on at this point like things I like you're pushing yourself on your skin tone I like that Like it feels like you're trying to get some good contrast in the green of the skin tone, which I like Uh, so now we need to keep pushing that contrast and really push paint cleanliness There's several points on here where it feels like the paint is messy. It's getting in the wrong places It's not where we want it to be so Really focus on paint application and cleanliness and contrast. That's what I'm going to tell you to work on. Okay So, um, that's my biggest piece of advice for you as well as give me some photos and non-diffuse lighting against a neutral color Background set your phone stable. Take the picture. Okay. All right Okay, next up joe. Uh, what did you write and what is you wrong? Okay, so first time trying osl and making a lava base Yeah, so I mean one of the things here to me is it doesn't feel like again We've got a lot of very shiny paint or something like I can't tell what this Shine or texture is again put the like Mini neutral background diffuse lighting photo Okay, guys, this is a bit like this month The the photos Are killing me. I'm not gonna lie All right. I don't I'm not don't want to be mean now With like when it comes to osl, we shouldn't be doing osl right here. Like It's fine if you want to play around with it. That's cool. I don't have any issue, but like I I can't read the individual elements. So what do we need to work on? Like we need to work on really defining the individual elements in a clean way Matting out the paint job making sure every element is separate like right here. He's got this Strap and yet there's the brown of his cloak all over it His face is coming down on the the green of his cloak, right? So like number one thing you want to be working on is paint cleanliness And applications like get that control get the paint mat and and stuff like that small notes blonde hair is not yellow Um, I I know lots of people who have blonde hair. None of them are lemon yellow blonde hair is actually like sepia tone to slightly bright ochre with white included With a white inclusion into it to have more of a desaturated ochre Don't use a lemon yellow for blonde hair. That never works for me Now as to the thing I do really like So there but I you know, I don't want to leave you just with that kind of like I don't want it to be negative I want to say I do want to say there's a thing here that you did that I actually really really like And that's this frying pan and the glow of it over the lava I actually think you did a really good job capturing that Okay, like a really good job. I love the way the lights up here And you trace the edge and then it goes gray and then we've got this soft glow and into the hot edge That honestly sells to me. I think you did a wonderful job with that So, um, well done. I think what you want to focus on is really like Separating the elements through contrast and definition and paint application. That's what we need to work on Okay, simon, uh regionally recently released sergeant ripper jackson as a means to push a skill What's right? What's wrong and where you can improve? Yeah, sure So the number one thing that jumped out of me here is largely contrast on a lot of the elements The green feels kind of flat especially on like her jacket on her band Again, the muscle structure can we can go for a little more definition? It's probably stronger But you have the the shadows are too thin. This is this is the the sunken wash syndrome I see a lot where like you have the muscle structure and like this is all basically what so it's like one two three four five Right like we just the volumes are way off. We need some softer shadows Really setting the the volumes here same with like the gun the metal things like that Those need to be struck out a little more With a little more contrast a little more edges picked out a little more You know kind of variation especially in the metals and stuff like that the I like the texturing and stuff on her leg and on the The scratches on that sort of thing. So I've got no problem with that But I feel like in general we can we can up that contrast and push it some more Same with the skin the integration. It's not even as much contrast of value But there definitely needs to be a little more contrast of hue in there as well That's kind of the stuff that jumped out of me. So Overall, we just were a little flat. We need a little more tones in there, but she's nice It's well executed and I think you did a good job. So yeah cool stuff Okay, next up allen Any thoughts appreciated by most of this army to go I'd really appreciate one main thing to work on sure Okay So one main thing to work on first of all, I think this piece looks really nice The metallic work is good. You're you're taking control of the light in a big way The contrast on the blue looks really soft and smooth. I enjoy that. I enjoy the edges Um, the lightning is still a little thick Um, honestly looking at this guy I am trying to think about, you know, sort of the rest of the army So the things that pop out to me on this guy, let me say this way I don't know how applicable it is to the rest of the army, but The drake off himself feels flat and like he needs more action more contrast more scales picked out more variation in tone Uh and in hue The White of like his banner and his holy toilet paper that feels really really flat It's not shouldn't be popping like the metal but it needs more There's not enough on that The only other thing that jumped out at me was the The cloak with the lightning like I like the lightning effect I don't think they're all going to have lightning cloaks and the Cloak itself feels really flat and strange like how the lightning is interacting with that light So I'm not sure what's meant to be going on there. If you're going to do a whole army of lightning cloaks It's probably fine But it's a little tough for me to read like what's actually a highlight and what's actually a shadow So those are kind of the little things. There wasn't really one big thing I think you're doing a really good job of getting control of the light on the metals And that's the toughest thing I usually give people feedback on on stormcast So I think that puts you in a strong position for the rest of the army. So hope that helps All right, darin, uh first model for you you've submitted for review anywhere, um Favorite, um, many from the warband you painted Rushed it a bit towards the end but was going for basically like, you know, getting on the tabletop Any advice on getting a purple white skin that looks good is appreciated