Boredom + Supply Line Cut = Art..sorta?

[Failedlegend]

A couple months ago Wizards of the Coast announced that they would no longer be producing their miniatures line (they never cease to amaze me with their stupidity) and will be replacing them with "Pog-like" tokens and a pseudo card game thing...thus forcing me to find alternative means of obtaining minis for my meager collection since I just got back into D&D (yeah I prefer 4E..sue me :P)

So while flexing my search-fu muscles on google i found a bunch of cool sites that sell minis and other tabletop paraphernalia (ie. Dwarven Forge) but the majority of it is either unpainted or over the top expensive so while i was contemplating which of my organs would sell for the most I happened to noticed my pile of random boardgames and remembered that WAY WAY back i bought a bunch of warhammer sets...goblins,high elves & even some lord of the rings sets so i figured that they would be some awesome test subjects for painting...which upon opening the boxes i found the few i painted when i first bought it...and they looked like worn-out clowns who wandered into a Multiplayer Match of Goldeneye 64 with paintball mode on.

Anyways despite this ominous reminder of my horrible lack of art skills I decided to try again since that was forever ago and I've been practicing with photoshop etc. quite alot...figured id be at least a smidgen better and it seems I have improved to a point where things are actually recognizable when painted...I dunno if they could be called good but nevertheless here's some pics of what I've done so far.

Note: Sorry my photography skills kinda blow...and my camera is kinda old...I might borrow my buddies good cam (or buy a better one) if I decide to continue uploading images of my minis

The first Mini I finished painting is actually an Ogre from a WoW boardgame (kinda of like the game it came from :P)..recycling FTW :P



The next images are of a partially finished Troll I started yesterday....It was mostly an experiment with mixing colors and I really like how the hair/skin turned out color wise.

Note: The color of the trolls cape,etc. is the color of the primer I use for all my minis and will be changed when finished.



This next image is actually a mini i bought at my local hobby store because i didn't have a dwarf the only issue is the horrible paint job (WoTC painted it this way)

It used to look like this



Now here's what I did with it



I've pretty much decided I'm going to stick with this painting thing and HOPEFULLY improve a bit I want to paint a handful of monsters for my upcoming campaign I'm going to run soon with a friend...here's my first critter


Oh and just for the hell of it here's the three ways I tested for painting

1. The Snake-Man thing = Nothing added before Paiinting
2. The Murloc = Basic Silver Spray paint added
3. The Owlbear? = Sprayed with actual primer stuff



It turns out unsurprisingly that the primer makes a huge difference causing the colors to be more vibrant and the paint "sticks" better so i doesn't drip or run as much.

Oh and I'm keeping one of the murlocs as just Silver (the others all ended up getting primed after the experiment) for he shall always be MECHA_MURLOC!! :P



Oh and yes that is a Valentine's day table cloth the table im painting on is quote old (like family heirloom old) and my parents would kill me if i got paint on it...and its not an easy thing to hide if they decide to pop by for a visit.

So what do you guys think?

Any Tips?