As the dust settles after Golden Demon, my feelings are starting to calm down.

This was my first time painting something on this scale, with this level of detail. I've lost count of how many times I pushed myself beyond my limits with digital and traditional sculpting, painting techniques, and freehand work.

I was hoping to earn a **"Notable" pin** for all the hard work I put into this piece, but this time, it wasn't meant to be. I originally entered the **Duel** category, but my entry was later moved to **Diorama** and then to **Open**. I don't know how these changes affected the judging of my work, but I wasn't happy with how the process unfolded.

Now that this chapter of my professional painting journey has come to a close, it's time to take the lessons with me and keep pushing pigment.

**Trust the process!**

Some of ya'll asked to see some pictures, so here are the stills from the video I posted the other day.

Now that you can zoom in, I feel I should caveat that none of this stuff is finished yet because finishing things or having a final project or completing a body of work isn't the point of DYCP, it's literally just about developing your practise.

That said, this army has already won Best Painted trophies at Warhammer World and AoS Worlds in Italy this summer—this was also not the point but who doesn't love a little side quest.

Anyway, this is The Attendant Amora. I'm not going to tell you all about them here yet as I'm in the process of doing a proper full write up and don't want to spoil that but I will, for "reasons", draw attention to the scroll work...

(For those who didn't see my post the other day, I got awarded a grant from Arts Council England last year to work on Warhammer as an artform. I'm sure wrapping the project up now, lots more to come)

Including this big map of fantasy

I gave a quick try to the Carthalos skin tones, first time using tone pro. Loved the texture and how easy it was to blend the colors together!

Not super thrilled with how glossy and how little the black covered over white, perhaps I must shake it more?

Anybody had a similar experience? Any other nice set you recommend?

I have a 12yo grandson (apparently I’m old) and we’re both into Warhammer. We’ve all seen the online bitching about Games Workshop prices and much derision for their paints. Very recently, my grandson started parroting some of this, even though his parents buy him the minis and paints he wants and, while he’s gotten better with managing his pocket money, he’s far from understanding what it takes to earn a living or the true value of things. Being salty about GW seems to b a popular thing to do online and is practically a meme people repeat.

FWIW, I thought I’d share my, possibly unpopular view.

Frankly, if it weren’t for GW, painting and mini gaming wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is. GW made it viable and was business minded enough to ensure that it as a company was not only successful and profitable but grew to the point out’s bordering on achieving mainstream awareness. That’s quite something for what started as an extremely niche, nerdy, quirky idea borne out of misfit creatives from the punk era.

IMHO, people forget that GW is a creative enterprise that supports multiple mediums; lore, illustration, sculpting, painting and literature. While some dismiss these because of their sci-fi or fantasy nature, I regard them as art forms. The quality has improved over time, thanks to GW’s patronage and some of the literature, illustration and sculpting are truly masterful. They then also go the extra step of having a studio with a team of full time painters to paint the minis used in box art. All of this takes talent, human creativity, time and a lot of effort.

I’ve worked for a company that did CAD sculpting, high quality plastic injection moulding, packaging, global distribution, marketing and sales. It’s incredibly difficult and expensive. It requires specialised, experienced people in dozens of fields of expertise. It’s not just a matter of paying a few bucks for a digital download and running off a couple of prints on your resin printer. Moulds are CAD milled and need to be hand polished, each costing $100K for something with a finite lifespan. The injection moulding machines cost hundreds of thousands, if not
Millions all up and then you need the land, factory building and logistics just to get started in what they do.

The first time I walked into a FLGS and bought a Warhammer model and paints was
In Sydney, Australia. I bought GW minis because they were what I was interested in, even before I’d ever painted one of really knew much about them and the models looked incredible. The paints were there in a nice display and looked good and I liked using them. Most people have no idea of what it takes simply to get to the point where your products are real and in a store.

Over the years, again IMHO, thanks to GW’s success, others have entire marketplace to compete. This has meant more and better paint options in particular, as well as some other good minis. In my experience, GW has not sat on its hands and stagnated but continued to evolve and improve. Their paints have gotten better over the years, as have their minis.

Ultimately, for me, the clincher if that I see GW as a company whose purpose lies in human imagination and creativity. Something that’s becoming rather rare nowadays. They carved the market and are successful and, for their sins, haven’t abandoned that core. Yeah, they’ve made decisions I’ve disagreed with and some I’ve been angry about but all of this is an attempt to point out the virtues that keep me coming back to them and why I don’t share the popular view that they’re expensive.

/rant

I own a FLGS and so I'm trying to paint a team up to showcase the new paints, this team will be to my med standard with the new paints and pushing a few tests while also letting it as simple as I can on most of the models (aka basic paint jobs a new painter can do) and showcasing a could things on the a few parts, these are also with the GW brushes (which doesn't have a fine tip to them).

