Masterclass 2

A while back I mentioned that I'd been to a few of the GW masterclasses, the first being the Tank masterclass. The next one we went to was a day run by two of the 'Eavy Metal team, showing us some of the tricks and tips they use in painting. I thought this was last year... looking back in the Dakka forums, it was apparently 2011! My how things have moved on.


I've been painting miniatures on and off (mostly off) for about 18 years and has mostly been done on the basis of "that'll do", so the chance to go and see how the Eavy Metal team do their thing was great.  On the Tank day we got a good, close look at the FW models and how they approach infantry, so it was interesting to compare their fairly basic, weathered troops to the almost clinically clean Studio painters. 

Forge World clearly want things to look good on the tabletop and fairly realistic with lots of weathering, chipping and stains while not taking forever to paint it, which fits most people's needs, but occasionally it's good to have a nice centerpiece to your collection.

There was a standing joke during the Tank day that if 'Eavy Metal ever did a masterclass it would take all day to paint one jewel. By lunchtime we'd done the white leg and nothing else... so they weren't far off! The Studio painters are given roughly one day per figure for items to appear on the box covers, which is apparently their "basic" standard! Characters and display pieces take much much longer. When time runs tight, shortcuts need to be made, which is where we learned the fastest way to finish a unit for a box... paint the backs last! The cabinet had the plastic trolls, which demonstrated this perfectly. The fronts were really nicely detailed, but the back was block colours.

If you've seen 'Eavy Metal miniatures in person, the highlights are over the top and don't always look all that realistic. The reasoning behind this is quite clever when you stop to think about it. When you take a photograph and have it printed, the colours become slightly muted. This extra contrast on the highlights are there to counter this.


One of the things that I keep meaning to do, and hope to finally achieve with this blog, is to actually take the time to relearn to paint different colours and textures.





For a starter image, here's what I did on the masterclass back in 2011. As you can see, we didn't actually get to finish the model as there was too much to go through. Mine is ahead of most though as technically we skipped red... I was just messing around while waiting for the Eavy Metal guys to carry on. I think it's come out nicely though and, surprisingly, matched the recipe they suggested using when I asked later. It needs some more contrast to get to their standard though.

The black slashes in the white leggings just look wrong and should have been dealt with as shadows... still. Lesson learned and filed away for next time.

I'll start to cross off each colour with some nice step by step guides later, but hopefully this gives you some insight to where I'm going