Painted men

Bloody hell, Felt.

These are goddamned exceptional. Do you do commissions still? I know a DnD group or two that'd go mad for work like this.

Ninchilla

He's just painted a kobold monk for me that should arrive back Soon(tm). I haven't seen photos of it yet, but I'm really excited to see it.

feltmonkey

Bloody hell, Felt.

These are goddamned exceptional. Do you do commissions still? I know a DnD group or two that'd go mad for work like this.

Thanks!

Yeah, I'd paint some D&D men for your group, providing they stumped up the cold hard cash. :) I'm not the quickest painter though, but a few individual miniatures shouldn't take too long.

Ninchilla, your kobold should be with you tomorrow, hopefully. I posted it signed for, for the added security, so they can't claim to have delivered it when they haven't. It does mean you might have to pick it up from the post office, but then it wouldn't have fitted through your letterbox anyway.

Ninchilla

Yay! I look forward to the jealous amazement of everyone at D&D on Tuesday. :D

feltmonkey

Well, if they want their miniatures painted too…

Ninchilla

There's one who'd pretty definitely take you up on that, if she ever gets round to ordering her mini…

Alastor

September 17, 2018

Nice work! Nice to see people chomping at the bit for your work too.

Prole

These are all stunning. There's some detail on everything that makes me really appreciate the work involved (and the talent it took). I do think that Sgt. Marv is particularly striking, though.

Mr Party Hat

It's giving me a headache just imagining painting those fiery tree men.

feltmonkey

Yeah, I'm fairly happy with how those trees turned out. The one holding the big staff was particularly satisfying because I painted it all the wrong way. This is a bit technical, but bark lends itself quite well to drybrushing. Drybrushing is where you wipe most of the paint off the brush and flick the brush over the miniature, catching the edges. It used to be the only highlighting method anyone used in the 80s and 90s (well, apart from the professionals who kept their secret advanced techniques to themselves.) So instead of doing that, I wet blended everything. This involves sort of mixing lighter and darker paints together on the miniature, in order to create a smooth gradiation between the two. It's a LOT more labour intensive, but paid off. I also painted wood grain onto the bark by hand. I know.

But the bit that I like about it is the glow effect on the end of the staff. I wasn't going to do this, because OSL (object source lighting, where the miniature is painted to look as if it is lit from a light source which is part of the model itself, such as if a miniature is carrying a lantern, or a big glowing staff) is too hard. I'd never managed to do it even half competently before. When I'd finished everything else about it though, it looked wrong. It had to look like the staff was glowing, or it would look unnatural. So I had to create that glow effect you see on the hand, and I managed to spread it across other parts of the miniature. The light shines on the tree's hair, beard, and face, and there's a small reflection on the gold beard ring. I'm just glad I didn't cock it up too much.

I did cock up the water a bit, and it ended up with loads of bubbles in, but I guess it just looks like there are fish in the stream.

aniki

How long do these take you to do? I reckon I could spend months on one and not manage anything that I was happy with - certainly not to the extent that I'd ever post pictures online for other people to see.

feltmonkey

The trees probably took dozens of hours. That Kobold I painted for you took about five. I'm not a quick painter, and it's a time-consuming thing to do. Patience is more important than talent.

Sgt Marv didn't take a huge amount of time (still several hours) as there wasn't any blending on that one. I've been working on a squad of ten space marines for months on and off, and still don't seem to be particularly close to finishing the bastards. They were supposed to be a quick practice with the airbrush I bought myself in January. As a side note - I still have no idea how to use the airbrush. The most I've used it for is to basecoat something a flat colour.

Ninchilla

http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8370a.jpg

You painted aniki a kobold, too?

feltmonkey

September 19, 2018

Goddammit sorry!

