Tinweasel's Golden Demon Chicago 2012 Thread

[Tinweasel]

I've been out of the loop for so long it's not even funny, but I've taken up painting again in the past while and was convinced/motivated to go to Chicago Games Day this year by some friends who are also painters. I really have no idea what I'm going to enter other than this one figure, although the Renegade Psyker is a strong possibility after some touch-up work, and I'm really just doing this thread to get some feedback and garner opinions about whatever it happens to be that I post up in here - selfish, maybe, but I'm not really expecting to win anything this year and have just kinda been "going through the motions" painting-wise for quite some time what with a whole lot of real life issues going on.

Always liked this figure ever since I received it in a trade through the Forums here, and it's just the past month (maybe?) that I started to get serious about painting it. I don't have any prior work-in-progress pictures (because I never took any), but feedback would be nice:


I was hoping to do a nice display base for him, incorporating some appropriate scenery out of The Two Towers' Dead Marsh sequence - water effects, bodies in the water, rushes, cattails, etc... but I don't think I'm going to have time. The long and the short of it is that I really don't like Games Workshop's depiction of the Dead Marsh Spectres on their site (near-white skin and glowy Hawk Turquoise effect) and how they look neither like water-logged unliving corpses that have been lying in a marsh for a hundred years, nor as weathered, exposed-to-the-elements pale undead like you see beneath the water's surface in the film. There's not really many photo references to go by online and it seems like everybody and their brother that have ever painted any of the Spectre figures has painted the Elf with the banded armor. Meh. Anyways, hopefully this gets across what I'm aiming for - pale greenish skin, weathered gear, rust, and muck-stained everything. with any luck I can do tufts of scraggly grass and wet mud on the base and have it turn out halfways decent.

Got a week to go! (As per usual, disregard the slight glossiness caused by my use of floor finish to cut my paints...)

[Dooks Dizzo]

Look forward to seeing you this year. I'll be helping to run the 40k Big game for the Dark Eldar.

Keep up the good work on the model, do you have a straight on shot of him?

[Winterdyne]

Hard to tell 'cos of the gloss you like to work with, but I think the cloth needs a lot, lot more contrast. You're a bit limited in that the flesh and metals are going to be dull and muted by the fact they're mummified / rusted respectively. Really cranking up the colour transitions on the cloth should help give the mini the pop it'll need.

[Brother Wolf]

Looking forward to seeing more from you Tin! I'm w/ Dooks, do you have a front facing shot?

[Tinweasel]

Do I have a front facing shot of him? Why yes, I certainly do! I appreciate the feedback and interest from folks thus far - the suggestion on bumping up the contrast, Winterdyne, is duly noted. I thought I had it high enough (this is after more work than just in the initial pics) but mixed up a few more colors (GW Rotting Flesh +2 drops GW Baal Red for the faded red cloth, and Rotting Flesh +2 drops GW Skull White + 1 drop of uber-thinned VGC Livery Green for additional splotching on the skin) and went to town adding even more highlights. The shading is a little wonky on the eyes in the pics here, but that's because I was using a mixture of the thinned Livery Green (slightly glossy) + GW Devlan Mud + Reaper Black Wash and pushing/pulling that back and forth to try and tidy the eyes up - his left eye is sculpted slightly larger than the right eye and it's throwing off my sense of proportion on his face (not to mention that half his mouth appears to be missing).

Anyhow, pictures:

I gave him a quick spray of Dull Cote prior to taking the pics so I knew where things stood exactly, aside from going back to touch up some stuff on his eyes, face, and skin - with the exception of the eye area, everything else should be matte finish now.

I don't know if I had mentioned this yet, but I'm going for a flesh tone that would've been a "traditional" LotR Ork olive drab that's been underwater for a long, long time - so pale, somewhat bleached, splotchy, etc. I'm doing sort of a stippling/splotchy effect on his skin to try and make it not look so bland - hopefully that's coming across in the pictures. I might go back and add some more scratches/exposed unrusted metal to his armor in parts just for color variety - I'm trying a "new" technique where I'm just using some of my old metallic colored pencils from when I was a kid for touchups in addition to light drybrushing of GW Mithril Silver (one of the advantages of using the metallic pencil is that the point is much sharper = crisper, finer scratches).

