hey guys jay here welcome to eons of battle now not to brag but i've painted a few minis in my day
but in that time i don't know if i've ever actually practiced
true mastery of any skill requires a million hours of practice and i don't
know if i ever have i always paint to get a model finished i have never laid brush
to model with the purpose of learning and not finishing i think i should probably fix that
practice makes perfect as the mantra goes and what do i need to practice on well that's no mystery
faces faces are really really really hard to paint but it's a bit of a rite of passage for painters
once you can pull off a decent face no longer do you have to hide your mini's head under a helmet
also stay tuned till the end to see a montage of painted models courtesy of the eob complete
community the focal point of a mini the most important part of a mini the face of a mini
i had always avoided it i think every painter does i probably didn't attempt to face until a year or
two into painting but once i did a couple i found that it was not impossible and that i could do it
my first faces were nothing to write home about and nowadays i try to paint as many faces as i can
and because of that i think i've gotten okay at it but even now that i'm really pushing myself i
only get to paint maybe one or two faces a week if i'm lucky now i treat all my minis an opportunity
to learn but really it's not about practice it's more about having the finished model in the end to
add to my collection it's about the joy of the toy not growing and learning if i'm going to improve
i just need to sit down and do it so i'm going to paint 10 heads right now in a row one after
another looking through my bit spin i see i own hundreds of space marine heads that'll never go
on the bodies unless i plan on starting the legion of the no helmet space marines i think these will
be acceptable casualties in the name of practice painting i was thinking of how to hold onto these
heads while painting usually i stick models down to blocks of wood with some double stick tape
but for these i decided to pin them and then stick them down to some cork to hold onto
i prepared all 10 heads for painting i gave them a xenothel highlight i don't think that's going to
help me too much with painting but it will help me see the details that are a little bit hidden by a
black prime now i want to practice but i cannot keep myself engaged just doing the same exact
thing over and over and over so i'm going to have a little side hustle going a little experiment
alongside my practice i'm going to be base coating every head with a different color so not only will
i be getting the reps in but i will also hopefully learn what base colors work good under a face
well it's been a while since i've used cork as a painting handle but i think it'll be just the
thing for this project so i'm going to get started on my first head and i think i am going to use
classic colors browns and tans just get back into the swing of things of painting heads i started
off applying some dark brown to the face watered down about 50 50. i wanted a little bit of primer
to show underneath to let me know where my halide should go once that was dry i had a rough map to
follow and i proceeded to darken some areas like his cheeks then it was time to highlight the most
obvious spot to highlight was his forehead temples and around his mohawk i also basically painted a
stripe of this dark tan down his nose and mouth not the cleanest work ever but it was a good start
i tried to pull out the details of his face his lips his cheeks i wanted to really have
some good contrast so i made sure to leave the recesses dark brown at this point the face had
lost a lot of its contrast so i went back in with some dark brown to try to darken it up
after that a final highlight of light tan to his brow cheeks nose and chin and
it was definitely a face this guy is a good first try i really pushed the contrast with
dark dark shadows and bright highlights he looks like an early 2000s enemy goon from a video game
i applied some dark olive to the head which gave me a nice base then to darken it i tried something
new slathering on some watered down black paint this one-two punch of a strong base coat and then
a black wash did a great job of giving me a base to work up from then i mixed some light pink with
my olive to make a middle color which i applied to the head and face as a first step in highlighting
i focused on his brow nose and cheek particularly and i think using the olive to mix in instead of
a new color made the blends look much smoother i finished by using some light pink with just a
tiny bit of my olive as my brightest highlight i used this to just dot the focal points of the face
and glazed it over his bald head i really like how this head turned out i don't know if i love the
color but the smoothness of the paint is really nice the lips are there i hope this is just a
sculpt problem but it looks like he's blowing out birthday candles and that's two heads down
and i think this one actually turned out quite a bit better i think the blends look a lot nicer
and it might just be because i stuck with one color kind of an olive brown and then mixed in
black and mixed in uh light tan and so i wonder if that's why it just looks much much cleaner
on this head i slathered on a base coat of terracotta will dark brown red look good on
a human face only time will tell i went in with some dark tan to start my highlights and i figured
i had to cover up about 90 percent of the red or else it's going to look like a tomato so i
put lots and lots of coats of this thin dark tan i don't know if it was the sculpt or not but on this
head i feel like i was really getting to know the face and a little contrast between the cheekbone
and the rest of the cheek helps define the face on a canvas so small as a face everything gets like
