It begins.

So with my Reaper Bones coming in the next few days, half my Warmachine Cygnar army ordered and the second half kind-of-ordered, I decided I had better actually start painting.  Or at least, try.  I've got a pile or minis I have had for years and never painted, mostly Iron Wind Metals and Reaper, and a couple of boxes of 40k Space Wolves, Tau and Eldar that are mostly broken at this stage, but I'll probably keep for roleplaying purposes.

I picked a generic knight-dude for my practicing, as he is pretty simple and not as detailed as lots of the rest.  The internet has revealed to me that a secret technique exists called "priming" and this would stop minis chipping like mad.  As all my metal minis have chipped, I decided to try this crazy idea.

A local store had Tamiya light grey primer.  It apparently may give me cancer if directly inhaled, but that isn't my intention.  I also picked up some Tamiya thinners, as I read thinning is the way to make things pretty, and some 1mm and 1.4mm steel wire for pinning.  The steel wire turned out to be a poor idea, it is so hard it dents my wire clippers.  Luckily its brittle so I can snap it to length, but I should have gone with brass rod instead.

I currently have a set of beginner GW paints, from the goblin painting start box.  The box was years old when I bought it and the paints have mostly separated, but its what I have.  I tried to lay down some basic colours , each mixed with a drop of thinner to make it flow better.

Turns out, the thinners did make the paint go on... thin.  Weird, that, but it seems to be nicer than chunky layers of paint.  The paint also accentuated his gigantic hands, feet and sword; I guess this model is ancient.  Oh well, this is a test after all and he was never going to be more than a RPG character mini anyway.

I then decided to try do the eyes, as I'd read a tutorial sometime online recently.  This has always been a weak spot for me, as I never got it right with my 40k models (most of them were helmeted marines anyway).  White, shadow grey and a messed-up mixture of separated carthan brown, black and thinners later:

THE EYES, THEY SEE ALL

Well, that looks fairly crappy but might be better with flesh tones over it.  The brown is intended to add depth to the creases of the face, like around the eyes and mouth.  Lets see how well that works out.