I'm wanting the fabric to look sun-bleached and faded (water-bleached?) so the overall effect is pale but darkening more towards the lower parts of the clothing and the deepest folds. The reds are highlighted up to red-tinged greenish yellows and the deepest shadows are shaded with olive/black. The wood color I'm aiming for is the grey you get from weather-exposed pine darkening towards the edges where swamp muck has stained it all greenish.

Any and all suggestions are welcome! I don't care (for all the viewers who don't comment) if you're a "good" painter or not, any opinion is valid - maybe moreso, because there'd be less of getting caught up in techniques and terms and more feedback based strictly on initial impact.


I had a picture of the primed base, but the pic looked like ass and didn't really show and details. I'm going for muddy dirt islands topped with moss and dead grass, with reeds/rushes sticking up in clumps from murky water... I basically need to add all that yet, because right now it's primed a reddish-brown rusty color. I'm also thinking/concerned that for once, the base is going to be much brighter and more vibrant than the figure itself - can't be helped, though, given the theme and the actual figure I'm working with here. We shall see how it turns out.

[SilverTabby]

It's looking good so far. I must admit I'm more a fan of the slightly more 'cartoony' look of sharp and extreme highlights, but you do realistic really well. I shall be watching this one carefully...

[Tinweasel]

It's looking good so far. I must admit I'm more a fan of the slightly more 'cartoony' look of sharp and extreme highlights, but you do realistic really well. I shall be watching this one carefully...

Wow, thank you! Your compliments mean a great deal what with your skill and background, and I took the rest of your post as indirect feedback - I bumped up the highlights on some of the stuff a bit more yesterday. I originally tried starting out on the figure with more extreme highlighting, but aside from the cloth and the gauntness the figure as a whole doesn't have a lot of definition: the skin is mostly smooth and rounded, the remaining armor is all smooth aside from a few dings and the edges, I had to paint on a lot of the wood patterning on the shield, etc. The cloth is really the best thing he's got going for him, and there's no sharp edges on it - it's all rounded folds. I got so frustrated with everything looking bland after a while that I started painting my own details to liven things up - splotching on the skin, a grip on the sword, extra scratches and dings on the armor, streaking and fading on the fabric, ragged edges on the leather, swamp staining, etc..

Anyhow, thanks for the "I do realistic really well" and "it's looking good so far" compliments, and I've tried to add more sharp and extreme highlights per your indirect feedback, since the Golden Demons are, after all, a GW painting competition.


Dunno if I mentioned my attempt to take a pic of the base post-priming. I used a Krylon rusty reddish-orange color and there were barely any details in the pic of the base so I just scrapped the pic. Here's a better one after some staining, a few steps of drybrushing, and application of green-stained cornmeal as moss. I'll be working on highlights on the moss and have a lot of reference pics from real swamps and LotR screenshots to go by - I'm not so concerned about the dirt (so long as it's reddish-orange mud looking) since it's mostly going to be covered by murky swamp water anyhow.


I was helping a friend paint up a Necron Command Barge yesterday and took some of the Scorpion Green we were using as highlights and added that to/around the eyes - much more striking now. Pics to come, but more painting first!


May as well mention that I'm kinda stuck on what color to paint the vines/leaves stuck to him in several areas. The GW site has 'em a mid-range green but that doesn't seem quite right to me, the general appearance of the Dead Marshes from the movie, however, is mostly mossy dirt and straggly grass. I guess it's maybe an underwater vine or something?

[Brother Wolf]

In theory, I'd suggest a technique I use on Dwarf Longbeards. The base color is akin to whatever color his beard was in his youth, (black, brown, rad, blonde), and then worked up through a lighter color of the base, then through successive tones of grey from dark to light ending in white.

For the marshy swamp grass, you could base everything in a deeper green, with a stark transition to something in a dead foliage like and ochre or mud and then work all the way up through to a pale yellow/beige or even bone. Given the color of the model already, I might stick with something in the dingy yellow category. I think it would work well on the rusted metal, decaying wood and mottled flesh. I my mind's eye it would, anyway.

