Games Workshop Make Games For Kids.

[Charon]

Though on the note of Necromunda, I have a few of the dudes with long trenchcoats and specs, and man those guys look excellent.

House Delaque

[Erik Setzer]

I'd say the opposite. I could crank out bright, shiny tanks in a day, piece of cake. Making them look dusty, drab and beaten up extends that to a week, and I wouldn't have them any other way. I don't see how painted a drab scheme is any easier than painting in nothing but bright colours...

I take it you're actually doing chipped paint, applying specific areas of rust, stuff like that? If so, yeah, that takes some time.

But one trick that's caught on, because it's quick and easy and works rather well, is just painting a basecoat and then hitting the model with a coat of Agrax Earthshade. It takes hardly any time at all. The local GW manager will do that with display models when he needs to paint them fast, and I had a guy trying to tell me that some of the models in the 40K demo setup couldn't have been done that way because they looked too good, until the manager confirmed they were. Try it out some time, you'll see. And if you want a dirty look, it's easy enough to let some of the Agrax Earthshade sit on higher areas.

Want a dirty tank without all the extra hassle, but will look find? Well, for chipping you can take a brush, get some Leadbelcher on it, wipe off most of the paint, and then lightly brush edges in a random fashion in places, before applying the Earthshade wash. Rush? Either the rust effects GW puts out, or even use some chestnut ink or wash (like Reikland Fleshshade, IIRC). Spots of oil? Nuln Oil. Mud splashes? I forget the modern color (used to use Scorched Brown), but you can "spatter" some brown on in places, and even quickly dab off a lot of it, leaving just a thin layer.

You can scoff at it as a purist, and I'll admit it won't win you a Golden Demon, but it actually comes out looking rather nice in a short time. I'll probably use tricks like that when I get around to painting my Imperial Guard.

Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of people who paint a kind of sloppy first coat, then slather the Earthshade (or Nuln Oil) without paying much attention to making sure it goes where it needs to, and then they have models that look a lot dirtier and dingier than they need to. They try to speed up the process a bit too much. Still... at least they're putting in some effort. So I've no problem playing against them, because I see way too many unpainted armies out there.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Erik, what you're describing still takes far more time and effort, and is still leagues better than those pictures of the Red Period. They look like someone slapped poster paint on them then didn't bother following it up with anything.

[Path Walker]

Getting clean, crisp bright colours with feathered highlights isn't easy and does take a lot of skill, its not the fashion now but it was very much that back then, you still had people doing the more realistic and grimey stuff and that was more in vogue pre-Red Period, but it was just a style thing, it was thought to be the best way to show off the models and the painters skill.

[Erik Setzer]

Erik, what you're describing still takes far more time and effort, and is still leagues better than those pictures of the Red Period. They look like someone slapped poster paint on them then didn't bother following it up with anything.

A lot of those paint jobs were pretty basic, yeah, but that's not to say bright is bad. I love my multi-colored Orks I painted during 3rd edition... even if people who thought Orks are bland green-skinned lemmings were confused by them.

I don't think you're giving the effort enough credit, though. You might dislike the paint jobs, and it's fair to feel that way, but they had paint guides for some of those schemes, and they did have shading, highlighting, stuff like that. Not the thirty steps for a basic Space Marine that modern painting articles have, but it was still more than "paint on a layer... aaaaaannnd you're done." If they put the same effort into a more toned-down scheme, I think you'd probably accept the effort.

Again, though, I totally get that a lot of people didn't like bright stuff or multiple colors.

[odinsgrandson]

A lot of those paint jobs were pretty basic, yeah, but that's not to say bright is bad...

Well, "bright" actually wasn't the problem. Bright is fine.

The problem was the abundance of different primary colors with no unifying element. Those high elves back then had red/orange, blue and yellow on them- and none of those were the main color that was supposed to define them.

Also, there have been a lot of actual advancements in miniatures painting art since those days- things like OSL, NMM, Zenithal Lighting and using "something other than green gravel" for your bases have brought a lot of competition painters to a level not dreamed of in those days.

Now, I don't want to say that the old painters were bad- I happen to know that Mike McVey is fantastic (and his wife Ali is even better).

[YorkNecromancer]

Well, "bright" actually wasn't the problem. Bright is fine.

The problem was the abundance of different primary colors with no unifying element. Those high elves back then had red/orange, blue and yellow on them- and none of those were the main color that was supposed to define them.

This. All the this.

I remember the old White Dwarf pictures of the early 90's Golden Demon winners, and almost without exception, everything was a frickin' rainbow. It was like, 'how many colours can we get onto one model at a time?' seemed to be the height of the art. And everything was just vomitous as a result.

Then there was this one guy, and he'd just painted a single Marine captain in two colours, red and white I think. It was so simple and elegant compared to everything else, that for years, that one model was kind of my personal core inspiration - no more than two main colours on any model, not including black or metal (unless the metal 'counts as' one of the two colours). I still try to stick by that even now, hence why my Deathwatch army doesn't have any chapter pad coloured; I don't need an army that looks like a bowl of f**king fruity pebbles, fluff be damned.

There's a kind of charm to the brightness at times, but yeah, when there's no unifying theme to them, then gah. Horrible.

[grimmas]

Odinsgrandson has really hit it. The issue was the creative choices not the level of skill on show.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, it's the aesthetic, not the skill. As others have said, Golden Daemon these days are leagues ahead of the ones back in the old days. Still, the one that stuck with me when I was growing up was this piece here:
[URL=http://s180.photobucket.com/user/pez5767/media/IMAG0680_zpsvwj4fz6v.jpg.html][/URL]

The OSL, the atmosphere, the fact that it had an unspoken story behind it that you immediately understoof. You can practically hear the Auspex in the Guardsman's hand chiming like the motion tracker from Aliens, while he's taking a breather, staunching his wound, wary of the predator stalking him but completely unaware that it's right on top of him.

It just oozes atmosphere, it was what inspired me to start back at 40K again after I stumbled across it years after I stopped collecting in middle school.

[odinsgrandson]

Well, Coffeegrunt, can get an age from you with that comment, and it turns out I'm older than you. To most painters during the green gravel days, that diorama was completely inconceivable.

Miniatures painting was forever changed by the internet, and especially by the contributions of Coolminiornot.com.

These days, people get to see top painted pieces even if they aren't entered into a competition that gets printed in a magazine. So, when Victoria Lamb paints up a piece with cool atmospheric lighting, we all get to have a look at it, and dissect the technique.

Miniatures painting is still a young art- we're still figuring out new ways to use the medium. The top competitive painters are all of the time looking at one another's paintjobs and figuring out how one artist achieved such a cool effect.

This is still going on- from reports I've heard, most of the competitions this year have seen a decline in entries, but a much higher overall quality (I saw this firsthand at Gencon, and I've heard it was true of other conventions this year).

The art is ever moving forward.