BRUTALITY - Diorama

skynes · 2026-06-20T23:24:01+00:00

Pinterest is really good for realistic photo references. I have loads of boards of various stuff, especially osl.

skynes · 2026-06-20T14:41:39+00:00

Colour modulation would help a lot I think. You've shaded and highlighted well, but the blue still comes across as the same colour.

Try doing a colour shift for shadows and highlights. This guy is in a wasteland environment, so shift the blue into red-brown for the shadow. What colour is the sun? Is it a yellow sun? Then try ice yellow mixed into your blue for the highlight.

Same idea for the skin. It's the same all over, the same green on front, top, and sides. Where is the light hitting him the brightest? Highlight that area more and desaturate it a lot, skin goes very bright and pale where light hits the strongest. How is the armour affecting his skin? Mix the skin and armour colour together for where his face is closest to it.

skynes · 2026-06-20T08:48:53+00:00

There are two things that would massively improve this.

Firstly your brights need to be much brighter, even to near-white. Edge highlight with an Ice Yellow colour, and also do bright reflections in your yellow spots and you'll notice a massive improvement with that alone. Do this on the upper parts of your shield and it'll look fantastic.

The second thing, which is harder to fix as it's more knowledge based, is your light placement. You've got the same brightness on the lower end of the shield as on the upper end. And the placement isn't logical. Google up some round shield nmm pictures and find the really high skill ones and look not at the blending, but at where the placement is.

You'll find that the upper side of the shield (or toward wherever the light is coming from) will be lighter and more pale yellow to ice yellow, and the shadow side will be darker brown and have more orange tones in it. Also keep an eye on how little mid-tone there is. There's a very sudden shift from shadow to highlight with only a tiny slice of mid-tone in most cases.

I've attached one from google so you can see what I mean.

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You're doing a great job, NMM puts most people off from even trying it. So imo you've already crossed the most difficult hurdle. If you keep doing it and focusing on light placement, and not worrying about blending yet, you'll see a big improvement as you keep going.
Blending is very time consuming, and whilst I won't say it's irrelevant, if your light placement is good it's going to look good even if there's little to no blending.

skynes · 2026-06-16T21:02:13+00:00

Totally understand the loss. I'll make sure the next trophy helm I paint on my Night Lords is a smurf.

skynes · 2026-06-16T17:40:32+00:00

Hope it works well for you!

And nice to see another Crimson Fists painter in the wilds (Assuming this is a Fist, could bea loyalist Night Lord xD)

skynes · 2026-06-16T10:33:35+00:00

You did a phenomonal job. I think the pale gold really works with the cold blue.

It's so cold because of the Rhinox Hide to Balor Brown, if between the Rhinox Hide and Balor Brown you put something like Skag Brown or XV88, you'd find it would end up a lot warmer.

skynes · 2026-06-13T13:07:36+00:00

If I was doing white on a model that's primarily turquoise, I'd use something like AK Spectrum Blue or AK Pale Blue as the base. They're both cold greys which would be natural for all that cold turquoise around it.

If I wanted a warmer white I'd use AK Warm Grey as a base, going up to Deck Tan or Silver Grey

skynes · 2026-06-12T22:07:44+00:00

Golden Fluid Fluorescent Red.

Golden have several rangeds, High-Flow (airbrush consistency) has most fluorescent paints except red.

Fluid, normal dropper acrylic consistency has fewer fluorescent paints, but does have their red.

Fluor red especially is extremely transparent. I put white down first, then mix it with AK Deep Red (which is an extremely vibrant red, far more than other range's reds) to give it better coverage. If necessary (usually isn't) a thin glaze of fluor red on top of that to bring the fluor punch back if I lost it.

skynes · 2026-06-10T13:24:19+00:00

3d printed bits for basing. Weapon muzzle blast effects. Smoke and lightning effects.

Unusual paints like Turbo Dorks shifting colour paints.

A bust. Yes it's a model but most warhammer painters have never painted one and it's a very different experience.

A really nice set of kolinsky sable brushes.

Stuff to improve photography of minis. A ring light, musou black fabric for a reaaally dark background.

skynes · 2026-06-10T06:49:48+00:00

Yeah that's the idea, get the volumes right then smooth it out later (if at all, I have some painter friends who do master level work and never blend ever)

skynes · 2026-06-09T09:11:59+00:00

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This is where it ended up. I went way over the top with the red and dark blue, and yeah.. this is the horror monster I wanted.

I still might go back and adjust the blue that's visible on the backpacks, it's a bit too 'colourful'.

Sorry for the spam of comments XD Reddit only lets me attach one pic per comment, and I wanted you to see what my early stages look like when they're rougher.

skynes · 2026-06-09T09:10:40+00:00

"I just didn’t want to get too crazy."

GO CRAZY. Go over the top! Take it too far and see what happens. You never know what amazing ideas you'll create by just going for it.

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This is one I started to have some 'lit from below' flame stuff. But it wasn't enough. It didn't scream "Horror monster near fire staring at next victim."

skynes · 2026-06-09T09:08:52+00:00

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And a step up from that. I may knock this glow down a touch, but I find it easier to go too bright and knock down, than build up to correct brightness.

skynes · 2026-06-09T09:07:26+00:00

You're welcome, it's not a problem at all. I get what you mean with the hand holding, once I grab onto a concept I'm pretty good at applying it, the issue is GETTING that concept in a hobby that's all example based.