Check out the color variations in this image below, not the wide variety from deep greens to stark yellows with areas of dead browns mixed in;


As for the model itself currently, I really like the work you've done on the cloth and metal. The transitions on the cloth are really great, showing off the lighting very well. The metals have a terrific effect on them and the subtle silvering on the highest edges make them pop. The skin tone isn't really working for me. It has nothing to do with technique, mind you. It just seems unfinished somehow, but then again it's really hard to go grey-green like you have and I don't have any constructive criticism on it. I'm not knocking it Tin, you are an infinitely better painter than I am. Something about it just doesn't seem wrapped up to me.

It's probably just ME! *grin* Cheers, mate, you've done a bang up job. Can't wait to see the base and the new highlights on the eyes in the next pix.

[Tinweasel]

Trying to get up to the GW store here to get my Games Day ticket - apparently it arrived at the store on the 17th but nobody bothered to call me. Double-checked my order on the GW website because I was going to raise holy hell, now I'm just mildly disappointed.

Anyways, got a more recent pic:


I'd ideally like to put some tall grasses sticking up out of the water in a few spots, but the material is being unruly... and then there's the whole issue of applying water effects to the base between now and tomorrow morning when we're driving down to Chicago and hoping it all dries - the Woodland Scenics stuff I used as a test two nights ago still hasn't firmed up in the bottlecap I tried it in, and while it takes dye really well, that just ain't going to fly. Between that and some "dead grass" static grass, I think that's about it on this guy.

You guys think I ought to leave the rim of the base a similar color to what it currently is? That's actually the primer color I used for the base... but it works.

[Brother Wolf]

Has kind of a terracotta colour, huh? I like it, I think it'd work well. I hope you get your water effects situated. I like the look of the base so far, the grungy mud and the green rises. I hope everything works out. Best of luck Tin!

[Tinweasel]

I got everything highlighted and sealed last night! Its looking like I'll be applying multiple layers of water effects to the base of the Spectre over the next few days, because the stuff keeps settling. At least I learned from my mishap with the scenic base of my Tzeentch Sorceror back at GD 2007 - it was still wet the morning of and I accidentally put a thumb print in one of the swamp puddles. Thankfully it settled by the time for judging. I didn't get a chance to take any pics of stuff before I left the house, and we're on the road as of this morning, but here's the grand total of my Demon entries:

• Lord of the Rings Single Figure - Dead Marsh Spectre
• 40K Single Figure - Chaos Renegade Psyker
• Fantasy Single Figure - Amethyst Wizard
• Open Category - Slaanesh Chaos Lord

I put a lot of work into the Spectre at this point and hopefully he goes over well. The Renegade Psyker is several years old now, but I went back yesterday and bumped up the highlights and added some details (weathered leather, the differentiation between his face and his skull is more distinct now and he's got teeth!) - this was one I painted up before with the hope I'd be able to enter him... Never quite made it, but he's getting his chance to compete now. As for the Wizard and Slaanesh Lord, I figger what the hell!

I'll be wearing an orange Reese's Peanut Butter Cup shirt so if anyone catches me while I'm there, don't be a stranger! I dont think I'll know anyone other than the friends I'm going with (that is to say I'm not specifically meeting anyone at Games Day), so really, just flag me down.

For anyone else that might be entering stuff, good luck!

[Inquisitor Lok]

Well from what you've posted, the model looks really nice. So best of luck to you!! (I wish there was a gamesday still in Canada )

[SilverTabby]

Best of luck, post pics of your trophies when you get back!

Also, don't forget to say hi to Phil (and remind him he's supposed to be relaxing!)

[Tinweasel]

Yay! I made First Cut with my entries!

So did the friend I came with, so we're both totally excited to see what happens next. The other entries are awesome, things have really stepped up a few notches since I was at GD in '08. I'm happy to have made it this far - trying to get pics of some of the other stuff, but the line is huge...

[Dooks Dizzo]

I was great to meet you at the show Tin! Sorry I didn't have more time to talk. Congrats on your success in the GD!

[Inquisitor Lok]

So how did you do after making the first round?

