Been a while since I've done some painting. But the new co-op campaign and the new expansion really invigorated me. And this time I think I painted a bit faster than before. Also first time ever with a wet palette. It's soooo helpful, especially with the skin.

Anyway, here are the Loth cats and the two new heroes. With the Loth cats I thought "I'll paint them first. Nothing special. Just get them done quickly."

What annoying little critters they turned out to be. These are not neat or anything but they'll do for boardgaming. After these, I started with the heroes. I tried to keep them simple and just get them ready for boardgaming. I'm pretty happy how they turned out though.

It's good to be back painting Imperial Assault. I'm also curious to see how others painted these.

Welcome back to painting! The colour application looks neat and smooth, and you also don't shy away from details like painting the eyes - that's good. Just keep painting, and you'll improve more - it's all a journey after all, and a fun one at that.

On 9/29/2018 at 12:47 AM, Fourtytwo said:

Welcome back to painting! The colour application looks neat and smooth, and you also don't shy away from details like painting the eyes - that's good. Just keep painting, and you'll improve more - it's all a journey after all, and a fun one at that.

Thank you for your kind words. I didn't paint eyes for the longest time because I couldn't get it neat enough. Now, I'm finally getting the hang of properly thinning the paint so that it flows off a thin brush. While I tend to paint most of the figure with size 2 and 3 brushes, 00 is nice for painting the eyes.

Working on Zeb atm. It's a fun figure to paint and I'm fairly happy how he's turning out. Still got some neatening up to do and have to paint the base but looking ok so far:

Also, this is the third figure I've painted that I've used wet palette with and I love it. I often don't bother using it for small detail colors like the orange lights but the skin and the metal bracers...it helps so much with them. I've found it helpful to make a gradient onto the palette and then when painting it's so nice to go back when I mess up and clean up with darker color for example or feather up a highlight some more etc. In the picture though, some of the paint has dried up a bit because I forgot the palette open for a few hours when I went to the store. But with little bit of glaze medium, it was still good to go.

Kanan and Zeb painted. Kanan's lightsaber turned out absolutely horrible. I don't know why but the glaze just didn't act nicely on the blade. I made sure there were no mold lines and the undercoat and white basecoat was neat and flat. But the glaze at one place didn't "stick" to the blade at all but always flowed out leaving the part white. And then when I tried glacing it over, the gradient effect didn't work and...argh. I ended up doing the lightsaber twice but it didn't turn out nice at all. I guess I should have switched approach to solid blue base color and highlight to white after the first defeat. Otherwise, the figure turned out pretty good.

But anyway, I'll admit defeat and move to the next figures.

Death Troopers painted. I started to paint the red one meticulously putting in highlights but it became exhausting. So I started thinking what would be the easiest, fastest way to get something half decent to the table. In the end I just went with drybrushing Army Painter's Necromancer Cloak and then mixing in white and drybrushing again. Then a little bit of Nuln Oil+Drakenhof Nightshade+Lahmian Medium wash and then highlights to pure white. Looks decent enough and didn't take that long. And the red one doesn't look any fancier than the drybrushed models. So much for my highlighting skills

Also, my Ard Coat varnish is going bad. I guess it's starting to dry in its pot or something. Doesn't mix nicely with water anymore and leaves an uneven shiny surface. It worked a lot better a year ago. Does anyone know if it's possible to revive that?

The loth cats are annoying, just finished mine when watched rebels again and saw different markings etc. Very annoying.

sabine is the worst one to paint though, the details are totally impossible to do accurately. Plus did the hair colour and it changed on the show!

I haven't gotten to painting Sabine yet. I finished Ezra today. So next on my list is Sabine. Then probably Thrawn or Hondo.

Also, I too found the Loth Cats annoying. But then again, since they are animals, the markings don't need to be consistent since I think they would be unique. But yeah, it does take some extra work to add them in. So, I hope at least you're happy with the loth cats you ended up with.

Ezra:

Not a great photo. My phone doesn't have an awesome camera. Also...Ezra's right eyebrow seems to be gone in this photo but I checked. I have that painted.

On 10/6/2018 at 9:27 PM, Soontirbeblownup said:

The loth cats are annoying, just finished mine when watched rebels again and saw different markings etc. Very annoying.

sabine is the worst one to paint though, the details are totally impossible to do accurately. Plus did the hair colour and it changed on the show!

Did my cats today as well. Most annoying part about them is the base though. Probably the first mini where I painted the base first, so I would not need to touch up the cats later. I decided to wet-blend the cats. Their markings are probably not correct, but in the end they'll be fine for gaming.

Hondo painted:

Also, got a new phone and decided to test the camera. Not sure if I like it.

Just try to catch the model in natural light, you'll see a massive difference, (In my old flat, I used to have to set-up for any photos in the kitchen, as it had the best light during the day). And make sure that camera is steady (I tend to rest mine on a paint pot (or anything the right height) to maintain focus etc).

And set-up a paper coving for a nice neutral background (like the below, best image I can find to explain....)

Also, use the White Balance-function on your camera. Set up a white piece of printer paper in your photo setup and use it for your camera as a reference for pure white (RGB 255,255,255) - this will make your camera automatically adjust all other Colours accordingly and thereby negate the colour-altering effect of non-pure-white light. Just check the manual of your camera if you are not familiar with the White Balance-function.

Thank you for the tips. I didn't actually know about the White Balance function. My camera is an old Canon Powershot 240HS and it didn't have a manual setting for White Balance but it had presets. "Artificial light" was the closest thing that showed basic blank A4 paper as white. So I went with that. Here are a couple of shots:

Hondo again:

Death Troopers vs. Rebels:

Pirates!

I think I need a new desk light. Maybe a LED with a decent arm so that I can move it around when I paint and position it better when taking photos. The camera I'm actually fairly happy with it. It seems better than my phone at any rate. And it has a lot of other manual settings that I don't know how to use but I probably should in order to take better shots.

Hera Syndulla painted:

Ugh, with this closeup I can see that I didn't neaten up from under the gloves properly.