bellybellybellybelly........first tournament done!

hello Bellies!

i have decided to take the plunge and start a gnoblog. A little  background first. Im newish to WFB, having played a few games with a friends army and attended one tournament with said army (bretonians). Had a great time although only won one game, it has really got me wanting to go again, but with one big difference........i must have my very own bought and very own painted army!

After choosing the mighty Ogres as my army i now need to start the daunting task of painting an army :-0.
i have never put brush to model before and so am a total noob, hoping this gnoblog will keep me enthused and also glean advice from you vets out there. ANY and ALL advice i would greatly welcome as i am just starting out here. I will admit to some trepidation as ive looked around at the amazing stuff done by people on here and am blown away as to how i would ever approach that standard.
Its also going to be interesting as most of the gnoblogs here seem to be from very accomplished painters, or those that have good knowledge, whereas i am coming from the total opposite end of the scale, im still a baby learning to crawl


Right on to my ogres.

I have no real 'theme' i just want to try and paint them nicely and cleanly to learn the skills and see if its something i can do. i have to confess to a love affair with leadbelchers.....there will be at least 12 in my army, just love the idea that the big guys find a looted cannon, shove some of that black powder stuff in it, shovel a load of sharp pointy and heavy fings in the end, light it and it goes BOOOOOOM!
i  hope i will be inspired as i go along to come up with a tribe name and symbol, thinking it will grow on me the more i get done and the more i invest into it.

i will post a list in the next update as i havent fully decided on it yet, also there may be endless questions from me as im trying to learn as fast as i can without ruining anything, not to mention i have no idea how to post pics etc so, it will all kinda be a little ramshackle until i get the hang of things. To that end i apologise in advance for any faux-pars i make in posting, please please tell me if i do something i shouldnt, as this seems a really good community and i wouldnt want to offend, or upset anything/anyone.

More later.

Hi, can anyone give me advice on how to upload photos.

i just attempted to do my first one and the file size is way too big (2.7MB), i have no photo editing software.
As you can tell im a total noob to this but im eager to begin. Any advice welcome

thanks in advance

I use a site called Photobucket. Upload them to there, then use the image icon when posting and paste the link to the photo into that.

toys have arrived 

thanks for the tip Xanaq

No list yet, but couldnt help myself after getting new toys!
6 Bulls, washed, clipped, scraped, assembled and based (nothing fancy, just trying to learn as i go)

Looking good so far, and very much looking forward to seeing this army progress

JJ

ok 6 Bulls now with base coats on skin, armour and boots, plus washes. have to decide on a colour for the trousers now

Welcome to the Stronghold mate!

The models look really great there, especially as these are some of your first models! You've managed to keep the paint layers thin and the painting very crisp. I love it! You should be proud of yourself!

A few tips, don't know if you've already used some, but here goes:
Start with big brushes
The first layers of paint on the model don't have to be clean. You can always tidy up a bit, and the first layers are colours that will cover a lot of the model (like the skin on Ogres). Using brushes like the GW large drybrush are good for this as you'll be able to quickly paint the basecoat.

Thin your paints
This is important especially after you've been using the same paints for a while, as the moisture evaporates from the open pots and you'll start having thicker paints. Thin paints also help to keep the paint layers even. If you haven't thinned your paints, don't worry about it as the results shown in your earlier post look really good. Water is the cheapest option, but the best choice would be getting some acrylic medium. GW sells 'Lahmian Medium' but your best (and by far cheapest) option would be to check out an art store as they sell larger pots for a lower price

Paint from the recesses up
This basically means painting the deepest recesses first and the highest parts last. An easier method, as then you won't mess up the parts you've already painted

These are very general tips, but important ones. Your Ogre Bull shows that you have a very good grasp of the basics already. So keep on going and post pics. It's always fun to see new people join the Stronghold and share their stuff Can't wait to see finished models
- Loran

These guys are looking really good so far.
Everything Loran has said is all sound advice.
Not much I could add to that really except watch for mould lines, they tend to stand out more on Ogres as the model is just so big.
The other thing that some people find helpful (not me to be honest, but others swear by it) is to paint the Ogre first then add the gutplate after the ogre is painted. Lastly, give some thought to the bases too. A big fatty means a big base; thus giving loads of opportunity for different basing ideas. Again, because Ogres are a bit bigger than your average troop there is more base to model, so they tend to stand out a bit more; thing of the base as another model (with allot less detail) and approach it a bit like a large unit of troops that need to be painted cohesively, but clearly.

