I keep my brush paint very thin. At the least I'll take 3 layers to finish an area. Sometimes more, hardly ever less. I do use an airbrush to put on my primer and base coat, so that's probably keeping things pretty thin as far as keeping detail on the mini.
My process isn't very consistent. I've start to prime in black then hit it was a burst of white so details are easier to see. I'll pick a color then try to do all of that color on a few miniatures. I should be that organized with everything else, but from there I just do whatever comes to mind. I experiment a lot as well instead of using test models.
What i did, which i personally think looked great: primed my models with macragge blue spray paint --> details --> clean up --> wash --> clean up the most f*** parts as i did that allot xD --> dry brush for highlights. Thats it, result was satisfying enough for me to be proud of what i'll put on the battlefield
Time for some Iron Warrior love! While these are not strictly the first miniatures I've ever painted, the last ones were over a decade ago when I was like 11 or 12. So probably not too many skills to be transferred here^^. I just recently picked up painting again and I am currently doing new additions to my army aswell as redoing the worst offenders from my childhood^^. Regular ol' Chaos Marine Squad completely repainted (Improvements have been made^^) Left in the back you can see the second squad patiently waiting its turn 2 out of the 5 new Terminators. I gotta say, I really love the new Chaos Terminator models, they look so bulky and mighty. I only knew the old ones out of metal before which were like the same size as a regular marine. Bonus: Greater Demon of Slaanesh and Nurgle, which my dad painted back in the day. (I always left the important stuff like generals, demons etc for him to paint for obvious reasons )
Dude, the basing on your IW terminators is sick as hell. Most people are satisfied with some textured green stuff, but you've got dirt and then rocks and then grass and then more rocks? Have a cookie, sir. And somehow the almost-flesh skin color on the Keeper of Secrets is even more terrifying than the usual bright pink. Your dad took some risks with the color scheme of that model and it paid off in creepiness.
Tried a different paint order primer/base --> wash --> dry brush highlighting --> details. I do like the result
You can get sharper looking detail if you find a few little details to pick out with a brighter color. Like, if you're using Macragge Blue, I think Caledor Sky is a good highlight. You could hit the apex of the face grill, the top edges of the knee pads, and put a little line on the feet. You can highlight a lot more, but doing just a few will help define the details a little better from a distance.
Personally not a fan of edge highlighting, If it's done well and suits the model hell yeah, but i personally think you get a really cartoonish look, With the dry brush highlights, you get a different kind of highlights which i personally prefer
I partially agree on the cartoonish look. If done well the edge highlighting can give cleaner results without looking cartoonish. When I was still painting I usually did a combination of drybrushing and "clean" highlighting. After coating and applying the base color I drybrushed the next two lighter colors and the last highlight was applied on selected edges without brushing...using the thinnest brush I could find and diluted color. For brighter colors like Deathwing I completely went away from drybrushing and used layering only as drybrushing there tended to make dirty looking clumps Tried to find good examples with my limited resources of picturesfrom my minis on my office computer ^^