Sure, so purple white skin go watch my exploring colors purple video And that will teach you a lot about how to highlight purple and how to get that under control I would actually say don't use white is my number one advice Like if you want a purple white skin, don't use white Use purple and a couple different flesh tones like a sunny skin tone and then a uh a pale flesh That will feel like purple white skin And then what you need to be doing to getting it all done is once you've set your values You need to be glazing it in very thin glazes of your original purple Okay That's what actually makes it ties it all together and makes it look good Again, go watch the exploring purple video now as the feathers Um, you know, if you like I think they're fine for what you're doing here if you're going for tabletop If you want to spend a lot more time then the right answer is you need to go in and create texture Which means taking a very thin sharp brush And going And creating hundreds of little tiny hashes on each feather Right Now if you don't want to do that You can create a couple interesting feathers where you make a couple mixed in that are a different color Or you make a different band in the middle Like that would be an interesting way to make this more visually interesting Is you make the center of this like a blue or something like that And you make a couple of feathers in there a slightly different color But the texturing is ultimately what you're going to want to do if you really want to pop it out So there you go. Hope that helps Okay, Oliver, um first time posting a primaris ancient for your crimson fists a couple questions The texturing on the banner and the osl on the eyes Looking for that or anything else general. Sure. So two thoughts. Let's go back to the first photo Texturing on the banner. I have no problem with it It's a little bit up here where you need to carry it out a little farther If if you're really wanting you to make it to pop pop and like take this up to a high level But honestly, especially as some an army piece I have zero problem with the texturing on the banner. I'm in love with it. It's great. It's great Well done like no no pushback. It's yes Solid a work Now let's talk about why this doesn't work Why the lighting doesn't work is because you have a glow up here. That's it repaint this white Okay, and it will look correct These eyes they have a visor that's like this Okay, like I'm over exaggerating it But if my eyes were glowing it would not be casting light on my forehead right here Because it can't get up there. So this edge should be a slight pink edge Okay, like that hard edge above their eyes And then down here should be a very soft Glow that slightly fades out over the tops of the cheeks So you need to basically glaze back with the white A little bit here And get rid of the top parts just a very small adjustment to the to the lower part But I guarantee you if you just turn this back to white, you're gonna be like, oh never or white gray or whatever It'd be white gray. Actually You'll be like, oh never mind. It's fixed That's it. So there you go Okay Okay, so next up we've got Kartik who brings us this model done in a very bright sort of a dual lighting scheme Looking for feedback on the osl You know and then also the face in the eye So let's talk about that. So the back works better for me than the Uh than the front Um, you did a nice job of setting the overall color tone on pallets. I think that works relatively well Um, but the problem is we don't have our lighting set exactly where I would expect the lighting to be falling Given where shadows should be like on her stomach. This area down here should actually be caught in a little more light So we just need to really control the overall light effect of like where this thing is casting from In a little more, uh In a little more fashion and and really get our shadows and our lights under control You also want to make sure you're smoothing them out. They feel a little rough The as far as like blends and stuff like that go now the back The back of it is because it's in the softer warm tones Also, we have this really hard line between the two. I think you don't want that. It shouldn't go like Super warm light light doesn't work like that. It doesn't it's not, you know I mean other than if you zoom out and look at the whole globe of where the sun is But that's not what we're talking about here. These are soft lights There's gonna be something else behind her that's bouncing it and things like that It needs to be a soft transition through shadow basically Because in the in the middle part where meter light sources really acting there is a shadow That's why that works like that Now, um As to the eyes, yes I mean the problem with the eyes is there there's too much white The pupils are are very large and the circle around them is too dark, right? So like looking at my eyes Okay, I guess I have a dark ring, but it's controlled and if you're if women have makeup on the under eye The under lid the lower lid it isn't that same dark color. There's still skin tone there, right? So it needs to be more of a soft transition out Right, um, but it's very always very Uh, it's always a very gentle transition down from any color under the eye out into the cheekbone Again Make up and contouring videos of your guide as well You don't have any real definition of like the iris the pupil At a at a size like this you want to make sure you've got You're getting color into the eyes and most importantly you want to capture the life light Which is the dot of light that's on the eyes reflection, right? Like when we look at people are used to seeing a life light It's where the light comes and reflects and in our and bounces off to to your eye Um, it's what makes people feel alive So that's even that little white dot would go a huge long way to making the eyes feel more alive So that's my number one piece of advice. Hope that helps Okay, next up zab Uh, working on a night of shroud conversion using the light of altharian by the way love this idea fantastic Push it to a competition level so if you can point me the area who need more focus, it would be great. Sure So one if we're going to talk about competition, we have got to smooth this model way out again We're we're breaking the rule of finished models only but okay, um at any rate, um the um That we got to smooth things way out our blends are super rough here all over the place We've got to smooth things down So like all like in some place. I understand you're trying to do texture like this up here I'm not sure it actually completely works because the