hyper charged and every brush stroke and every color of paint really stands out i don't know how
this kind of reddish undertone is going to work he's looking a little flush but maybe that's fine
he is looking a little sickly like he's uh he's running a fever he's a little hot under the collar
but maybe once i've got the the brightest highlights on there it'll all come together
now that this face has essentially been re-base coated with dark tan i went in with a light tan
and did my final highlights to make sure that the red was gone i may have overdid it with the
highlighting but i think this head looks better for it this head turned out ok there's probably
still too much contrast and i know that sounds sacrilege but on a face i think you want more
of a medium level of contrast too much and it doesn't look like a human face anymore
with this angry doomguy looking fella i think i'm gonna go with a straight brown as my base coat
see how that looks all these base coats i'm going probably 75 25 paint water mix just so i can see
a little bit underneath it acts a little tiny bit like a wash it does pool in the recesses and
it lets me see where the highest points are so that i have a quick little guide on how
i'm gonna do my highlights once his face was browned i went right in with some pink tan
i hit all of the usual places his brow nose cheeks and chin and i also tried my best to hit his lips
then i mixed my pink tan with white and applied my brightest highlights dotting his brow cheeks and
chin and i put a bit of white paint over his teeth he must have a good dentist now for the real test
on this face i applied a wash of water down brown over the whole model i hope that this would do my
blending and shading for me i was a bit sloppy with my highlights this time around knowing that
this watch was coming and the brown wash did do what i wanted but it toned everything down
so i went back in with my pink white tan mix and i did a few last minute highlights
this face turned out pretty good i think the blends worked a little bit better because i
reapplied that base coat in a super watered-down way and i think he's looking all right except
hmm i think because i'm practicing and trying things out i think i'm going to try to push the
highlights all the way to just about white and as a final highlight i did some dots of pure white
paint i think it helped this was the easiest head to paint by far and it's okay i think
the lightest coat needed to be much bigger as he looks like he has lines of white on his dark face
on this head i decided to get wacky magenta base coat i slapped it down nice and saturated then
liking what it did for my shadows i applied a very watered down coat of black paint over the face
then i went in with magenta mixed with pink to start my highlights similar to the red face guy
i knew i had to get away from the magenta if i don't want this guy to look like an oompa loompa
i continued to work my way up from pure magenta mixing in light pink it helps keep my blends
really really smooth but i don't know if i'm getting far enough away from the laffy taffy
base color at this point i'm basically just using pink to highlight and i thought it looked alright
at least ignoring the colors i thought it was one of my stronger paint jobs
i threw some white onto his teeth and it was looking good
until once i put this next to the others it looked bright pink it looks ridiculous i
think if i brought the other colors up way more it would look a bit more natural but as is it's just
silly five heads down five to go let's talk about those folks who make all this possible our patrons
the best way to support us is by becoming a member of our patreon over there you'll gain
access to some behind the scenes voting on what models i paint live on youtube a hobby hangout
live stream every week and more with that out of the way let's go ahead and get back to the heads
i base coated with a dark blue because yolo once that was dry i went in with a gray blue
and began my highlights i'm not sure what i was thinking perhaps this will be a good skin tone
for a troll or a towel but i don't know if it works all that well for humans i wanted a lot of
contrast so i left my dark blue in the recesses and worked up with my blue grey highlights
this looked alright but it was looking more like a statue than a person so i
decided to do more highlights with a pink tan mixture this worked to bring a little life
back into the face but it turned green when applied over the top of the blue base coat
i applied as many highlights as was necessary until i mostly covered the blue green mixture
well this model certainly has good contrast but it also looks like frankenstein's monster
it's interesting perhaps for a raven guard space marine it's definitely different
on this baldi i decided a green base coat would be a good trick so i applied a thin layer of
dark green then i mixed green with a light pink to give myself a medium tone to begin bringing
this head to life i glazed this all over the dome and around his face too i didn't know exactly what
was happening with his head so i glazed a little bit of pink tan to try to un-green the face then i
began highlighting with some tan pink and i just ended up covering 99 of the base coat layering
on highlight after highlights i then brushed on some very watery dark tan to hide the green in
the recesses now that the model was looking normal i went in with a light tan and did my brightest
highlights this face looks alright although i don't know if it can be attributed to the green
i did do way more brush strokes on this head than any other though so idk
trying again with green this time i mixed green with dark tan and apply this as my base coat
then i applied a very thin black paint to act as a wash over the whole face
then i went in with some pink tan and began filling in all these areas again
i'm covering up most of my green base maybe green is just not the way i apply this to most
