Hi everyone
as much respect for this community and being a fan of the site i have decided to join in and hope to share my though and works and continue motivated in this hobby

my first
would be of course asking for any comments on my work,
my work is as you may see not original, i do practice my painting by copying a good work from others and hope to learn from there, which so far i do enjoy doing that

while i worked on this mini, i somehow run out of motive so close to the end it looks a bit rush

what i do want to improve
- how to fix the GEM, for me it didn't feel like glossing or reflecting light properly, what do i do wrong?
- blending / glazing of color - when i look at the mini from my eyes it looks pretty smooth (try to achieve very smooth transition) but when i took the photo it looks very rough, how should i fix it, did i blend not good enought or light from taking photo does that
- NMM - first time i try this, and i can see i am so bad at it - probably have to coping other people works a lot more
- writing on the seal - from the photo it looks so baddddd, i redo it several times but cannot make any better, any suggestion?

*** ofcourse, any futher comment on any aspect would be much appreciated

thanks for looking

Welcome aboard Ben your figure is looking pretty good at this point. Sometimes photos don't capture what we really see and painters will compensate by forcing more contrast between the highlights and shadows. Try another photo with a solid dark coloured background with light coming from the top. But I am more sculptor than painter!

Welcome Ben!

Beautiful avatar and excellent mini!
Hope to see your more of your works soon.

Cheers,
Pedro.

that is a picture of my dogs, hopefully i will change it to be one of my work

@gordy
thanks for your comment, i am sure i will post more WIP
it's one way of self motivate

Welcome Ben
Thats a good job at 28mm. Having worked at that scale I know how challenging it can be. When the figure is that small, you want the highs and shadows to be strong. Too subtle and they won't show at this size... not enough room to make slight changes. The zoom on the camera will show things the eye can't see... if it looks good to the eye then it is good.
You will get lots of help here, there are some very talented artists here. Just keep practicing and posting.

Hope to see more of your work

@ChaosCossack
Thanks you, your comment make me feel more courage playing more with light and shadow.

That looks great...I'm hoping to get my figures looking that nice. What medium did you use for the paints?

There are a few different styles of painting gems but they're usually painted 'in reverse' because of the way that they catch light, so dark above and light below. There should be lots of threads on CMON if you want to try a search there for more info and examples.

Bear in mind that with your large photos we're looking at this at least ten times larger than it is in the flesh! So any tiny errors are literally magnified by that amount. Painted effects can photography oddly though, happens frequently. I usually assume that most things I see pictures of will be better in the flesh than in photos online.

Your pics seem quite good though - lighting doesn't seem harsh, the mini is fairly well in focus and there's very little image noise.

That can be very helpful. NMM is very challenging to get right and for most people it takes a lot of practice because it's far harder to do than it looks.

If you were aiming for a more realistic and less stylised NMM effect by the way I commonly advise looking at how painters depict metals rather than just looking at how it's done on other miniatures.

Other than decals, not really other than practice, practice, practice!

Einion

Hi Alan
i use Vallejo, and i love it - still long way to go - as i am still not 100% comfortable with the color

coz i am still in the stage of getting use to with brush and Acrylic color, that little mini took me weeks to finish, coz i keep do something wrong and has to come back to fix it again and again.

Thanks a million Einion

your comment are very helpful, i do take notes on every point you say
i am in a process of getting another mini done (soon). Hopefully, you wouldn't mind check it out and see what aspect should i concentrate/practice on

Welcome, glad to try to help.

Sure thing.

Don't be afraid to post in the Critique Centre forum if you want to get detailed feedback.

Einion