This looks like a sound and solid start though, so keep the pictures coming, oh and welcome to the stronghold

G_H

Thanks for the advice, progress has slowed a bit now as the evil entity called work has imposed itself once again   

@ Loren, im deff taking that advice with the big brushes, ive come to realise just how much blubbery skin there will be to paint lol

also i have thinned my paints with water, i was sceptical about it but once i tried it quickly saw how effective it is! my question though is, does the acrylic medium make a significant difference over water?

ive learnt the hard way that painting the recess first is better 

btw loved you Nids, very cool colours!

@ Gnoblar_Herder

yep also discovered the hard way that when you miss a mould line it REALLY shows up 
basing is something i want to get much better at, from my itty bitty knowledge it seems that a well based army really pops on the tabletop and like you say we have lots of room to try things out.

also i love your dish cloth clothing on your ogres, wish id have thought of it, very cool.

right so only a small update, ive gone for green trousers (green being my fav colour), i did a very thin base coat of castellan green and loved the washed out olive colour, however when i put a shade over it, the tone changed. my question is, if i was to now highlight with castellan again, would this return it to the colour i first had, or somewhere near it anyway?



a little tidying up and im on to highlighting......this is where i fear i have the most potential to ruin my models. can anyone give me some general tips (beyond paint the raised areas) about the potential pitfalls. i realise im trying to cheat here by asking you guys to 'gift' me the things you have all probably learned through trial and error, indeed i think it may be best just to have a go and see what happens.

thanks all
loving the stronghold here, sooooo much great content

Jock

I am sad to say that you are right; the best way to get to grips with highlighting is just practice. Having said that there are some general rules to highlighting.

In answer to your green question, yes it should be the same as the original colour. This is often a good way of "quickly" highlighting a model. Example; I paint allot of my Ogres trousers shadow grey (the fang) then wash them with Agrax earthshade, To highlight them I just re-paint the raised areas with Shadow grey again and that is pretty much it for their pants.

When you put a wash or shade on something it should make it darker. If you repaint the original colour then it will lighten up the area (edges in the case of highlighting) back to the colour before the wash.

Now, highlighting is pretty much a personal thing, allot of people do it differently. The first thing I would do is make sure you have watered the paint down. It is easier to "build-up" a highlight rather than painting it in solidly..missing and smearing bright light paint half way up the guys leg and having to paint it out.
If the paint is too thin, well it wont matter because you can just do it again and again until it looks the way you want it too.

I would only always go one shade lighter when highlighting, but repeat this making the target area smaller and smaller and smaller (and the colour lighter and lighter) until the last highlight is just a dot.

I have found that the best way to practice this is on some form of cloth on a model (trousers are good or a banner) and using the colour red.
If you have all the GW paints from Khorne red through to wild rider red (or beyond) then these compliment each other enough to be able to practice highlighting until you get a "feel" of how it works. By the time you get to the wild rider (or onto an orange) you should only be placing a single dot in the most raised area.

I don't really know if this will have helped at all, or if this was what you were looking for, but I am sure there are others here who can chip in with some tips. Sadly, their is no great secret to painting great models it's mostly practice and more practice and I have found that people are more than willing to share anything they know...lets face it, we all like looking at well painted models.

G_H

Oh, and it could be worth taking a look at Conogres Gnoblg as he has posted up some painting guides/ videos. Well worth checking out. G_H

Thanks for the praise of 'Nids

Acrylic medium is the actual stuff that is in the paint, along with the colour pigment. Hence it works a bit better, but I don't see the difference after the paint is dry Then again, I'm not an artist, so don't take my work for it, but I use both the medium (when I remember to take out the pot) and water (most of the time). So it's really all up to you. The medium mixes a bit better with the paint, but water works just as well. The only difference that I've actually noticed is that mixing the water might take a bit more time, but we're talking about seconds here, not minutes or hours, so it's not that big a deal

- Loran

PS. And don't feel bad about asking for advice. We've all been there at the start, and everyone's asked for new tips from the more experienced people. So it's kinda like the circle of the hobby (compared to the circle of life ), first you ask for tips and then you share them with others

The only real difference between medium and water is the density of pigment when diluted down. With water, the pigment becomes a lot more "lost" a lot quicker, whereas medium still provides a very solid coverage with the same amount of dilution. Also, I tend to find you get a smoother coat when using medium than perhaps you would with water.

That's not to say, not to use water, I use water 90% of the time but just something I have found

JJ

thanks very much for the advice, it is very much appreciated, i have a lot to learn.

work has got in the way, some issues, but i should get back on it tomorrow. have opened and washed the battalion box today so lots of clipping scraping and assembling tomorrow.

