A week of Ups and Downs

It has been an interesting week with some ups and downs, but not as much painting as I would like. So this is not so much the WIP post that I was hoping for. I will be sharing where I am with the dark Elfs as well as the new issues that I came across and maybe someone might be able to share why or how to fix 

Ok, so this is how the Dark Elfs are looking at the moment.

   

On to the Ups and downs ill start with the downs while I was doing the base coats on the Elfs I was painting in the front room and the light in there is poor as anything but I was watching TV and thought I could do it because I was not painting anything major. Then when I got back into my painting workspace I noticed the paint was cracked and had a bumpy surface I was using my wet palette and only a good 1 part paint to 1 part water so I was very confused, but I then got to the cause of the problem and I think it was caused by the primmer not being done right or the spray is coming to the end of its usefulness but while looking around came over a something that basically said first off GW's spray is not a primmer its a paint and primer works better than paint. Also to save time airbrush the primer and undercoat so have been looking into something just as confusing getting an airbrush.

The next down I was having was with the silver paint. Very hard to water down, then I thought, Oh, i would use a medium, but then the two would separate and leave a white mark over what I was painting not fun so then I had to water it down but two parts paint to one water.

Ok with my downs out of the way, time to talk about my up!

This happened when I was thinking of how I wanted to do the Dark Elfs to begin with and as always the imagination is a very powerful tool indeed.

 

Apart from the fact that when you start out you find that your ability is not up to how or what you can imagine.

So I went out with trying to make it happen with to start with some very poor results, but I will explain to you all first what I came up with.

The shields on the Dark Elfs I thought having them purple, then blending into a black bottom so like with a yellow and a white dragon on the top. Now this is something I have never done blending wise I have only done the same colors lighter and darker never two different ones and this is where I hit the painting brick wall especially when I had ago and it failed with epic proportions.

After this I thought that I may have to forget about it and think of something more to my skill level, but then a week later I was looking at some minis painted by some award winning artists and all of a sudden it dawned on me how to do it!!!

What I was doing was layering the purple into the black when what I should of done was Glaze the black into the purple and my god it work!

So this is where the ups and downs ended for me this week with a lot of more things to look into like, Airbrushes and compressors and also how to sort out the watering down metallic paints.

If there is anything you guys think might help, please do say.