"Templar Knight painted... what do you think" Topic

A few weeks back I asked for some advise on painting white. TMP link

Here is my work in progress. What you think?

a few more picture on my blog.
link

Thanks

The basing is excellent. Your paint control is very good. Probably the miniature looks better "in the flesh" than it does in the pic. The lighting is quite harsh, and is probably bleeding out your subtle shading. If you are satisfied with the look "in real life", don't bother painting for picture contrast, or, experiment with other picture taking procedure to achieve the best contrast that shows off your shading to good effect.

(And, perhaps, finish the model entirely first, before asking for opinions?)

Personally, the currently accepted "wisdom" on how to paint miniatures does not appeal to me nearly as much as a less dramatic approach, which is apparently what you are using here. I feel that miniatures look best when shaded subtly rather than "cartoonishly". This is especially true of realistic or historical miniatures. I'd reserve the "cartoonish" painting approach for cartoon oriented miniatures, pulp, scifi and the like….

I would use a light grey or brown wash over the white.
If it coome out slightly too dark (or "un-white"), you can highlight the higher parts in white again.

Personaly, I never use pure white, using off-white instead. And nobody ever noticed, or at least said something about it.
The big advantage of this is that it is easier to wash or highlight.

Thanks for the replies.

Have been working on Templars myself. Not the easiest thing to do :)

Your shading and highlighting is not bad – I would make a greater difference between highlights and shadows – I think you need more contrast

The vallejo Ivory (VMC) is a great paint for whites – it thins out well and so on. I would use pure white for only the brightest highlights. I find like you that the highlights tend to get chalky – I don't know how to fix that

So I think you could shift the whole scheme so that the base is more off white and the shadows deeper.

One thing I find is that the figure looks great close up (I use a magnifier and lots of light) but washed out when further away. So hide it for a couple of days and then view only at 3 foot away – are the shadows/highlights obvious ?

What scale is this figure ? – generally the smaller the scale the greater the contrast that you need

Good luck

John

I'll add something to this: I had the best success painting whites when I primed in black. A thinned white (stark white, btw) ran down into the low areas and ended up "fogging" the black primer, i.e. turning it into a dark grey. Then I dry-brushed (not too dry, mind) the high areas. The over all look is very contrasty and not chalky at all. Don't ask which paints I used, I don't remember. These are gaming pieces, not up for a painting contest. The unit looks very cool on the table, that is what matters….

Here is an example – the darkest brown is Vallejo VMC Brown sand. I could perhaps have gone a little darker in the folds.
I like the VMC Ivory a lot as a basic white colour, with pure white only used for highlights. Most of the crosses are decals

John

Had to edit as I am a posting Newbie …

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