I never really post on these boards, so this feels a little like advertising, so if anyone thinks it's uncool, I can delete.

I made a few painting tutorials for Mansions of Madness on my YouTube Channel : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avM2IekyLtU&list=PLc5n8uQiMzzVMJqu6gIah91KSRdvzcyE0 (playlist link)

So far there is only 3 for the newest expansion: so hired gun, skeleton and star vampire.

They are okay, think my quality is improving.

Not up to Sorastro's level, but if anyone is curious, you can check it out.

I'm not a 10 layers of slightly different colours on one area sort of painter myself, to me they are tiny board game miniatures played at a distance from the eye. Your video quality is fantastic, perfect for the everyday hobbyist. Keep doing what you are doing, don't hold yourself to any other level, your miniatures look amazing.

11 minutes ago, Phoenix_FFG said:

I'm not a 10 layers of slightly different colours on one area sort of painter myself, to me they are tiny board game miniatures played at a distance from the eye. Your video quality is fantastic, perfect for the everyday hobbyist. Keep doing what you are doing, don't hold yourself to any other level, your miniatures look amazing.

Haha, I normally don't go all out like that, but the star vampire is just a really cool looking model that I really wanted it to stand out.

Thank you for the compliments.

Thanks for the tutorials. I'm just starting to get into mini painting. I've painted 5 so far. This is my most recent paintjob. I have a very difficult time handling highlights. Here is my Marie.

On 4/21/2018 at 12:52 PM, Soakman said:

Thanks for the tutorials. I'm just starting to get into mini painting. I've painted 5 so far. This is my most recent paintjob. I have a very difficult time handling highlights. Here is my Marie.

No problem!

She looks pretty good. Marie was honestly one of the hardest investigators to paint in my opinion.

Highlights are tough, everyone makes it look so easy, but it takes practice.

If anything from looking at your model there, your paint jobs would probably benefit from having the paint thinned down a little bit more. The layers there look slightly thick. (I still struggle with thinned paints to some degree even today, again just takes practice and a little experimentation)

Thank you! I'm glad that highlighting is tougher than it looks because that makes me feel better about my trouble. All the tutorials I see are like, "and then you add the highlights *swish swish* Voi la!" And then I try to add highlights and it looks like a 3-year old applying make-up, haha. Just one of those things that take practice I guess.

Thanks for the note about the paint viscosity too. You're probably right. I think I need to get a real ceramic palette or something so I can tell better. Right now I'm basically using cardboard and papertowels for palette material. I'm also not entirely sure how thin the paint should be or how long to let a coat dry before adding the next layer. I'm not sure what it would do if the paint wasn't entirely dry, but I feel like I paint pretty slowly, so when I finish the base coat, usually the part I started on seems dry enough to keep painting the next coat, or the wash, or whatever, but I'm kinda just guessing.

20 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Thanks for the note about the paint viscosity too. You're probably right. I think I need to get a real ceramic palette or something so I can tell better. Right now I'm basically using cardboard and papertowels for palette material. I'm also not entirely sure how thin the paint should be or how long to let a coat dry before adding the next layer. I'm not sure what it would do if the paint wasn't entirely dry, but I feel like I paint pretty slowly, so when I finish the base coat, usually the part I started on seems dry enough to keep painting the next coat, or the wash, or whatever, but I'm kinda just guessing.

Check out various paint brands too. I love Reaper MSP the best because it comes in droppers and has great consistency. 90% of the time you can paint straight out of the bottle and it will be fine, or you can water it down / use a wet pallete for longer sessions or more delicate/fine details. Citadel is way to chunky to me, you HAVE to water it down to use it.

17 hours ago, Soakman said:

Thank you! I'm glad that highlighting is tougher than it looks because that makes me feel better about my trouble. All the tutorials I see are like, "and then you add the highlights *swish swish* Voi la!" And then I try to add highlights and it looks like a 3-year old applying make-up, haha. Just one of those things that take practice I guess.