Work kinda has done me a favour, i think i have jumped in without really thinking about how i want my overall army to look. Is that something you vets think about BEFORE you start putting paint to model?

Hope everything is sorted with work and what not

Sometimes... I tend to paint models as I go, and kinda just get a feel for the model and the colours as I paint. Occasionally, particularly with a theme, I plan what colours are going to go where and stick to this idea quite strictly

JJ

I usually have some sort of theme or idea in mind when I plan out an army. Based on that idea, I then go about thinking what will be the colours that tie the army together. With Ogres that's quite easy, as the amount of bare skin on the model means that you can use the skin colour as one of the tie-in colours (unless you're going for different shades, but that's manageable as well ). After that I go about thinking what colours would complement the colours I've already picked and then go with that for the whole army.

It's not really that difficult, but it's easier to plan that out before half the army is painted in a variety of different colour schemes

- Loran

If you want my two-pennies worth;
I tend to have an idea about an army when i start, the theme for it and an idea of how i want to paint it. I normally start and finish the first unit, then when that's done i change my mind and start again and have to re-paint the first unit again.

It happened with my Ogres TBH. I started to paint them with little thought to colour scheme other than (originally) i wanted them to all be dressed in sack-cloth. When i had done a few i realised they looked crass and un-uniformed, so i picked two colours (red and blue) and painted all the trousers/ pants in those two colours. It kept the Ogres pretty uniform without having a definitive theme.

I would advise planning though. So you don't have to go through all that ^ rigmarole. I am starting a Chaos Dwarf army and that is much more planned. I know how they will be based, what colour each unit will be and what i want the overall army to look like. I have also chosen a spot colour to tie them all together. I think this will work much better than the ad-hoc way i did my ogres. I have done some "test" models too, to see if i like the colour scheme and see how it works when actually on a unit.

I don't know if this helps at all.

G_H

thanks for your replies, its great to hear from vets and know that you deal with the same issues i do too

i think G_H has explained things that i kinda loosely was thinking about. i jumped into my first unit without thinking about the army as a whole, such was my excitement to begin, however whilst 'working' i have spent several hours reading through some of the excellent gnoblogs and general ideas banded about by the very creative people on here.

i am thinking that with my army i need to choose either skin as a unifying point or, as G_H did, pick one or two colours to unify. this is something i need to decide upon before investing too much time in actual painting. tester models seems a good idea, as im torn between my army having varying flesh tones, hence needing another area to unify them, or after looking through things here, maybe going with a pallid grey skin tone (i kinda like it, even a yellow but im not sure i could pull that off yet), and then painting everything else as i please. Would simply the huge quantities of blubber and skin be enough to unify the fatties? having never completed an army im not sure if it will be strong enough to tie units together when trousers, weapons etc are all varying.

on a side note, the extensive reading i have done here has grown my love for a good belly, some of the stuff people have done here is simply amazing..........i will be stealing ideas as im not such a naturally creative person 

I, personally, am not sure if skin alone would unify the models. It didn't work in my case as I explained.

G_H

thanks G_H i think you might be right, i still like the pallid grey skin tone, going to try a tester model, but im thinking like you did i should pick one or two colours to tie the rest together.

its seems one of the best things about ogres can also be a difficulty, the sheer variety of things you can do with them

if i was to do pallid grey skin across the army do you think doing the armour a dark iron tone would make them all look too bland (grey) on the tabletop?

You will need a spot colour and to think about the bases.
Again, Conogre did a video about colour theory that may give some idea on colour uses and which go together. If the models are all very dark then a green/ grass base could look too bright.

I think if you are doing dark iron with pale grey flesh, you will still need a spot colour to catch the eye and pick out stuff.

G_H

Thanks G_H i really appreciate all the help you are giving me

ill go hunt for conogres colour theory vid now, his stuff is pretty cool

Great stuff bud, I really really like your painting style. Starting wight he dark skin and highliting to that nice fleshy tone. Absolute wonderbar. Hope my Colour theory video can be of assistance, wish I was around sooner to welcome you to the community, however I am quite packed down as of late. Regardless, you got great stuff, welcome to the forum.
~ConOgre

thanks conogre, not sure i can take too much credit i think the light has helped me, the pics only had a base of bugmans glow with a wash, no highlighting.

love the vids, colour theory was great one, top notch, keep them coming, love the basing ones too.

right had a bit of time this afternoon and have attempted some first stage highlighting on my bull, im not sure if i like it and think i see where i went wrong but id love to hear what you guys think on how i can improve it.











thanks for any advice, be as critical as you like i know it will be helpful

Jock

where is the info about duke  tournament, so far i get all my info for tournament from TWF, ive really struggled to get tickets in the past

oh and overtime shifts are always super fun! i have given them up now as i just cant handle the exciting lifestyle

An actual hobby update, 

I took a crap launcher, oops did i mean a scraplauncher to the last tournament.