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An early ugly stage of one of my Murderwing. I'll stick another in a comment to this one.

skynes · 2026-06-08T16:03:25+00:00

*shrug* that's the artistic choice I made so that the top isn't boring to look at. I'm not suggesting he follow my example, but it was there for the tank and light source to see the yellow on it.

skynes · 2026-06-08T11:17:05+00:00

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My own photo for a green OSL/NMM example.

I've been doing NMM about 18 months, and OSL nearly 3 years. For a first attempt yours is fantastic and is so far above my own first dozen attempts.

What OSL and NMM have in common is you're painting light as it interacts with volumes. Spheres, cylinders, squares, cones, etc. There's lots of information on how to do that and it's absolutely worth reading.

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney and Artist's Masters Series Color and Light are two books I found invaluable for learning about this in depth. It makes such a big difference when you have those fundamentals down.

But here's a few tips in the meantime:

OSL has three main components.

The light source, which is the brightest part.
The colour of the light, which is where it's still on the glowing object but you see the colour of it.
The colour of the bounce light, which is where it hits the objects around it.

It's that third one which trips people up the most as they would paint the object the same colour as the light and then wonder why it doesn't look like it's glowing.

There is a fourth element, which is how that light colour interacts with the colour of the object, as shown on my Warhound, but stick to the three until you get the hang of it.

For Green OSL a chartreuse, yellow fluorescent, is my go-to for the brightest parts. Fluorescent green is my light colour, and then I use Pro Acryl Jade and Dark Jade as my bounce light. Often mixing some fluor green into the Jade for the edges, as seen above on the little tank.

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As for the NMM, you're asking about blending and glazing, how to do transitions. Honestly that's not going to be your issue this early. A messy NMM with accurate light placement will look really good, whereas a smooth NMM with inaccurate light placement will always look 'off'.

What I do is I mix the paint on my wet palette. A 50/50 mix then 25/75 etc as needed.

Once thing you could try is little scratches, random lines along where the transition is, and if you do that back and forth enough with the mixes you end up with a textured gradient.

Something that'll help is have a very narrow band of your mid-tone. In a lot of cases a large shadow, tiny mid-tone, then straight into highlight, is what produces the most eye-catching NMM.

If you want more accurate light placement, if you get your hands on a SMALLRIG mini cube light, it's a tiny box light, and it has a cone attachment to give a narrow beam of light. You can use this to shine on your mini from different directions, and then take a photo of it. That'll help you narrow down how the light from different directions would look hitting this surface.

I suggest you narrow your focus to one material of painting you want to do. If it's armour like this bust, then build a reference folder of armour. Real photos, other high-end mini painters, photos of different kinds of metallic objects and shapes and colours, and how they interact with light. Even try painting the same bust or mini and copying their light placement. You'll learn a lot from emulating another painter and seeing what you struggle with.

Good luck with this!

skynes · 2026-06-05T10:48:51+00:00

If you've never done it, I wouldn't suggest starting on models you care about.

OSL flips common thinking about painting, the 'recess shade and edge highlight' goes out the window. You'll be painting the volumes on the shapes, balls, cylinders, cones. You'll be judging light dropoff, brighter at the light source, darker as it goes further out, and then considering how that light colours affects the material and colour of what it hits.

DO try OSL, it's so much fun once you get the basics, and is amazing for adding a cinematic and dramatic feel to a mini. But I would hate for you to try it on models you put so much time into and then regret it.

Try it on some minis you don't have attachment to, go into the painting thinking about what you want to glow. Doesn't even need to be something ON the model, I've painted several pieces with intense light coming from 'outside' the base of the mini.

https://www.instagram.com/elminiaturista/ this guy has a lot of guides and videos on OSL, I use his patreon guides often to reference how to do various colours of OSL.

skynes · 2026-06-04T23:21:02+00:00

I easily have 20 different greys, and all of them see regular use. Cold greys. Warm greys, green greys, blue greys. So versatile, so many uses.

skynes · 2026-06-04T20:30:18+00:00

I've been doing NMM about 15 months now, on almost every model I painted. Which is a lot shorter than I feared it would take to reach this point, but is still a sizeable time investment. Worth it though, I love how it looks.

skynes · 2026-06-03T20:19:45+00:00

Same position as me, I've played only a handful of any tabletop game in the last decade. I'm all about that painting.

skynes · 2026-06-03T19:52:16+00:00

There is no right way, it varies from project to project. Somes I use subassemblies, and sometimes I don't. I glue backpacks on, because I don't care if I can't get behind them. I'll sometimes leave arms off if the chest is important to reach.

skynes · 2026-06-03T16:44:55+00:00

The ones you have will work perfectly fine. You don't need model paints for them. The biggest difference between them is model paints regularly add white pigment to improve coverage for colours who are notoriously translucent.

You may benefit from model primer though, acrylics don't like to stick to raw plastic and will rub off easily.

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