scratches don't feel like scratches They just feel like they're way too many of them and they feel like paint Um, if we're going to do scratches up here, they need to be multi directional They need to be of different sizes They need to be chips and hashes and things like that If we're talking about like the sword needs to be these lights know that that needs to be glazed way Like all that needs to be glazed out smoothed out blended out. Okay When we're talking about the cloak if we're doing like a textured cloak I need A thousand more hashes and I don't need these vertical ones. They're not doing anything I only need horizontal hashes and I need I mean literally a thousand more over this whole cloak Like I need you to sit there with a sharp thin brush For an hour and just do hashes of varying sizes like I did in the in the video where I talked about Doing textured cloaks. Okay Um, but yeah the smooth blends and then finishing out your texture and actually selling it I think is what you're really going to want to work on right now Everything looks really rough and you want to make sure that's Smoothed out like stuff like this on the edge of the armor all that needs to be smoothed way down If we're trying to go for competition level. Okay Hope that helps. All right next up Bertrand, uh Looking for an overall critique focused on contrast light placement textures and attempted glowing light Sure. So, I mean, I think the texture stuff works fine Um, actually, let's go back to Where's that? Sorry this photo Like the glowing little runes that works for me. I've got no issue with that the texture on the cloth that works for me Um, I like the the texture in the tree. So I think that's fine, too It's actually contrast where I feel like we're missing out. His skin still feels rather flat I don't have enough variation of either tone or value in there He needs more now. I like the pink and the addition of the green in the eyes The face does draw attention. I like that but like the arms and the volumes of the arms and the Uh torso and stuff like that that doesn't feel like it's doing enough for me So that's kind of the main area Continuing to pop that contrast shaping those muscles those volumetric highlights and the integration of not only value But hue I think is the main thing I would give you feedback on so there you go All right, next up Evan, uh, biggest question is on the tattoo on the side of the head. Does it read as a tattoo? Sure, so let's just look at this picture First of all, the war paint works get that no problem there The problem with the tattoo is it's not well enough to find so tattoos need to be Incredibly sharp and well placed when they were placed. They were placed with saturated Ink through a needle that was embedded into the skin. They're gonna be sharp. They're gonna be potent And then as they age they fade so that means skin tone goes back over top So again, I go back and watch my you know tattoos video again It needs to be if you're gonna do these sharp thin tattoos like this They can't I can't see paint streaks, right? And that's what I see a lot of Or I can see the actual brush strokes and where like the paint didn't you know This is really rough on this edge and we've got lines jumping in size It would be very precise Very exact and very Solid and then you glaze the flesh back over to soften Otherwise solid image. You're not smoothing the edges. You're softening the overall effect. That's what I would say. Okay So there you go. That's my feedback for you Okay, next up in veritas So first time submitting paint up this chaplain to a high tabletop standard Feedback on what needs improving to take it to display quality Sure So, I mean if we're gonna go up to display then we've got there's I mean There's a lot of work in between tabletop and display, right? So what's working? Well, um the green and the texturing works fine for me. Love the dirt on the boots All that stuff sells don't like the gold. Um, it's way to That color and nothing else. So a lot more taking control of the light Working in inks and stuff like that to gain control of shadows and highlight your tmm and and and anomatallic fashion Um bringing out more highlights softer transitions of gold to silver It just feels way too yellow orange. Like this is a gold ring Look at the color of this on the screen right now. Like that's a 24 karat gold ring or whatever, right? Um, look at this compared to that color Okay, this is cheddar cheese over here. That's gold All right, so the that and my guess is that's retributor armor gold I do not like that base color. It doesn't actually feel like gold But you can get it there if you start mixing in some of the silver colors Now as to, you know, where you're gonna go the biggest thing is you're we're gonna do that with like talking about display quality That means popping the armor way up and smoothing the blends to our highlights We've got a couple places where you took it up again for tabletop. I think this is actually quite successful Uh, even like a high tabletop. I agree with you. I think it's fine. It looks nice looks clean Got some good texturing added Great pigment work No problems with that if we're going to talk about moving to display And that means you've got to pop the contrast on the armor way up and really put a lot of time into smoothing the Blends. It's a big gulf. We've got to jump but that would be my advice for you. So hope that helps Okay, next up uh mads looking for um Study in brown is quite a challenge for you to set all that apart any comments Help me focus on specifics to be much appreciated Yeah, I mean if you're going to deal in sort of a monotone piece then Contrast of value becomes all the more important and again, that would be the main thing I would give you feedback on overall. I think it looks nice But yes, we need more separation of elements through Contrast right so the parts that aren't in brown should really be popping out We should be having more dark lines between it The skin needs to come up to a higher highlight in places where I'd really be reflecting to make it pop out The leather needs like hard edges and scratches and wearing and texture And sort of edges that are catching the light in a way and and scratches and stuff that have called the light The hair needs like a halo of light that kind of thing So hopefully that helps give you some specifics as to what you can work on But it's cool fig and I do think you're in the right tone of the skin. I think that looks really nice. It's a really cool skin tone Uh, we just need to pop up that contrast more Okay, next up john, uh, his fires fires layers war cry