of the face leaving the base coat only in the recesses and a drop of white paint on the teeth
then a final highlight of bright tan and i tried painting some fine lines on the forehead to look
like ridges and this looked great i applied this brightest highlight to the temple in the cheeks
and brow i thought this one was one of my better faces of today this head is the better of the two
greens in my opinion i think what it has going for it is the subtler transition from dark to light
most of the face exists in the middle tone and i think that has a more natural look to it
on this head i put a base color very fitting of a space marine jean steeler purple
then i went in with pink to highlight and i was really liking what was happening i highlighted
more and more with dark tan but i kept it thin the purple actually looked really nice underneath i
glazed this color over his chrome dome and brought it down onto his face this was looking great but
he's still a little sickly i watered down some brown and then glazed this over the recesses
this did a great job of bringing some color into his face and it still left a hint of purple after
the brown wash i went into the final highlight of light tan and his face was finished this face
looks great to me i think it's a good balance of not too much contrast but enough highlights
to show what's there but maybe it's just the mutton chops that are hiding 40 of his face
and on to the final head and i was liking what purple had done so i decided if light
purple worked so well then surely dark purple would work better so i gave this head a base
coat with purple i made it a watery base coat and began highlighting right away with some tan pink
i painted some of this on most every part of the face leaving the base coat only in the recesses
and the same as before i applied a wash of brown to tint some of the colors of the face
but it didn't cut through the dark purple as much as it did over the light purple after that some
highlights with some light pink tan i left the cheeks darker and kept my final highlights to
the forehead brow nose and cheekbones this head has more contrast than the last two
it seems like that's just what happens with a darker base coat but it still looks good
actually this and the first head have a lot in common i think this one's better
so how did this work out well i don't know if it's the most fun i've ever had painting but
it was kind of neat i had to keep reminding myself that this was practice and i could try out
whatever i wanted i thought i would just have 10 heads the first being the worst and the 10th being
the best but really it's a collection of painted heads some of the base coats i tried work better
than others like purple and olive and if i did a few more heads i would try magenta and blue again
there is something there but it'll take some more experimentation to find out it was fun to see how
the different base coats change the look of each face now the imperium is vast so any skin tone is
possible green red even jet black with glowing red eyes on a practical real world note it's
all about what catches the eye from across the gaming table sure blue tinge skin might not be
the most realistic but on a figure that's 1 inch tall if your model can turn heads from across the
table that's a win now that i have these guys i don't really care about them but that's actually
a great thing to have around i want to try out some new varnishes and these heads will be the
perfect test subject to see how much those varnishes change the look of a painted mini
now you can without a doubt learn and improve by painting any model but i think a little targeted
learning can really help out i am better at painting faces now and it would have taken
me weeks if not months before i had painted 10 more faces now i can take what i learned today
and apply that to what i paint tomorrow so i think it was worth it perhaps a better understanding of
faces will help me get through these 14 rebels from star wars legion so what do you guys think
is practice worth it or is it a big waste of time that could have been better spent painting more
models and tell me what are some things you feel like you could use practice on i know i'm gonna be
practicing more often but now for the real star of the show looking at all of this week's submissions
for eob complete we put out a challenge to our community to send us before and after photos of
their recently finished models to be immortalized in our videos if you want to join in the fun
you can submit a before and after photo of your painted mini to our discord server which you can
find in the description below or you can post it to instagram with the hashtag eobcomplete without
further ado let's look at and get inspired by what the folks have finished this week
an orc adventurer by decimation some assault intercessors by or of matt a tao battle suit
by lookout science a necron catacomb command barge by bubblefett ig-88 a primeris inceptor by comrade
rc a gray knight terminator by commander kade some necron scarab swarms by bread s a space
marine by vego ski a space marine razorback by nick an imperial guardsman by just make stuff
a necron warrior by get goofed a primarist lieutenant by crayon commander a post-apocalyptic
warrior by cherry goblin some chaos-based marines by mega slade some giants by sebwees a primerous
captain by mukel some dark eldar mandrakes by redbadger91 a sci-fi warrior by matthew a heavy
weapons team by prussian blue a plague belisarius call by sour kiwi aspires for strong from conquest
by the happy heretic a big necron by wolf string and an owl adventurer by ox4297 congratulations to
everyone for a job well done it's no small feat to get paint on a mini and you all should feel really
proud nothing gets the hobby juices flowing like finishing a project and we all thank you
for sharing your work motivating us and the hobby community to paint our plastic thanks for sharing