[SilverTabby]

Enquiring minds want to know what happened next...

Whatever happened, well done for first cut!

[Tinweasel]

I'm back home now - what happened next is that after a brief period where my LotR mini was missing from the case entirely, I didn't see it over in the photo area, and judging was apparently finished, they started announcing the winners for the different categories and I won a Silver Demon for my Dead Marsh Spectre. I was talking to a staffer who apparently does content for the website, and he was saying something along the lines of winners likely being published in White Dwarf - he wasn't sure whether it would just be Gold winners, or all Demon awards, or including Honorable Mentions/First Cut figures, but that some time after that they'd have stuff published to the website as well.

I am in the process of taking updated pictures of my Demon entries, and should be posting those soonish. I also managed to get a decent handful of pics of other GD entries from the cases with my camera, despite the horrible organization of the entry display area and the perpetual line - I need to process those and will hopefully post them up also when I get a chance. Dunno whose minis belong to whom for the most part, and I'm pretty sure I never even saw the Slayer Sword-winning Lilith Hesperax-into-Wood Elf conversion much less took a picture, but at least I got some pics of some other stuff despite the difficulty involved.

I can't say I was a fan of the perpetual lines for everything this year that seemed to be prevalent compared to when I went in '07-'08, and I'm very disappointed in the general organization of things/areas in the hall which I think significantly contributed to the lines - I'm likewise disappointed in the Demon Lounge being discontinued (presumably for somewhat petty reasons, if rumors are correct) since I got a lot out of chatting with other painters and getting demonstrations of techniques and things from people whom I'd only ever heard mention of previously, but whatever... for what it's worth, I still had a good time!

I think I'd like to go next year and maybe things will be better - I know the overall standard of painting was mind-blowing this year, and the trend will presumably continue...

P.S. I bought a decent amount of cool figures (yay, Forgeworld!) and the FW Masterclass Vol. 2 book - already I've read some stuff I'll be putting to use in something or other.

[Inquisitor Lok]

Congrats man!

[SilverTabby]

Oh, well done! As I can't get the US WD over here, post pics if it gets in?

And I shall await your pics with interest...

[AridMonk]

Woohoo, go Tin! Congratulations!

Must get to work on my entries, so much work to do 0_0

[Tinweasel]

Okay, here's pics finally of my Lord of the Rings Dead Marsh Spectre that took a Silver Demon in its category:

(I've been busy with Real Life and a simultaneous commission to paint up 5 SS Tiger I tanks for Flames of War)

Please let me know if the color balance, sharpness, etc. looks okay - I realized I haven't done any serious photo editing of miniature photos since I've gotten this new monitor with multiple color modes. Assuming everything looks okay, I'll put up pics of my other ones for posterity.

For what it's worth, here's my "new" photo editing process: I took single pictures of the figure from all sides under 3 100 watt Reveal bulbs (a little closer in the front, also doubled image size for all pics), used the automagic Color Balance (didn't bother with cutting back on the red shift a little like I used to do), duplicated the image in 3 layers, adjusted the Histogram settings for the upper two layers (the first with adjusted high and low value range, 1.0 Gamma and -2 Midtone Compression - the second with the same high and low value ranges, 1.2 Gamma and -2 Midtone Compression), middle layer transparency of 70%, upper layer transparency of 60%, merging of all layers, editing Sharpness (Radius 0.6, Strength 100, Clipping 10), and auto image Clarification. Suggestions appreciated from anyone who has more experience with editing or color balancing photos!

[Tinweasel]

Pics of the Empire Wizard I painted up to sell, but decided to enter in Golden Demons for the hell of it:


Noticed some lint on the brim of his hat, need to remove that!

[SocietySoldier]

The purples and the skull really pop on the wizard, love it.

[BillyBob]

Congrats Tin! I should have asked you to get me one of those Blood Angel captain Gamesday minis for me!

[Brother Wolf]

Long overdue to chime in, but man Many MANY congrats on the Silver Demon Tin! Now I can say I have an award winning painters work in my collection, (among the other things I get to say about you, P0kky, justin & Tabby that is! *grin*).

Kudos my friend!