war bands um Talking about his proving his skin and giving the hair a pop Yeah, so my answer on the so again pictures very, you know Please take the picture set in front of a neutral background with indirect lighting stable camera yadda yadda Okay Now the skin we need to keep going. I mean basically the story here is giving me the same just your this is good We need to keep pushing the contrast you mentioned a yellow wash. Don't use a wash A yellow wash is not really do anything over orange to pop the hair. You want to get in there with yellow paint Pop the edges and then orange wash back down because yellow is going to flow to the to the To the recesses you don't want yellow in the recesses of the hair You want the strands that are exposed to be turning yellow or a brighter color, right? You want the recesses to be shadowed so it needs to go the other way around So I had you know go in there get some some uh, like an ochre color An orange yellow something like that on the side on your brush use the side of your brush to catch that hair And then take an orange wash and pull it down toward the orange in a controlled fashion Okay As far as the skin goes again smoothing it out and working on more contrast both of hue and value As I've said many times throughout this review, so that's what you're going to want to do But overall cool stuff Okay, yon Looking for this is a work in progress of his first ever bust again No work in progress finished stuff only and I'll keep going uh, okay Do different rules apply to the change of scales and busts. Yes a hundred percent Um, also I tried to go with a streaky non-metallic metal, but it doesn't work really well I'd like to push skin further any tips. Sure. So let's break this down. Okay streaky non-metallic metal go watch my brushed Uh iron or brushed steel. Sorry, uh non-metallic video You need more streaks. They need to be thinner and they need to be closer to each other I'm actually working on a big piece right now. It's just a game if you're going to go for that style It's a game of doing thousands of little lines over and over and over and over again with slight changes in the variation of tone And then glazing it all together after that, right Now, um, so so that would be my feedback there now does a but As far as like is a bust painted differently. Yes a hundred percent go watch my bust painting 101 video Um, because I talk about it in detail for a long time It's what you need to do different the key with the bust is you keep going until you've almost lost your mind And then you go twice as far as that because there's always more you can do now as to variation on the skin I actually think like around the face looks really nice. I like the lips I love the little color and the the Cheeks and the light emanating out of his glowing eyes. I think that's all really neat What we need to see in the skin itself is just more integrations of again a higher highlight Through the addition of probably a Caucasian flesh tone into the blue to create your highlights And then more glazes of soft red purples into the shadows, right? And and really you've got to focus in and bring out every texture every detail every everything It's not like painting a 28 mil miniature where you can just kind of go over a whole area in a volume and do it Everything has to be popped out completely because you're working in such a scale where all that detail all that texture All that everything needs to be given love care and attention. Okay, so but go check out that video and that'll help you out All right, next up one first time posting Uh, this many is where he's at right now looking for a general critique and what to improve on Um, sure. So looking really nice. Um, cool application of some different stuff I like the contrast and the horns. Um, we could go a little farther even there. So keep working on that, but that's nice Um, I like how we're pushing the contrast on the skin Paint job feels pretty clean Um, I think probably the main things I tell you to work on at this point coming back are There's some places where we're getting kind of rough in our blends So push that contrast up a little higher where I see it actually missing is in the shadows We maybe a little bit of highlights a little bit more one But not much is mainly your four and five that's lacking and then we just need to work on our blending and smoothing that all together Okay, now again, if I was going to paint an army of like, you know, 30 zangor I'm not sure I'd care that much. So it depends on the standard you're going for I want to be real clear on that like I'm very sensitive people who are doing army painting and are not going to sit there and spend You know, eight, 10, 20 hours on a fig on a single person in a unit of 30 And I am very sympathetic to that. I don't either. We all got a cut corner somewhere and I'm cool with that But if you're talking about what you want to work on to me It seems like pushing contrast and smoothing on your blends Those should be your sort of mission statements for how you where you want to go coming forward But welcome back to the hobby. This is super cool fig and I love your instincts with colors. I think that's really great All right, next up, uh, panda, um Reanswered the hobby in november 19 watched a lot of the videos and hey, I'm super glad to help man I'm glad that that's very helpful So the question short version did you push the contrast enough or should I refine it more? No, yes So tip to be more It actually gives some useful feedback for you No, we didn't push the contrast enough and where it especially falls down is in things like the horns Where, you know, these need to have a colored shape to them brighter towards the tip deeper towards the bottom But especially in the red the red is very flat throughout the whole thing The skin and the gray skin is better I like the sort of contrast of hue you've started to work in there with some of the reds in the low parts I'm seeing those. I'm liking those. I like what you're doing. Let's go farther Let's keep pushing in a little more maybe red to purple tones down that that lower skin I think we could really be somewhere and be popping something with some good contrast So we don't have enough four and five in the skin, but I do love the variation of hue Uh now on to the on the red we just need to go, you know a lot farther Like we need more contrast there the integration of deeper purples browns blacks There's lots of ways to to shade red But we've got to bring that deeper and really create some highlight and shadow in the red. So there you go That's my feedback for you All right, chris uh