They have some good qualities and some bad, I'll try to key it simple.

The bad: They are a bit rough to push around and honestly you can't really glaze with them.

The good: they base very well, they actually wet blend together well.

The ugly: some of the steps between colors are to far or not far enough.

The point of these are to make painting easier and quicker. And I keep finding myself picking other colors outside the same line of 5 to darken or highlight better. As well as I'm still needing to mix to get a more gradual steps.

The wet blending on the shield is from Blue Gorkshroom 1, 3, 5. Which for a highlight is fine but to have contrasts for wet blending I find you'll need to pick different colors for a darker or a brighter shadow/highlight.

Then to the black/grey/white. These serious needs a more lighter grey and darker grey, the 5 step isn't enough and the dark grey is too light against the black and the light grey number 4 is too grey for the next step of white and I needed to mix the colors together.

Overall for a new painter I say they are great but will not be good to learn a lot of new techniques on. Adding these to your lineup of paints for a base color is what I recommend them for.

Command squad for my custom regiment. The light grey bits are sculpts i created and then made resin cast of. I to represent the more eleite units of scions i altered the casts changing poses and adding higher boots with leg armor using platic card and putty. Also altered the helmets adding battery packs and wires to all. Arms are a combination of kreig shoulder pads and aquillon arms plus greenstuff. I cut all the arms at the joints and re sculpted all the cloth after using pins to positin the arm bits how i wanted.

Yellow is tamya putty quick type, green is greenstuff. CC welcome.

Green

Finally got around to cleaning up the paint desk and taking some better photos of this project. Quite chuffed with how it turned out and look forward to putting it on the table.

Before anyone asks - the eyes have LEDs it them, and I ran the wire up through through the pillar and left leg through the body. The Steelhelm helmet on the ground acts as the switch and the battery is under the base.

Hope you guys like it as well!

Cheers

Mick

Found out as long as it original work I can do 40k for art gcse so I’m painting this guy currently

I'm very curious of what it would look like used as a bace coat. If you have please send a picture I'm very curious.

Just finished quite an ambitious project. It took way longer than expected and I’m not entirely satisfied with it. However I consider it a success in terms of learning technique and above all patience. I’m also tempted to make a similar illustration for each Chaos Legion, but that depends on how much time I can afford to spend on this “hobby”.

Hope you enjoy!

Inks on paper, 70x45cm (27,5x17,7 inches)

What was I thinking. This thing is huge. And I did the whole thing in NMM? WHERE IS MY SANITY?? Oh, it ran away 6 months ago? ... that... that explains a lot...

AdMech combat patrol needs built before I can touch my knight. I already want more…this could be a problem

Honestly, I think one of the best things about Warhammer is that people can enjoy the hobby in completely different ways. Someone might spend weeks perfecting the armor on the Lion, another person might be figuring out how to make their first 1,000-point army work, and someone else might just want to paint a ridiculous-looking Ork because it's fun.

I genuinely prefer seeing that kind of variety over every army becoming a copy of whatever list is winning tournaments. Competitive play has its place, but if you're constantly buying new units because the meta changed, it can start feeling more like keeping up with a trend than enjoying your hobby.

There's also something satisfying about using models you actually like, even when they aren't the strongest option available. You get more invested in painting them, learning their rules, and finding ways to make them work on the tabletop.

For me, an army has more personality when you can tell the owner chose its units because they love them, not just because a tier list told them to.

Winning is great, but I'd rather lose a close game with an army I'm excited about than win with a list I built purely because someone online said it was optimal.

So I quite a few orange paints in my quest to find good ones for THA Votann, but decided to give the Chotec Orange a try. I would call myself an intermediate level painter, overall. I use a mix of several different paint brands when I paint, primarily Pro Acryl, but also Army Painter Fanatic, AK 3rd Gen, Ionic, and a little P3, even.

I always felt all the available oranges I tried had either poor coverage, sacrificed saturation, or both. I made due by mixing in the excellent Monument Hobbies Expert Artist Acrylics orange, and doing multiple layers for each color. If you look at some of my other posts you can see it works. It's just a lot of layers and time compared to the Tone Pro + glaze method I tried today.

I prefer my oranges to be vibrant and punchy, and I think I am going to switch to the Tone Pro paint with an orange glaze going forward.

Also, yes, I hate the pots, and I've already transferred two of the paints to dropper bottles (waiting on supplies for the others). That is something to keep in mind. Also, I am at the point in life where time is more valuable than money.

I would not generalize this to other colors, as I feel like there is less difference between brands for most other colors that I have tried.

I did this for my own testing and thought maybe people would find it useful. I will always point out that practice and experience make much more of a difference than any particular brand of paint.