Thanks for the note about the paint viscosity too. You're probably right. I think I need to get a real ceramic palette or something so I can tell better. Right now I'm basically using cardboard and papertowels for palette material. I'm also not entirely sure how thin the paint should be or how long to let a coat dry before adding the next layer. I'm not sure what it would do if the paint wasn't entirely dry, but I feel like I paint pretty slowly, so when I finish the base coat, usually the part I started on seems dry enough to keep painting the next coat, or the wash, or whatever, but I'm kinda just guessing.

It's a fair amount of practice. Highlighting is all about layering paint, which the paint needs to be fairly thin to do, but it does take practice to see how your brand of paints works in that regard. As long as you are using acrlyics the dry time should be fairly quick, so you can add the next layer fairly quickly. It's typically just washes that may take a bit of time.

with as many minis that come in the game, I honestly just base coat, dry brush, then wash. it produces pretty good results.

https://ibb.co/ieL4ZS
https://ibb.co/cyH7on

this is before the matte finish protectant i use

https://ibb.co/cXURg7

8 hours ago, PinkTaco said:

with as many minis that come in the game, I honestly just base coat, dry brush, then wash. it produces pretty good results.

https://ibb.co/ieL4ZS
https://ibb.co/cyH7on

this is before the matte finish protectant i use

https://ibb.co/cXURg7

Not bad at all!

I'm crazy, and I love painting plus these minis are fairly lowish quaility so I can practice advanced techniques and when they don't always work out, they still look fine.

I picked up some Army Painter washes and am going to have a go at Agatha Crane soon.

Hi Soak,

Can i send you mine and you paint them for me ?

i pay well!

thank you

18 hours ago, Soakman said:

I picked up some Army Painter washes and am going to have a go at Agatha Crane soon.

Agatha Crane isn't too bad. I had the original first edition version (same sculpt, but the plastic is even worse than 2nd edition). White is always interesting to paint.

Mansions has encouraged me to try my hand at painting, but before I start on the actual Mansions figures I'm attempting to not completely ruin some of my old Space Crusade figures. I currently only have an Army Painter starter set and a couple other colours, but it will suffice for practice at least.

These are nice tutorials, and I've taken to watching a few partly to see colour choices.

I'm actually curious to know what colours some people have painted various figures from the game? I would go with similar schemes to the official Premium figures, but they don't tend to follow the games... the description of the Hunting Horror for instance says it's "black and ropy", rather than turquoise and spotty .

Perhaps that should be a subject for a different thread.

2 hours ago, gurumets said:

Hi Soak,

Can i send you mine and you paint them for me ?

i pay well!

thank you

I would love to if I had more time and experience! I'm still learning and it takes me quite a long time to do a single miniature partially because I'm newer to the hobby and partially because I'm a little too cautious I think.

Thanks though, that is quite a compliment!

On 5/10/2018 at 2:55 PM, samuraislyr said:

Agatha Crane isn't too bad. I had the original first edition version (same sculpt, but the plastic is even worse than 2nd edition). White is always interesting to paint.

Hmm.. sooo.. speaking of which.. what kind of a wash do you use on white? I assume you will just inevitably need to re-drybrush the areas after the wash dries. There's no way my white lab coat is going to turn out well, but I'm gonna try to do what I can, haha.

8 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Hmm.. sooo.. speaking of which.. what kind of a wash do you use on white? I assume you will just inevitably need to re-drybrush the areas after the wash dries. There's no way my white lab coat is going to turn out well, but I'm gonna try to do what I can, haha.

That's one way to do it.

I kind of like to actually start base painting in an off-white color like Uthuran Grey. Then if I do any wash on the whites, it's primarily only to the darkest recess orrr I'll water down nuln oil and put a few light applications of it across the entire area. The way, I hopefully don't have to go over the entire area to get good highlights.