How long have we been doing that on this forum? 😂

Ninchilla

September 19, 2018

When did we join?

feltmonkey

September 20, 2018

Putting that embarassing mishap behind us, here's the kobold I painted for… Ninchilla.

http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8361a.jpg

http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8363a.jpg

Here's a pic for size comparison. This guy was tiny.

http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8366a.jpg

Ninchilla

September 20, 2018

I am still in awe.

feltmonkey

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8407.jpg

I entered Armies on Parade earlier this month. What Armies on Parade is is a competition run by Games Workshop in all their local stores where you display an army on a board and are mercilessly judged by the public. You can make a scenic board yourself, or buy a plain one from GW themselves, or add shop-bought scenery, whatever you feel like. One guy in my local store had a fishbowl full of sea-elves for some reason. I built a scenic board from scratch.

A week and a day before the competition (Friday 5th) my board looked like this -

Photo features a guest appearance from my feet. I didn't have a hot wire cutter, so I had to saw the blue foam by hand, which was a lot of work and took a lot longer than I had planned. Getting to this point took all Friday.

From this point, I glued all the foam down with Gorilla Glue (which is incredible stuff), as well as some stones I stole from in front of the leisure centre, before smearing polyfiller over the whole board, smoothing the angular corners of the foam, making the whole thing look more natural, and filling in the gaps around the foam and rocks. Obviously I avoided the rocks with the filler. When this was dry, I glued on a few leftover treemen bits as roots, and then added sand over the top of the board, using some spray glue. Next, I spray painted the whole thing black. This was a necessary step, but I really wish I had found a cheaper black spray paint to do it. The can I used was £8 and I used almost the whole can! Anyway, next I sprayed a muddy brown over the top. This was the reason I sprayed it black first - to vary the tone of the mud over the board, and to have some subtle shading. I could spray lightly on some areas to keep them dark, then spray more paint on where I wanted it lighter. I didn't want a uniform brown. This might have been a bit pointless when you see what I did later, but it was important to me. By Sunday night it looked like this -

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8412.jpg

This photo features a guest appearance from a View-Master in a plastic tub.

Next, it was time to add the grass. I used my spray glue again, having first bluetacked over the roots and rocks, because I didn't want to cover them in grass. I also covered the river by holding a piece of card in the way of the spray. I used a couple of different types of flock grass to add some variety again. Once this was all finished and stuck on, the next evening I painted the rocks, roots, and river bed. By Monday night it looked like this -

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8470.jpg

Tuesday night was spent adding a water effect to the river, plus some wash and drybrush to the rocks and roots. Wednesday night I added another coat of the water effect. Thursday and friday, I frantically painted the last five minis I needed to put on the board - three big Kurnoth Hunters with bows, a Branchwych, and a Branchwraith. I was up until 2am both night, I think. Friday in work was painful.

On Saturday morning, I suddenly realised I had never painted the edges of the bases on any of my 40 flipping Dryads. That took half an hour of frantic work. Transporting the whole thing was not easy. My local GW is miles from any car park, so it took a 20-minute walk carrying the board and two large sportsbags with the miniatures in. I nearly died. Of course, when I got there several of the leaves clusters had broken off my Wyldwood, but the GW manager was kind enough to lend me some superglue to stick it back together. It took me so long to set everything up, the staff were taking the piss, saying I was setting up for 2019's competition.

This is how it looked in the end -

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8474.jpg

I didn't put all the dryads on. It might have swamped the board.

feltmonkey

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8476.jpg

Some closer photos -

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8477.jpg

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8478.jpg

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8479.jpg

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8480.jpg

There were quite a few entries - 14 in all. Quite a few were just plonked down on a shop-bought board with shop-bought scenery scattered around, which I thought was a slight shame. Only three or four of us had hand-made boards. One was great - a Blood Bowl stadium, which was quite nicely made, and had the genius idea of a smartphone incorperated as a stadium big-screen. A couple were really nicely painted, one guy had Idoneth Deepkin inside an actual goldfish bowl, one guy had just thrown money at the whole thing and bought a bunch of knights and a £300 Warhound Titan. The overall winner was a load of Imperial Guard and some rather lovely tanks, arranged on a cityscape made of GW buildings on a flat board. It was nicely done, if a bit unimaginative, but it was the highest board there, and often highest board wins AOP. My favorite was a quite small, understated but beautifully-done diorama, but the winner was certainly deserving. He had about eight or nine tanks, all meticulously painted, and about 50 guardsmen, so it must have been a hell of a lot of work. I didn't win any categories, but I did get second overall, which I'm very happy with and quite surprised by. I got a cool medal -