overall proud on how we turned out Um, I would love to really push this guy even further, but I'm not sure what he's missing So I'll give you the number one thing that popped out to me when I looked at this fig earlier And I was reviewing all these I think he's nice But the number one thing that popped out to me is it's it's the contrast. Yes. That's what it is It's always the contrast um the gold all especially with the metals though Now I think we could go farther on some of the plum color of the cape But what really jumped out at me was the was the gold the metals go watch any of my videos on shading True metallic metals in a non-metallic style the metal here is just looking like metal. It's very flat It doesn't have a lot of tonal variation to it and that's what needs to improve So that would be my number one piece of feedback to you chris. So hope that helps but overall super cool Arm on I think he looks really nice Okay, next up chris taking the feedback into account to make the paint thinner and smoother Good, we're getting there keep working it. I think we still need to thin down a little more There's a places where it's not, you know, like or just layer more a little bit Get a little more control of it. Um that being said I can see the improvement So now we've gotten in the place where our paint control is getting better And now what we're going to work on is again Contrast and and and that kind of thing. So especially with stuff like the sword, which feels extremely flat the white armor The gray pieces those the stuff that's really jumping out to me. Your red has some nice variation I'm okay with the red. Um, you do need to matte varnish out the red as usual red paints because the pigment They use are often very glossy. So make sure you matte varnish that out You do not want your red to shine You do not want this to happen if the shadows are shiny. They're not shadows. They're light not shadow that makes something look bad. So Make sure you matte varnish out things, especially red Okay Alex first time posting here finished a squad in this style. This one's the best of five general critique. What could you have done better? Um Sure Uh And then you have some questions about the leather So I mean it depends on what you're aiming at if you're aiming at like a really clean nice tabletop standard. I think this is fine Um, you know, it's a traditional g w style for like a good tabletop Sort of the flat color and edge highlights and stuff like that, right? No, I don't think there's too much dust on the feet I think that totally sells for like a dry desert atmosphere by the way Now if we're talking about what would you do to go farther? I mean, it would be Contrast of value, right? Like take that armor. We need to create more naturalistic volumetric highlighting of the shapes Deeper shadows higher highlights don't rely just on the edges, but actually create some more volumetric highlights It's a very simple answer. And that's absolutely what I tell you to work on if that's the direction you want to go The other thing I would say is make sure your elements are cleanly separated So like with things like the hand, you know, when he's got these joints in between his fingers Make sure there's something dark in between each of those You've got the edges, but you also need the shadows and the hand doesn't really have it That's the part that jumped out of me is being kind of flat All right, Matt with something I'm not going to review because I don't know how to review an army But this is amazing. He said I don't want to highlight such an awesome accomplishment He said this project was all kicked off by hobby cheating 170 throughout the pmp and the hobby cheating videos has been instrumental in keeping him motivated as a painter 130 gray Gabbo's knocked out buddy. That's amazing. Congratulations. I almost want to do a We'll probably do some army review videos at some point in time in the future where I want people to actually submit armies and do specific evaluation on those Um, and that might actually be what we start doing is having monthly instead of just a generic everybody throw everything in and we get feedback Events we might come to like monthly types of events submit these particular types of figures So I can give really pointed feedback on specific types of stuff and army is one of the things I was thinking about At any rate regardless of all that this is an amazing accomplishment. Look at how wonderful this is I mean matt you killed it Uh, I love this whole goblin army. I love all his fanatics. I love all his gobbos um, I love scars nick And or the goblin boss with cape swig or whatever it is. Um, I don't think he scars nick anymore I think scars nick is long dead But just fantastic like I love seeing a finished army. This is just makes me so unbelievably happy Beautiful job. Well done. Well, well done matt something to absolutely celebrate Congratulations keep painting. I think you did a fantastic job. There is nothing better than finishing a painted army It is a celebration. I wish we could all do a balloon drop man. It's it's great. Well done. Well done Okay, next up florian first bunch of the sisters army try to get some practice with war colors basically looking for, um Um Feedback regarding color composition Uh, and also just general feedback since he's got to paint 50 more of them Yeah, so again, it depends on the standards you're going for I I did look at these earlier And my answer is I think this is the good shot that I want to talk on Um, these work like these sell for me. Um, if we're talking about again doing a tabletop standard Like and again if you're doing 50 more that feels like we're talking tabletop standard We're not looking for a display piece or a competition And so if we're talking as an army Compositionally, yep, it works. Love the magenta with the little pops of teal here and there You know, you're in my sweet spot. You know that works from what I paint Uh, so yeah, I mean, I think overall these look really great Um, again, if you wanted to go a little farther, we could push the contrast on the magenta armor You know glaze in some soft purple shadows That's really going to be a wonderful color like use a if we're talking about war colors Get yourself out some violet five and thin that down and glaze that into the shadows and bang bang You're gonna have some some really nice Really nice shadow work on there, but for the most part, I mean again, if you're just talking about an army these sell for me I'm a buyer. So yeah, I think they look great. Bring on the whole beautiful sisters of battle army like this Okay, next up t-bow