Welp, this is how it came out. It looks better in person and is completely serviceable as a game mini. Still looks like my paints might be too think or something. They seem a bit gritty and I'm not sure if this is due to my brushstroke techniques or if it is just a paint issue.

This is also the first time I've used pre-made washes and I had to work the white of the coat back up from the washed out brown/white basecoat. It's hard to see the highlights in this photo (maybe the lighting?) but I think it's a step-up from my prior highlights though I can't tell.

Thoughts?

3 hours ago, Soakman said:

Welp, this is how it came out. It looks better in person and is completely serviceable as a game mini. Still looks like my paints might be too think or something. They seem a bit gritty and I'm not sure if this is due to my brushstroke techniques or if it is just a paint issue.

This is also the first time I've used pre-made washes and I had to work the white of the coat back up from the washed out brown/white basecoat. It's hard to see the highlights in this photo (maybe the lighting?) but I think it's a step-up from my prior highlights though I can't tell.

Thoughts?

It's not bad at all. It's hard to get real detail on these miniatures. The melty paint look could honestly just be the camera. I've had that happen once where it looked fine in person, but my camera made it look like melted butter, very weird.

https://imgur.com/a/zNNzGmY My agatha isn't all that great to be honest haha, before I learned the skin technique I know now.

Hmm. I'm hoping it's just the camera and I"m not doing something majorly wrong, haha. I like your Aggie. I coulnd't figure out if the coat was supposed to be 'open' in the back, or if that was just a fold in the fabric, lol, so i just painted it white. *shrug*

I mixed a few paints together to get the skin tone. I have a paint labeled flesh tone, but it looks, basically, yellow. I don't care for it, so I mixed 'cork brown,' white, and a very very small amount of red to get to what I ended up using. I think it looks okay, but I really don't know what to do about skin. Skin and skin tones seems difficult. Especially when it comes to highlighting. I can highlight, like, a green skinned goblin okay, but actual flesh tones seem harder.

On 5/12/2018 at 9:49 PM, Soakman said:

Hmm. I'm hoping it's just the camera and I"m not doing something majorly wrong, haha. I like your Aggie. I coulnd't figure out if the coat was supposed to be 'open' in the back, or if that was just a fold in the fabric, lol, so i just painted it white. *shrug*

I mixed a few paints together to get the skin tone. I have a paint labeled flesh tone, but it looks, basically, yellow. I don't care for it, so I mixed 'cork brown,' white, and a very very small amount of red to get to what I ended up using. I think it looks okay, but I really don't know what to do about skin. Skin and skin tones seems difficult. Especially when it comes to highlighting. I can highlight, like, a green skinned goblin okay, but actual flesh tones seem harder.

Coat works either way really, one of those ambiguous models.

I get you on skin tone, I have a hard time with it. I use to do Bugman's Glow, Cadadian Fleshtone, Kislev Flesh, as my layers. I always found that hard to blend quite right. Lately, I've stuck to glazing and I really like the results: Can see the results in a fair amount of my investigator videos. I use medium fleshtone from Vallejo, then kislev flesh, then eflic flesh (vallejo) or flayed one flesh [they are both pretty close to each other) and then glaze those highlights down with searphim sephia. Makes a nice yellow,pink,white fleshtone in my opinion.

Hmm. Interesting. I will likely review your tutorials and see if I can pick up some tips when I have time. I'm using a mix of reaper/vallejo paints with army painter washes atm so I don't have any citadel paints.

On 5/12/2018 at 3:15 AM, Soakman said:

Hmm.. sooo.. speaking of which.. what kind of a wash do you use on white? I assume you will just inevitably need to re-drybrush the areas after the wash dries. There's no way my white lab coat is going to turn out well, but I'm gonna try to do what I can, haha.

FYI, there is a colorless wash from GW that you can use to make your own hues of wash. It's called lahmian medium. If used without wash it gives its own effect, sort of extra matte

Hmm.. Thank you for this. Interesting, I had no idea.