Painting figures was a pretty intimidating premise for me. However, after reading a lot of stuff here and getting excited about some of the awesome work I saw, I gently stepped into figure painting. My first attempts were simple repaints such as Agent Skahen. After reading up on more techniques such as drybrushing, washing and highlighting, I attempted more and more difficult projects, which gradually increased my skill and confidence.
Some very helpful and inspiring threads and websites:
-justjohn's Beginner's Painting Tutorial
-Soundwarp SG-1's Mods
-Rocktroll's Exclusive Repaint Guide
-Rocktroll's Customs
-Griffin Paints
-Lord Pyre's Heroclix Painting Tutorial
-A3n Paints
-Games Workshop books about painting Warhammer figures.
-www.miniwargaming.com has some really excellent figure and terrain tutorial videos. Many of them are in the Members Only Vault, but if you get on their email list, they frequently offer free trial memberships to the vault and free downloads of some of the tutorials.
So here are some photos of my work. I put them roughly in reverse chronological order, so you can see the oldest, simplest projects at the bottom of this post, and work your way up to the most recent at the top. And thanks to all of you who have inspired me to do something that I didn't think I could do! It has been really exciting to find that I can do it! (or maybe my standards are just really low
)
Rancor Monster
White Knight graciously sent me a Rancor Monster (in pieces) that he printed on his 3D printer. I assembled it and finally finished painting it.
The technique I used was:
- Spray paint a gray primer
- Brownish/reddish base coat
- Yellowish on the claws, tusks and spikes
- Dark brown wash
- Drybrush with lighter shades of browns and yellows on outermost surfaces
Mysterio Holographs (C3G)
This one is quick and easy. I painted over the figure with "Grape" with a little bit of "True Blue" mixed in to darken it, then dry brushed with "Grape" mixed with a drop of white.
War of the Ring armies painted
Not Heroscape or Heroclix or anything, but this project has been taking up a lot of time lately. War of the Ring is somewhat similar to Risk, but 20 times better. There are good guys (molded in baby blue plastic) and bad guys (molded in red plastic). There are 5 different good guy nations (Rohan, Gondor, Dwarves, Elves and Northern dudes) and 3 different bad guy nations (Sauron, Saruman and Southrons&Easterlings). Each nation is represented by a different color on the map, but when you get a bunch of figures on the board, it can be difficult to tell them apart, so I wanted to paint them in their nation's color...well really it would have been awesome to fully detail paint all of them, but since there are over 200 figures, I didn't want to take the time for that. So instead I base coated, washed, drybrushed and added slight details to some figures (flags and shields), then spray sealed them. Here are pictures:
Bad Guys
I did the Sauron army first since their nation color is red. All I had to do was wash and sealer. I played around with some drybrushing and highlighting but did not like the result, so I went with the wash only:
Saruman:
Southrons & Easterlings:
Good Guys
I did the Northerners first because they are already molded baby blue, and that is their nation's color. So they got a dark blue wash and drybrush with white:
Rohan:
Gondor:
Dwarves:
Elves:
Red Hulk and Hulkbuster Iron Man
I finally finished these two that I started over 2 years ago
Hulkbuster is a Handful of Heroes figure that I painted red, then highlight with yellow, then wash with black (or maybe it was brown). The Red Hulk is a repaint of the Hasbro Hulk figure. Paint red, pants blue, touch up on hair and teeth. Wash with a dark red/brown. Drybrush a bit with red on the hulk's skin, and with white over the pants to make them look like a worn pair of jeans.
Obsidian Guard Repaints
As part of a trade, I repainted two squads of Obsidians into Granite Guardians for someone. Here they are standing with a squad of original Granites. Can you spot the real ones?
Stealth Suit Iron Man
Paint all over with metallic blue paint. Then paint the detail lights, eyes and chest lamp red. Finally, using a very small brush with a tiny speck of pink paint on the tip, gently dab it into the middle of each of the red lights.
Treasure Chest
This is a chest from my kids' toys, Littlest Pet Shop, I think. It was originally plain brown.
Green Lantern - Guy Gardner
This is an expensive Heroclix figure, so I copied Griffin's idea. Cut off the head of the Heroclix Ray figure and replace it with the head of the Heroclix Doc Samson figure. Then I shaved off the lines on the chest with the Dremel. Next paint the arms, legs and body black as a base. Paint the jacket and boots green, as well as the bars on the sides of his shoulders and legs. Paint the gloves and the trim around the jacket white and freehand the Green Lantern logo onto his chest. Don't forget to add a green dot for a ring. Finally I painted the hair and eyebrows a reddish brown color and then washed the the hair with a darker reddish brown color because it didn't look very natural with just one shade of color.
Sam Brown
This one is fairly simple, just look at Rocktroll's guide where he quotes Grungebob on the colors to use. Basically just repaint the coat, hair, hat, knife, canteen and canteen strap, then coat with matte finish sealer. For the hair I painted it light grey, then added a darker grey wash to it to fill in the shadows between the strands of hair. This simple step makes the hair look MUCH better.