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/IMAG8489.jpg

I'm going for going for gold next year!

.
.
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A few days later, when I posted the board on my Instagram, Sergio Calvo, genius painter winner of multiple Crystal Brush competitions, commented on my photo! It pretty much made my day.

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/Awesome2.jpg

aniki

Good Lord. That's hugely impressive for a week's work - on top of other commitments, to boot. I don't think I could manage that with a whole month of free time.

Congrats on the second place, too - very well deserved!

Mr Party Hat

That's obscenely good.

The little details, like painting the bases to match the ground they're on, would never have occurred to me.

feltmonkey

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8410a.jpg

Thanks, guys.

Obviously I didn't paint all the miniatures in a week, I think that would have killed me. They were mostly done beforehand, apart from the five I mentioned.

The matching of bases to board came the other way round - I matched the board to the bases. That's why there's a stream on there. I had used the water effect to make the bases for my two favorite big treemen more interesting, and when I came to make the board, I realised that it would look weird if the water on their bases just stopped and they were standing in a grassy field. So I had to try to create a stream, and not only that - it had to come down the board to match the Treelord Ancient (the one with the staff) and also go across the board to match the Spirit of Durthu (the one with the flamey sword.) That's why it opens out into a pond. Getting the width of the stream at that point just right to match the TLA's base and have the two of them right at the front was, genuinely, a bit of a fluke.

feltmonkey

November 27, 2018

Here's another man.

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8417a.jpg

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8414a.jpg

http://oi784.photobucket.com/albums/yy130/feltmonkey/DSC_8451a.jpg

Prole

November 28, 2018

Amazing, as ever.

cavalcade

November 28, 2018

Jesus felt, save some talent for the rest of us.

feltmonkey

November 28, 2018

Thanks guys.

I used some cool weathering paints on this guy. They're enamel based, so you can slap them on and, using a cotton bud and some white spirits, wipe them off where you want the highlights to go. It was the first time I used them, and it was surprisingly easy to get good results with them.

feltmonkey

July 17, 2019

How do you post photos on this board now? Photobucket is trying to extort money from me so I'm using google photos. All I'm getting is extraordinarily long links.

Garwoofoo

July 17, 2019

I tend to use imgur these days.

feltmonkey

I'm going to try to post some photos again. My efforts have been thwarted every time I've tried since last November(!) but fingers crossed.

Some Dark Angels Aggressors. Really menacing models, and my best attempts at Dark Angels ever.

A guy from a now-defunct game called Anima Tactics. Sort of a Final Fantasy style mini game.

A great big AT-ST model from Star Wars Legion. About 8 or 9 inches tall.

Swamp Thing, of course.

An Imperial Knight.

Another one of the Knight because this one is famous. Go to the Games Workshop website, search for Imperial Knight Gallant, and you can see this very photo advertising GW products. I received/receive no money for this. I don't mind at all.

Snowspeeder.

A Deathwing Land Raider tank with freehand lion on the side.

Dark Angels guy with a banner.

Dark Angels Chaplain.

Bob Feet.

Brian Bloodaxe

Holy shit Felt.

Prole

I know, right? Stunning, as ever.

aniki

I've started making terrain tiles for D&D and it's given me a whole new level of appreciation for the work that you put into these things. How do I learn the patience necessary for this stuff?

Alastor

Aniki and Feltmonkey Collaboration when tbh

feltmonkey