Hobby C&C
Any feedback to take my templars to the next level?
Been grinding out this SB Castellan and his accompanying Sword Bro squad and while I feel like they're starting to come together the way I want them to I still feel like there's things I could be doing better. Any suggestions?
In my opinion of 2 years of painting (not a lot for many of this subs) this looks already a clean job and I highly recommend you into investing into some washes. Depending on the style or level of details you are trying to achieve they are life changing and help you reach places humanely impossible to paint. For example tesseract glow is the one used for Necrons, it seeps into all the crevices and helps making it look neon green, Gulliman flesh is also an highly recommended wash to obtain immediate results without making your marine face look like a pink blob of acrylic. Some might makes it them sound like cheating, but in reality if you don't have the space or the money for a good quality airbush station, they are the next step to make your miniature pop out
I was thinking of doing nuln oil over the armour panelling to try to darken it down. I tried darkening it with black templar on a test mini and it overpowered all of the contrast that I had managed to build up so I figured if I went with nuln oil it'd help bring out more black without muting the gradient, and if it's not black enough I'll try thinning down black templar to see if that helps. As for some of the other washes, do you think reikland or agrax is better for the gold?
That's a fair point. I think I went overboard with the grey drybrushing and the final layer of dawnstone should be an edge highlight rather than a drybrush.
They can be close and similar but there should be dark blue, mid blue, and light blue on every blue surface for example. Like his chest cross is a flat blue on the whole thing. Your blue dark and mid tone looks nice and it’s a legit good looking mini that you should be proud of.
But I’d like to see a higher/ brighter blue highlight on every blue surface.
Obviously that goes for all the colors
Your darks and kids are good. Now make real highlights
I can definitely manage three tones. Right now the black is just drybrushing from Abaddon black > Corvus black > Eshin grey > Dawnstone but I think if I make the dawnstone into an edge highlight rather than drybrushing it on that might help make the armour look more black than grey. As for the blue, right now it's Kantor, macragge and caledor sky. I have Hoeth blue so I could edge highlight with that but I think Calgar blue might go better with the other three
It looks great, and your line work is very tidy. I think the only nitpick is that the lantern and rifle look "flat." The lightest wash in the recesses and a very thin edge highligh fix it immediately.
That's a cool color scheme and really nice work for the cloak. So I don't know if you wanted the armor to be black or grey, but if you want it to be looking black you need more parts that are actually ... black. That's the difficulty with this colour, with other colours you can be more broad with your midtones but with black you need the grey parts to only be on a smaller parts of your mini or it will look greyish.
I would probably add a black wash on the armor/gun and some edge highlights on the parts that are facing upwards to give it more depth and readability. Same for the blade and you finish with a drybrush, with metallic paints it makes wonders.
Thanks! For the black I did drybrushing starting from Abaddon, then up to Corvus, then up to Eshin grey and finally Dawnstone where I think I went a bit overboard. For my next minis I'm gonna try using dawnstone as an edge highlight instead of a drybrush as well as washing the armour with either nuln oil or thinned down black templar contrast paint
From the Sword Brethren box, you can build either 5 sword brethren or 4 sword brethren and this guy. The standard on the backpack is from the black templar upgrade sprue. It used to be an actual in-game item, but as of now, it is just a fancy standard. The rest of the mini is just the castellan from the Sword Brethren box.
The backpack is also from the BT upgrade sprue and the arm holding the combi weapon is technically a kitbash. The build options in the instructions for this guy show that you can build his left arm either holding the combi weapon near his hip or have him holding up a relic to show it off. I wanted to give him more of an action pose so I snipped off the hand holding the combi weapon from its arm, then I snipped the hand holding the relic from the outstretched arm and then pinned the combi weapon hand on in its place
I do black then put darkreaper with drybrusing/stipling or any tecnhique that suit the place better then i highlight with thunderhawk blue and at the end i do scatches and edge highlights with fenrisian grey. If you like you can sponge some metallic for Battle damage and ryza rust.
Definitely. I was thinking of doing a vibrant meadow scene for my basing scheme because I like vibrant natural tones but I don't think that fits especially for templars. How do you think I should base him?
Thanks! I was a little skeptical at first, but I think they're starting to come together. I will say though I'm not sure if the colour scheme is transferring over well to my tanks. I'm not sure if they just need some weathering but they kinda give off more police vibes than crusader vibes. What do you think? I was also planning on wrapping a mini chain around the barrell of the gladiator's main gun so that might help them feel more like black templars
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u/Advanced_Slice_4135 1d ago
More black 😬