latest attempt at playing with strong light source I don't know which will be the next competition. He'll be able to attend But I love your opinion what can be approved Yeah, this is a beautiful piece t-bow. It really is. I spent some time just ogling this earlier Um, I think the lighting that you're playing with here is largely working I love it bringing out the tones and desaturating in the shadows There's a couple areas of light that felt like they should be a little more lit Uh, like the stick back here on his back like this weapon half didn't feel as bright as it could be um The light feels like it extends a little bit unusually to the bottom of the This like I'm not I don't have the piece in front of me But my impression of it is that nose piece curves back in a little bit And so there'd be kind of a naturalistic shadow on the bottom there So i'm not really sure but again, I can't super I don't have the thing in front of me to look at Um, but like looking at it as best I could tell from the photos. It felt like it curved in Um, I think probably in some areas I would smooth out a little more like the blade I like the hashing style. I do a couple more glazes to bring in some more ambient colors Especially here on the bottom of the blade where it's turned away from the light Maybe give me some bluish cold shadows down here This was the part that jumped out of me when I was looking at it. This felt rough back here and here And if we're talking like you you've showed me that we are in real cold light like cold shadows Other than the direct light source which feels warm So it feels like the off highlight colors of the nmm should have some some of that soft bluish Purpleish glazing built into it down here down here over here That was the thing that jumped out of me when I was looking at t-bow. I mean, this is a beautiful beautiful piece Um previous question about busts. This is what I'm talking about like look at the texture T-bow went as far till he was insane and it did twice as much Look at the texture in the beard in the horns in the hair in the skin in the wood in the bone Right like I could keep going That's what's fantastic about this not just the lighting, but the texturing is actually t-bow the part here that that totally sells me so This is going to do Well, I suspect at whatever competition you bring it to Uh, or at least it would if I was judging. So there you go All the best to you my friend and this is this is another triumph an absolute gorgeous piece. So very well done All right Damien, uh, okay, so uh, finally finished this his monster. I'm generally looking for overall feedback Especially the skin the weathering and the base Sure, so okay, let's talk Damien So the thing I noticed when looking at this is one thing I wouldn't do this Is a general on a basic thing don't point figs away from the viewer like when you're looking front on This is sort of a thing. I did a couple of times as well before I realized it Like I understand he's supposed to be like cowing this guy I suspect but move him to the side doing that or something so that the viewer can actually see both of your piece at once It's just kind of a general thing now As to the skin tone. I mean, yeah, it's rough and when it comes to a machine like this Like I've painted up a couple soul grinders in my time I mean, it's rough because this guy has weird skin texture But again, what we need to get to here is understanding a more volumetric highlighting with it Right, so you've got this red to black But he doesn't feel natural in any way because we're starting at three and we just go three four five The red doesn't actually have any highlights. It just has mid tone to shadows Right So that'd be number one, you know, follow those volumes and integrate highlights One of the things you can do with red is again integrate something like sunny skin tone That's going to make it feel like a living Fleshy thing, right and it'll give you a naturalistic highlight that won't turn it Pink in any egregious way The other thing I noticed is just there's some areas where the paint just isn't Fully applied and that's because you're using red probably over black So like here I it feels like we've still got some paint cleanliness issues that we need to focus in on And really make sure that we've got that so like separation of the elements making sure things are Like the paint is only getting where it should There's a couple times in here where I noticed paint being in places where it shouldn't So working on like paint cleanliness and paint application And and getting a good base coat down for stuff like that Okay, you know with the metals, um, you want to be focusing in on on Achieving that transitions in the metals of taking control of the light They really feel quite dull and I don't know what's you know, we don't have the edges picked out We don't have areas that are more reflective So we want to smooth that out and then you can also chip it and weather and stuff like that That's fine, but you want to make sure you're taking control of that So I hope that helps Damian Um, but yeah, I mean my number one things to be more contrast Paint control and the integration of your highlights and getting down nice smooth clean applications of the paint Okay Merced uh general feedback across the whole model to a high tabletop standard. Sure How to make the statue and the black robes more visually interesting as well as the gold on the statue So we're actually going to look at these pictures here. Now again, if we're talking high tabletop, honestly I think you're probably fine But you know, I don't I don't know that you need to go much farther, but To answer your specific questions Um, because again, I mean if you're going to do like 50 or 60 sisters in this in this sort of a style Yeah, it works for me It's a bit strange that the colors are so separate between the banner and her I would generally not Like that too much because they feel so very different Like this fig is under a completely different light than this fig. These these two are not standing in the same environment Okay, that's a problem your highlights here have nothing to do with her highlights there like this fig is in cold bright Winter like sun this is in like a warm torch light That's too distinct. Okay Now, but I mean this is the only one that's going to have that banner in the whole army So I don't think that really matters. Um Now let's talk about the cloak with black. I mean if you want to make it more interesting that means more contrast or texture It's one of the two Uh, go back and watch the video I mentioned earlier of doing textured cloaks