NagoyaHammer.com

As talked about in choosing a new army, I have broken my armies down into three tiers; tabletop current ability, improving and learning armies, and highest quality I can do after I've learned a lot. As my goal is to improve my painting and modeling skills, I want to post a general technique learning thread which I can discuss all my army choices, painting plans, goals, progress on learning new techniques and what ever else is necessary. I'm also going to keep a bit of a journal into how I go about this for any new person who wants to improve their techniques or start painting in general. As the armies start to take shape, I'll start hobby logs for them for more detailed talk on just the armies and what not while keeping this primarily focused on learning and techniques.

So to start this off, I want to talk about my goals, which armies will play a part in this and why I chose each one for improving my skills and techniques.

Necrons; necrons offer a limited pallet of colors of metals (I'm going brass and copper) as well as dynastic colors (TBA) which I plan on learning to use layering and washes more effectively. Some of the larger models also need to be painted before assembly, a new challenge for me to work with. Necron glyphs also add a unique free style painting chance. As time progresses, I want to also work on modelling conversion skills with the necrons. I'll be using GW paints for this primarily.

Circle of Orboros offers a lot of different painting opportunities including glazing, inks, and mixing colors using a wet pallet which I have never done before. It also has a great deal of different skin color (along with painting faces) and fur colors to really get familiar with different layering and coloring. Also a good chance to get to try P3 paints.

Greeks/Fallschirmjager; I've added greeks as even though they are table top level quality, I still need to learn to base. plus my Fallschirm will by a higher level basing. The Fallschirm add a camo dynamic on a small level that will hopefully improve my detail painting. This is also the chance to try vallerjo paints

Assuming all goes well (not likely given that I am literally related to a Murphy), I plan to have my Necrons and Circle ready for next years Nagoyahammer. FoW will move more slowly but hopefully the escalation campaign will keep the greeks moving at a good speed with the fallschirm coming along at a decent clip.

I applaud your resolve, sir

Its really good to see someone setting out to improve their painting. I hope all goes well for you in your noble quest Try not to get disheartened if a mini doesn't turn out how you want it to. As long as your third mini is better than your second, or your twentieth is better than your tenth, then you're creeping up that learning curve little by little.

You mention in your above post that you intend to use certain mini ranges to test certain techniques and paint ranges on. My advice (which you are of course welcome to disregard) is to try not to think in terms of any given miniature range lending themselves to any given technique. You can blend a scyrah elf as easily as a space marine or a Malifaux neverborn. Think more in terms of surfaces. Cloaks and large armour plates (or big muscles like ogres or orks) lend themselves to nice blending. This also applies to crons, btw - metallics should be treated just like any other colour in terms of highlighting ad shading. Faces of any kind are good for detail work and brush control, and so on. Fur and chain mail can largely be dry brushed, if done carefully.

I'd also advise that you think less in terms of paint ranges and more in terms of colour. Tbh, it doesn't matter what shape the bottle is - if it contains that shade of green you need then it should come outta the bottle and onto your pallete. If that means using a Vallejo military green on your Circle minis, then all to the good.

Anyway, if you maintain your attitude of wanting to improve your painting and keep up the practice then you will definitely, most assuredly get better

Gambarre!!!fighttooooooo!!!

You make good points and I fully agree with your conclusions. In the end, that is exactly what I plan on doing, matching the color I want from what ever range has said color.

That being said, I have only ever used GW paints. I have heard a little about P3 and even less about vallerjo. With the recent changes to GW paints and all the new styles they put out, that leaves me feeling rather nervous about how any of these paints will work, let alone trying to mix them together. So, starting out, I have separated them for experimental purposes. Necron's metallic colors work well to start with GWs new line and get a feeling there. There are some techniques for Circle that I really want to try so P3 there and vallerjo for FoW fallschirm. Once I get more comfortable I'll start mixing, for example, I most likely will use GW for flesh paints and P3 for my necron's dynasty color. I think one I start talking about what models I will purchase and start painting with, this will make more sense how all of this will come together.