Iron Man MK 1 and MK 2
This idea was ripped off from the Griffin Paints thread. These Iron Men are from the Handful of Heroes packs, but I just went and bought them from somebody on eBay. This repaint is easy, just paint silver or gold, wash with black, and then coat with something shiny. I used Krylon Clear Glaze.
Sinestro
This is the Heroclix Blue Lantern?? Sinestro. I really know next to nothing about Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet Lanterns, but I do know that the C3G Sinestro is yellow, and that the official Heroclix Yellow Sinestro is way too expensive. So I got the cheap blue one and painted him.
Giant Man
For Giant Man, I started with the large sized Yellow Jacket figure. Heroclix also makes a regular sized Yellow Jacket, so make sure you have the large one if you want to try this. Next I cut off the wings with an exacto knife and then shaved them and the logo on his chest down kinda smooth with a Dremel. The bits I used are in the third photo below. You might think the grinder looking bit was the best choice...I thought so too...but I was wrong. The furry wheel thingy works sooo much better for doing this. Just be careful, if you press it too hard, it will wear down the figure pretty fast. The remains of the wings are perfect for the suspenders. Last I painted him red and blue and added a wash followed by a bit of drybrushing to add some highlights and lighter color to the surfaces on top of his arms, shoulders, etc. because those surfaces would be facing the sun. So making those surfaces a bit lighter makes it look more natural.
Thor and The Hood
For these figures I did nothing more than add a wash. They were just so plain without them. Thor's armor was just silver, so the detail of the mail on his arms didn't stand out and his cape was one solid reddish color, without any kind of shading. The wash helped immensely. The Hood looked too red and blue before the wash, not like a crime lord guy who sneaks around in back alleys and abandoned construction sites. Again, he looks much better with the wash.
Master Woo and Master Woo proxy
These are not too difficult, basically add some grey with yellow trim. This was my first attempt at doing a wash. I learned that the wash darkens the main color significantly. This is also the first time I used a sealer. It came out a bit more glossy than I liked. I have now settled on Krylon Matte Acrylic Sealer as my preferred product.
Agent Skahen
This one is pretty easy, but I tried using glossy black paint to make it look like she's wearing leather pants...the effect didn't really work out so well...but I have a Skahen!
Lara Croft - Tomb Raider
I think this was my first attempt at a repaint. I wanted a figure to use with Greyowl's Lara Croft card, so I bought this green haired Indy comics assassin, Aphrodite IX. When I received the figure, I discovered that she sports thong undies. So I gave her some painted on pants and went over the hair with a dark brown paint. At this point, I didn't know of the importance of washing the figure with soap and water prior to painting and sealing the figure with an acrylic sealer afterwards. So the paint is wearing off on the hair and face. Now she looks more like a Joker Thug...
Some very helpful and inspiring threads and websites:
-justjohn's Beginner's Painting Tutorial
-Soundwarp SG-1's Mods
-Rocktroll's Exclusive Repaint Guide
-Rocktroll's Customs
-Griffin Paints
-Lord Pyre's Heroclix Painting Tutorial
-A3n Paints
-Games Workshop books about painting Warhammer figures.
-www.miniwargaming.com has some really excellent figure and terrain tutorial videos. Many of them are in the Members Only Vault, but if you get on their email list, they frequently offer free trial memberships to the vault and free downloads of some of the tutorials.
So here are some photos of my work. I put them roughly in reverse chronological order, so you can see the oldest, simplest projects at the bottom of this post, and work your way up to the most recent at the top. And thanks to all of you who have inspired me to do something that I didn't think I could do! It has been really exciting to find that I can do it! (or maybe my standards are just really low
)Rancor Monster
White Knight graciously sent me a Rancor Monster (in pieces) that he printed on his 3D printer. I assembled it and finally finished painting it.
The technique I used was:
- Spray paint a gray primer
- Brownish/reddish base coat
- Yellowish on the claws, tusks and spikes
- Dark brown wash
- Drybrush with lighter shades of browns and yellows on outermost surfaces
Mysterio Holographs (C3G)
This one is quick and easy. I painted over the figure with "Grape" with a little bit of "True Blue" mixed in to darken it, then dry brushed with "Grape" mixed with a drop of white.
War of the Ring armies painted
Not Heroscape or Heroclix or anything, but this project has been taking up a lot of time lately. War of the Ring is somewhat similar to Risk, but 20 times better. There are good guys (molded in baby blue plastic) and bad guys (molded in red plastic). There are 5 different good guy nations (Rohan, Gondor, Dwarves, Elves and Northern dudes) and 3 different bad guy nations (Sauron, Saruman and Southrons&Easterlings). Each nation is represented by a different color on the map, but when you get a bunch of figures on the board, it can be difficult to tell them apart, so I wanted to paint them in their nation's color...well really it would have been awesome to fully detail paint all of them, but since there are over 200 figures, I didn't want to take the time for that. So instead I base coated, washed, drybrushed and added slight details to some figures (flags and shields), then spray sealed them. Here are pictures:
Bad Guys
I did the Sauron army first since their nation color is red. All I had to do was wash and sealer. I played around with some drybrushing and highlighting but did not like the result, so I went with the wash only:
Saruman:
Southrons & Easterlings:
Good Guys
I did the Northerners first because they are already molded baby blue, and that is their nation's color. So they got a dark blue wash and drybrush with white:
Rohan:
Gondor:
Dwarves:
Elves:
Red Hulk and Hulkbuster Iron Man
I finally finished these two that I started over 2 years ago
Hulkbuster is a Handful of Heroes figure that I painted red, then highlight with yellow, then wash with black (or maybe it was brown). The Red Hulk is a repaint of the Hasbro Hulk figure. Paint red, pants blue, touch up on hair and teeth. Wash with a dark red/brown. Drybrush a bit with red on the hulk's skin, and with white over the pants to make them look like a worn pair of jeans.