Which I did it on my cast warriors. It was in I think like the 230s Um, that's a method that you can do it is time consuming, but it will make it will still look black, but it will look really interesting So that's one way to go. Um, and then I mean that would be probably my biggest piece of advice You can also just layer in some gray or something like that or some gray blue integrate a color You know, maybe a gray blue, maybe a light purple Maybe a maybe working in like a sunny skin tone any of these things would work And then just do some soft black laces over to smooth everything out and bring it back in Okay Now as far as the true metallic gold on the statue And on the armor pop more. I mean the answer there is we need more contrast of Value like you have bright shiny reflective silver and gold, but we have no shadows What's brighter all a completely white screen or a big white square in the middle of a black screen Obviously the second one right it's going to stand out more to your eye. Why contrast name of the game So, you know again go back and watch my how to Highlight true metallic metal in a non-metallic fashion as I mentioned a couple times And that's what's going to take you up to the next level with that. Okay All right newt, uh, I've been started painting this year first go at skin and hair plus my first attempt at simple free hand on the trousers Sure Okay, so we'll welcome as you're very new. I mean again, I think you're you're doing a good job on the skin So and you're pushing things you're pushing for contrast I think the stripes on the trousers work. You got to we got it We need to clean up those lines just a little bit by going back with the white But yeah, I mean you're in a good place for just starting out If this is your first attempt at this kind of stuff, it's looking really nice My best advice is keep pushing the contrast, you know I paint go trek and his skin in a video go back and watch that video Really look at how I'm shaping the volumes applying the contrast and working it out Same with the hair right like it needs a little bit more deep contrast and shadow Down by his head it needs to have a little bit more control overall of the colors and the tones And that's just stuff you're going to learn over time. It seems like even for just starting out You've got good brush control. I see really clean applications of paint Um pretty decent separation of elements. So really at this point. It's just getting in those reps Um working on those those pushing that contrast and then blending it back together So but overall very cool. I dig them. I think you did a nice job All right, next up Brandon, uh starting in iron warriors army Again still whip talked about whip but okay This month here we go So, uh He said, you know, there's things you can do to add more contrast That's cool But he's looking for more of a troop to squad tabletop standard. I get it The hazard striping is taking a while and the trim takes forever Um, yeah, I mean welcome to chaos I I hate to say it chaos models take a long time to paint Because of all this stupid edging stuff on their army And yes, like if you're going to do iron warriors, that means hazard stripes and honestly your hazard stripes look quite nice Um, if you're doing those in 15 minutes, you should be celebrating. That's great work in 15 minutes Uh, I would not complain about that at all like so here is my number one advice for you You sounds like you said you've got some things to do the contrast And you're gonna do a little bit of pigment powder and stuff like that fantastic Honestly, if what you're going for is tabletop standard, I think you've nailed it Be here This is right Okay So I'm gonna tell you instead of instead of working on something on the mini. I think you've got the mini where it should be Okay for for painting a tabletop iron warrior Um, again, I think they did in my mind. I'm adding the pigments the other things you mentioned What you're going to work on is your endurance muscle 15 minutes is not a lot of time on a detail like that. Okay Um, you know, like here's a figure I'm painting right now. This thing on his back This was five hours of work on just the gray metal Okay So not I'm not talking about the whole figure. I'm talking about this tank These tanks Okay So like what you buy my here's my thing. I'm this is going to be an unusual one But here's what you would work on your endurance muscle It's a it is an important thing to build and if you're going to get through a bunch of these guys you got to build that muscle up And doing those things like those had to stripes is going to be really beneficial because it'll really help you Your your paint control and your application like getting in those reps and that muscle memory is really beneficial Don't think of it like a cost think of it just like going to the gym, right like this is your leg a day It sucks, but it's important. You can't skip it Uh, and and this is what's going to help you build the strong foundation to build everything else on Okay, so overall, I think you nailed a great scheme. Keep going with it. Keep doing it work on that endurance Okay, jim norfolk, uh, so general dislikes and likes on this I'm asking about the cat lighting the ground on fire. Okay, so I'll be honest with you My least favorite thing here is the cat lighting the ground on fire Um, one, I don't love this orange edge to this. Okay that I don't know why this part's hot I only this edge should be hot. I guess as it's putting the ground out But honestly, I feel like that's all just distracting. I'm gonna be honest with you completely. I don't love it. It Neat trick at something, you know neat try at something, but it just doesn't it's not it doesn't sell for me. Okay now The the real reason I'm I'm sad about it is because it detracts from an otherwise gorgeous model Um, I think you nailed it with this orange and blue classic fantastic color combination great tonal variation on the horns The orange feels very natural Love the move from the yellowish orange into the deep tones. The blue has some really nice travel in it The metal I love what you're doing there with uh with that and and having some control of that light That's working for me. So yeah, I mean, I think the model itself I quite like we could do a little bit more with some hashing to pick out the hairs of some of this stuff Like especially in the main is what I mean in in this area here. Um, but Beyond that, I think this thing looks great. Uh, it's really just the fire feet that don't work for me, man Um, but the rest I call an overwhelming success. So yeah, cool stuff. Love. I love this