I love these things even if they are a bit poor next to the mighty ironblaster.

I need to do a few more highlights and finish the base properly but im quite pleased with how this turned out, it made me feel like my painting ability is growing......







as always any C&C is welcome, im still learing and have sooooo much to learn to reach anywhere near the heights of some of the stunning work on here.

Jock

I think you underestimate yourself there. This Scrappy looks excellent and right up there with others I have seen around and about this forum.

The Gnoblars are all well painted and shaded, the Rhinox looks really good and the front guard on the Scrappy (the big metal spikey thing) is a colour that I still have yet to perfect; very similar to the effect that GW painters use when doing battered iron for their OK models. I have tried and just can't get that effect, you on the other hand are almost on the money with it!

This looks like a great model and when that base is done I am sure it will be something that others try an emulate. As for it not performing too well in games; you wait until you use it painted! Everyone knows that a well painted model always out performs a grey plastic or undercoated one. Why it is the law of the gods!

Keep up the good work mate.

G_H

where is the info about duke  tournament, so far i get all my info for tournament from TWF, ive really struggled to get tickets in the past

oh and overtime shifts are always super fun! i have given them up now as i just cant handle the exciting lifestyle

Just here under Duke it out.  They are still figuring out if they are going to Comp or not so it's still in planning.

http://www.bristolvanguardforum.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=7&sid=0c4d77da507fb592bc01e30564246424

Having already seen the scrappy in person I absolutely agree with G_H.  Scrappys looking great once he's finished up it's just going to be Awesome sauce!

Kind regards Zolas.

It does look very good, and on the gnoblars skin tone, what paints did you use? I like the green look while they don't look like orcs/goblins

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

I will try to remember what i did, stupidly i never took note of how i did things when i did them (noob mistake!)
I have since tried to paint some more gnoblars but never quite managed the same look, frustrating to say the least!

@ G_H the beaten metal look i think was warplock bronze mixed with leadbelcher over a mornfang brown base. Im sorry to say i cannot remember the proportions, im also sure i put a tiny tiny bit of mechanicus standard grey in to try to 'wash out' the colour a bit.

@ Havoc, im about pulling out what little hair i have left over the gnoblars, i soooooo wish id paid attention to what i did on them as i havent been able to replicate it yet.
Ive been working with very thin layers, and the base was caliban green mixed with a touch of warpstone glow and a tiny bit of grey (mechanicus i think).
Then im sure i did a fairly heavy wash of bel-tan green.
After this my stupid lazy brain starts to fail me, ive been experimenting with the formula p3 paints (deff switching my stock over to those as my gw ones run out). Im sure i used a colour called ordic green, then for the final highlight i used ordic green with im sure a slight mix of averland sunset (very small amount) followed by a light glaze with waywatcher green.

As i have said though i REALLY should have paid attention to what i did when i did it as i have not quite managed to reproduce the gnoblar skin, which is very very frustrating as i quite liked what i did.

sorry i cant help more, i have certainly learned a lesson here, yet again

Jock

Painting journal, 5 min after you finish, just listing stuff out.  Helps me

@ Havoc, yep im deff going to be using one from now on

ok so i went to a tournament this weekend, was a great weekend of gaming, more on that to follow.

In order to take the list i wanted to use i needed a second butcher model, so i decided to have a go a making one. Be warned this is a total noons go at it, and there is nothing at all fancy, just basic, i was quite pleased with the result though....



I mixed up arms from the ironguts and bulls, and decided that there would be no gut plate, just an huuuuuaaage belly.



i added a belt and my attempt at entrails



based up, want to add a pile of entrails at his feet but still working on this.

i have started the paint job and will get a piccy of that up soon.

thanks for looking

JoS

Looking good buddy!  Loving the re-purposed buckle there.  The belly is really well done.  The entrails could do with some holes at either end but otherwise looking good.  Nice first attempt and you have managed to keep finger prints smoothed over nicely.  (That's the biggest problem I always get personally.)

Kind regards Zolas.

update on the greenstuff butcher....





Zolas thanks for the kind words, its simple things like poking holes in the ends of the entrails that i need to learn. I can totally see how such a simple little thing would make it look better. Well im here to learn its all good.

JoS

Looking great there Jock.  Though I have noticed the entrails have gone from the base.  Decided against them?

Kind regards Zolas.