Obsidian Guard Repaints
As part of a trade, I repainted two squads of Obsidians into Granite Guardians for someone. Here they are standing with a squad of original Granites. Can you spot the real ones?
Stealth Suit Iron Man
Paint all over with metallic blue paint. Then paint the detail lights, eyes and chest lamp red. Finally, using a very small brush with a tiny speck of pink paint on the tip, gently dab it into the middle of each of the red lights.
Treasure Chest
This is a chest from my kids' toys, Littlest Pet Shop, I think. It was originally plain brown.
Green Lantern - Guy Gardner
This is an expensive Heroclix figure, so I copied Griffin's idea. Cut off the head of the Heroclix Ray figure and replace it with the head of the Heroclix Doc Samson figure. Then I shaved off the lines on the chest with the Dremel. Next paint the arms, legs and body black as a base. Paint the jacket and boots green, as well as the bars on the sides of his shoulders and legs. Paint the gloves and the trim around the jacket white and freehand the Green Lantern logo onto his chest. Don't forget to add a green dot for a ring. Finally I painted the hair and eyebrows a reddish brown color and then washed the the hair with a darker reddish brown color because it didn't look very natural with just one shade of color.
Sam Brown
This one is fairly simple, just look at Rocktroll's guide where he quotes Grungebob on the colors to use. Basically just repaint the coat, hair, hat, knife, canteen and canteen strap, then coat with matte finish sealer. For the hair I painted it light grey, then added a darker grey wash to it to fill in the shadows between the strands of hair. This simple step makes the hair look MUCH better.
Iron Man MK 1 and MK 2
This idea was ripped off from the Griffin Paints thread. These Iron Men are from the Handful of Heroes packs, but I just went and bought them from somebody on eBay. This repaint is easy, just paint silver or gold, wash with black, and then coat with something shiny. I used Krylon Clear Glaze.
Sinestro
This is the Heroclix Blue Lantern?? Sinestro. I really know next to nothing about Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet Lanterns, but I do know that the C3G Sinestro is yellow, and that the official Heroclix Yellow Sinestro is way too expensive. So I got the cheap blue one and painted him.
Giant Man
For Giant Man, I started with the large sized Yellow Jacket figure. Heroclix also makes a regular sized Yellow Jacket, so make sure you have the large one if you want to try this. Next I cut off the wings with an exacto knife and then shaved them and the logo on his chest down kinda smooth with a Dremel. The bits I used are in the third photo below. You might think the grinder looking bit was the best choice...I thought so too...but I was wrong. The furry wheel thingy works sooo much better for doing this. Just be careful, if you press it too hard, it will wear down the figure pretty fast. The remains of the wings are perfect for the suspenders. Last I painted him red and blue and added a wash followed by a bit of drybrushing to add some highlights and lighter color to the surfaces on top of his arms, shoulders, etc. because those surfaces would be facing the sun. So making those surfaces a bit lighter makes it look more natural.
Thor and The Hood
For these figures I did nothing more than add a wash. They were just so plain without them. Thor's armor was just silver, so the detail of the mail on his arms didn't stand out and his cape was one solid reddish color, without any kind of shading. The wash helped immensely. The Hood looked too red and blue before the wash, not like a crime lord guy who sneaks around in back alleys and abandoned construction sites. Again, he looks much better with the wash.
Master Woo and Master Woo proxy
These are not too difficult, basically add some grey with yellow trim. This was my first attempt at doing a wash. I learned that the wash darkens the main color significantly. This is also the first time I used a sealer. It came out a bit more glossy than I liked. I have now settled on Krylon Matte Acrylic Sealer as my preferred product.
Agent Skahen
This one is pretty easy, but I tried using glossy black paint to make it look like she's wearing leather pants...the effect didn't really work out so well...but I have a Skahen!
Lara Croft - Tomb Raider
I think this was my first attempt at a repaint. I wanted a figure to use with Greyowl's Lara Croft card, so I bought this green haired Indy comics assassin, Aphrodite IX. When I received the figure, I discovered that she sports thong undies. So I gave her some painted on pants and went over the hair with a dark brown paint. At this point, I didn't know of the importance of washing the figure with soap and water prior to painting and sealing the figure with an acrylic sealer afterwards. So the paint is wearing off on the hair and face. Now she looks more like a Joker Thug...
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Very nicely done.