model. I love what you did with it Okay, Tom, uh same as last month two things you like in two areas for improvement. Um, sure So let's take a look at this guy So I I like this guy, um two things I like. I like what we're going for with the texture on the robe Uh, I think that's working for me. Um, the same with the robe and his like, um Skull cap, I guess or whatever whatever this thing is that actually really works I like the skull cap the best Um, because I love the colors you're traveling through here. I really really like that Uh, that's working for me um The It doesn't work as well in the helm because it feels too rough Like the streaks are too big. I like the colors you're integrating, but the streaks are too big There's not enough definition around things like the rivets and stuff like that. Um The amulet doesn't work at all. I don't know if this is supposed to be gold or something It doesn't feel like that. It just feels like yellow. I'm not sure what this is So this is this is a real problem for me. Um, the skin Is the other thing that I think we need to to work on for improvement a little bit like so I like the tones we're integrating blue tones green tones and red tones I'm loving it. What we don't have is the highlights And things like that that are really popping it up. So everything that's just skin Feels very much like it's in the same Caucasian skin tone Like all of this All of this all of this all of this all of this feels very samey I'm loving the variation of hue. You are nailing that that is great. Oh, man This like green blue tone you're using and the shadows and the red under the eyes I Love it. Maybe a thousand percent clear. It is Fantastic. It makes this dude feel like sickly and weird and kind of off But I feel like with the skin tone itself in that tone. We don't have enough travel of value Okay, so there you go. Hope that helps Okay, Cole feedback on his chipping using a combination of sponge stippling and ak interactive Also are the rust grime streaks too subtle. Yes. I looked at this one earlier and here's my answer Uh Yeah, man, this works like I like this weathering quite a bit. I think you did it to exactly the right amount I actually quite dig this Um, no, I don't think the streaks are too subtle. I think they actually look quite perfect Could you do them heavier? Sure. If you wanted them to be heavier, you could could you do more chipping and stuff like that? Sure if you wanted to But no, this amount works for me. They're focused toward the edges. We've got nice streaks coming off of rivets We've got some there that's sort of damaged in areas. I would absolutely expect like near the doors and stuff like that Uh, or near the front where things are scraping by lots of good variation of size and chips and directionality Uh, now man, I've got no pushback. It works Well done like yeah, great I've got nothing you did good So there you go Okay, finally saying uh, Mephiston for for a friend's birthday. Thank you in advance for improvement suggestions. Sure Uh, so, um with this guy, I mean, I think the biggest opportunity saying I see here is that the red doesn't have enough travel Like by that what I mean is just not enough contrast in the red Um, I also don't love the blonde hair tone That feels a bit too too yellowy a lot of things feel a bit too saturated yellowy on here So but the hair especially and then uh, but the red is what really strikes me So like if the hair was more desaturated had a little bit more sepia tones in it And the red had a lot more travel go and look at uh, on hell girl does this video he did of Mephiston Great contrast in that one. He's nailing it that I think he did red as well. So because I think he did the classic Colors, I'm pretty sure this guy's classically in his cloak is in red. I think so Um, so go take a look at that and that'll really tell you show you and hone in on exactly what I'm talking about But overall cool application. I think the part of this that does work for me quite well is um, I like the face And I like the black cloak. So yeah, nice little just soft subtle variation on that That brings us to the end of the month so with that I will say thank you to everybody who submitted Uh, great month great submissions. I am going to remind everybody one more time. Please take good photos They're your minis. You've spent so much work on them. I want to review them Don't give me a bad photo. That doesn't do either of us any service Also finished models only and please be specific. Don't write me a novel. Tell me what you want feedback on Uh, but this is great. There was so much cool stuff this month. I really appreciate it all. Thank you to everybody who submitted Um, really really awesome stuff this month. I it was one of the things that thrilled me so much this month was to see all the first time submitters I thought that was really honestly fantastic. Um, I love people stepping up and You know putting themselves out there to get feedback It can be rough and when I'm moving quick and I'm critiquing out there I know some of this stuff can seem pretty harsh. I please don't take it that way I'm only trying to offer the feedback that that uh, that I want you to hear It's all meant with love and to help you take the next step on your hobby journey Everyone of you submitted is awesome. You are brave. You are all hobbyists I admire and I thank you so much for doing it Uh, absolutely wonderful. So just take better photos But thank you so much everybody. I really appreciate it for all of you in the community Remember the pmp is a great community because we are all positive Hobbyists that are focused on helping all of our hobby brothers and sisters take their next step So when you see something posted you like drop in there give it a like Comment and say hey, this looks awesome You can change the trajectory of someone's entire day just by giving them a comment That is an unbelievable power We have to improve the lives of our fellow hobbyists by taking two seconds out of our day to say how much we appreciate their work I think we underestimate the power we have to improve other people's lives And that's why I love this community because it's community built on sharing on positivity and on experiencing this hobby together So keep answering those questions. Keep keep offering those those positive critiques those celebrations of the hobby. It's wonderful So all of you out there, thank you so much As I said, if you want to join us in this wonderful hobby community link is down below Just remember to ask to answer the questions. But as always, I thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time