Fair enough I know it can all be a bit daunting at first. So far as I'm aware, all of the main 4 paint manufacturers (GW, Vallejo, P3 and Reaper) use essentially the same base, with the slightly different chemical compositions manifesting as slightly different paint properties. The ranges can all be happily mixed together, though. For example, my cryx skin tone is GW bleached bone, shaded with P3 coal black (with a bit of old school GW purple ink mixed in for the deep shadows) with P3 white for extreme highlights. For the transitions between colours I mix the paints together on the pallete and have no problems with them. They're all water based acrylics, so they're all happily mixable.

So with the goals put up and the time frame sent out, we now need models and paint which means spending money. As this isn't just learning techniques but also building an army, planning is going to be needed as well. Balancing the goals I want to achieve and the army I want to build isn't easy as I quickly discovered.

Starting with Flames of War, my fallschirmjager are already an army in being, though no basing or coloring. As I have Job coming over to teach me how to base, I will get a better idea of what I need and how much I will have to spend as well.

For my necrons, I need to start with the basics. a Necron Lord and a battle force. In addition, I have added some lych guard and an annihilation barge. I have also added a set of metal paints and a black spray paint can to cover my robots with first. This list gives me a good starting point (necron warriors) and builds up to the dynastic colors (lyche guard and lord) once I am more comfortable with all the new paints. In addition, the two weapon platforms will force me to paint models in parts before gluing together. The large size will give me experience before I try smaller models. This will also give me a lot of bits to work with for conversion work later. With regards to basing, I have a few ideas floating around in my head but which one I will choose will depend on several factors. Over all to buy the new paints and models and after using the Towncrier's Nagoyahammer discount, I spent 24,000 yen and got 1,000 points.

The circle of Oboros has proven to be harder. Originally I wanted to go with eKaya and the three warp wolf types for a nice 25 point army. However, two of the key painting techniques that constantly draws my attention is the lacquered bronze and green glow. Sadly the wolves don't have much lacquered bronze and none of the green glow. Also five models doesn't give you many chances to improve; as MiJ pointed out, third is better than first and 13ths is better than 11th doesn't work if only 5 models to start with. While I will be getting all of these models at some point, starting with something that meets my requirements a bit better. After several list debating and building, I finally settled on Moshar as my first warlock. To join him, he will have a gorax, woldwyrd and gnarlhorn for a total of 12 points. Building up from there to 35 points will be various support units of the circles that include lots of the techniques I want making the army more viable and including more models than Kaya would have offered to begin with.

I also need paints, As I want to learn the mixing, a wet pallet is also needed and the privateer painting CD should help give me some extra help. So with my starting 12 points and all the paints needed, I come to 19,400.

So with a plan in mind and a lot of money ready to be burned up, I have made my orders and now all I can do is wait to see which I get first.

I'll be interested to see how your wet pallete is. I cobbled mine together myself, and truth be told it isnt even technically a real wet palete, since the paper I use is waxed and so the water doesnt osmose through (it does however keep the air around the paint cool and moist, which cuts down on evaporation, so it does the job well enough.) Anyway, keep us posted on how the pallete works out for you

With the Lych Guard you will also be getting plenty of practice pinning models. Their wrists need real metal rods inserting to hold their arms in place.
The rest of the necrons are easy enough to put together though.

just to chip in my tuppence worth, I know pinning is a PITA, but if a model looks like it needs pinning, you shoulde defo do it. I spent 2 hrs of precious, precious mini time (um, that was pretty much my weekly allocation) pinning together models I need for naghammer yesterday. I couldve just glued em and got on with the painting, but I know that theyd just break in transit, or worse, break 6 months down the line after Ive painted them, thus ruining the paintjob.

Pin em for me, Marv. Pin em good.

(kudos points to anybody who can name that mis-quoted movie... )
*edit* googling is cheating and you know it!

me_in_japan wrote:Pin em for me, Marv. Pin em good.

(kudos points to anybody who can name that mis-quoted movie... )
*edit* googling is cheating and you know it!

Sin City?

aaaaaand Prim gets the points within 9 minutes. Nice one