The Space Marine is finished! Started in Nov/Oct 2025 and I can now call it fully finished after some much valued feedback. In this post I wanted to go over a recent painting competition I attended, and go into detail on the feedback I received after.
Salute 53
This month was Salute 53, and I took this piece, along with another, to enter in their painting competition. Salute is a closed competition; that is, they offer one bronze, one silver, and one gold award per category. However, as seems to be the trend with competitions these days, they also hand out cards and pins to runners-up in much the same way as Golden Demon.
I went with my good friends Ricky [IG Link] (look out for a blog post on him soon), Josh, and Ollie [IG Link]. We mostly avoided the huge queue to enter Salute, but the separate queue for model entry was enormous. Ollie was entering his work off the back of winning a bronze trophy at Golden Demon, and it was like standing next to a painting celebrity. So many people came up to congratulate him and give him a pat on the back — and I’m sure, at some point, I saw a secret handshake pass between him and other GD winners.
Once the models were entered, Ricky, Josh, and I spent the day browsing the stalls, eating, and drinking. At a few points during the day, we managed to get a look at all of the entries in the cabinets, which, if I’m honest, was very difficult due to the number of people trying to get a peek and the awful lighting.
Later in the day, we returned to find that a few of our pieces had made it to the top shelves and were accompanied by fancy little “Commended” pins. This meant that your piece was under consideration for a trophy — think new GD finalist, or old GD commended. Both of my entries received one of these pins, and that felt great. I went into Salute with no expectations of winning anything, so this felt like a nice nod to my efforts. I didn’t win a trophy in the end, but considering the competition included David Soper and Matt Kennedy, I didn’t really expect one!
The awards ceremony was short and sweet, and Ricky and Ollie both won trophies! Ricky picked up a silver for his space marine bust, and Ollie a bronze for his Cathay piece. After the ceremony, there was an option to join a long queue and get feedback from the judges, but we took one look at their weary faces after a long day’s work and thought it best not to add to their load. Instead, I asked the judge for my category for some feedback via Instagram a few days later. I find that most people are willing to do this if I ask nicely.
That judge was Anthony Smith, none other than APS Mini Painting [IG Link], winner of countless Golden Demons and a regular at many UK open competitions. I also had a very specific issue with one part of the model, so I reached out to a legend of mini painting, Dave Colwell [IG Link]. Dave is probably one of the most talented, passionate, and dedicated miniature painters I know, and he takes real joy in sharing his knowledge with anyone who asks. I’m going to share their feedback in this post. I’ll have to summarise a bit, as the topics were nuanced, tricky to convey in places, and quite in-depth.
Feedback
So, feedback: the best hack to miniature painting improvement. Why spend years painting in isolation, making mistake after mistake, when you can hit up some of the best painters in the world who have it all figured out, and ask them to take a look at your work. I can’t think of many other hobbies or vocations that have such easy access to the best in the game, and in such concentration.
Feedback #1 - APS
Anthony kindly provided me with feedback on my space marine over Instagram. The advice I received was that while the brush work was good, there were some issues with light placement. I wasn’t surprised by this, I added so many main highlights, bounce reflections, secondaries etc. that I sometimes strayed from keeping it consistent to a primary light source. Below are some of the paint overs Anthony provided.
In these images, Anthony is explaining that the rear main light reflection on the golden shoulder pad isn’t consistent with the rest of the model, and he produced a paint-over showing me where he believes it should be - essentially aligning it with the other main light reflections, a simple enough correction to make. Anthony also noted that he found the bounce reflection on the rear of the left leg jarring, and advised that I knock back some of the secondary reflections. The first image is my original painting, the middle is the paint-over and the third (slightly different view) is after I repainted it.
In this next set of images, you can see Anthonys feedback on the front of the model. His advice was to consider the top of the gold shoulder pad as a cylinder and create an elongated highlight. I was also advised against having those small spot reflections dotted everywhere, so I replaced these with more realistic bounce reflections. The first large image is the paint-over, then you have the previous vs new paint jobs. Please forgive me for not having consistent photo angles or settings!
Feedback #2 - Dave Colwell
I was able to quite easily action all of the feedback from Anthony, except one thing, that flippin’ gold shoulder pad! I could get it working well enough from the front and the back, as you can see in the above final photos, but the middle zone, that no mans land between the two main viewing angles, caused me no end of trouble. So, I reached out to an Auzzie.
The main issue I had with that middle area is that I just couldn’t get it to read as a shiny material. I usually create the effect by slapping in a very bright highlight next to a darker area, with a small amount of midtone between the two which indicates the type/colour of the shiny material. In this instance though, it wasn’t clicking. The shape is complex, there are multiple bounce reflections to consider and about five different viewing angles to account for!
Dave spent a good while with me over Discord, providing me with full breakdowns of what I should be considering and how I should tackle the problem. He also independently noted the complexity of this particular area which made me feel like I wasn’t being dumb, and that I was pushing my painting and just hitting a stumbling block.
The next image shows just a few mark-ups Dave provided me, each one came with incredibly insightful and detailed explanations which I will attempt to summarise.
- As indicated by APS, slim up that front main highlight, also move it upwards to be consistent with other highlights around the model. Do the same for the raised shoulder guard.
- Create lower value, more saturated midtone bounces to fill the space between main and reflections - these create interest and prevent it from looking like a zebra pattern. Vary the size of these to add some realism.
- Ensure that the front main highlight is the brightest, followed by the rear main reflection, then the side reflection comes in third.
- The raised guard part should have nice bright secondary reflections as they face the same direction (share the same plane) as those on the hemisphere. This was something I hadn’t done well before, and made the biggest improvement.
- Another crucial addition to ensure that the upper and lower viewing angles worked well. This was to add a nice brighter area bridging the front and rear highlights along the top of the hemisphere. This acted as a nice bounce reflection from the guard at the top view, and a sort of rim-light when viewed from a lower angle.
My thanks to Anthony and Dave for their help.
Bonus Section: Varnishing!
I HAD to add this onto the end of the blog post as I’ve recently discovered the third phase of miniature painting! You have priming, painting then varnishing!
It was again, Dave who shared his knowledge of varnishing on the Gitgud Discord channel, where he regularly imparts his years of hard earned painting wisdom onto us try-hards.
Some people will airbrush a matte varnish over their work when finished. Some like to use AK Ultramatte, some prefer a more satin look. The aim of this is to homogenise the finish, as paints from different ranges, or even within ranges can have vastly different finishes. But once this is done, there is still painting to be done!
Bruce Rose [IG Link] recently introduced me to VMS top coat varnishes and they’re great. I picked up a bottle of matte and a bottle of satin varnish. I homogenised the overall finish with the matte varnish, then got to work with the paint brush.
I thinned some VMS satin varnish with a little airbrush thinner in a small metal dish and brush painted this onto the highlights of my model. I focused on those brightest main highlights on metals and focus areas. I applied one layer of varnish to the forehead and hair, two coats to gems and lenses, and around four coats to the brightest spots on the silver and gold metals. I could have used a gloss varnish for this, but I find it a little aggressive.
This didn’t take too long, I did have to go back with a targeted airbrush of matte varnish in areas I went a little too far with, but the final result blew my mind.
When observed in the hand, the addition of satin varnish to the brightest highlight points further increases their contrast and perceived brightness. They actually catch the light in the same way as true metallic metal paint does. It can have a positive effect in photo’s, but as it’s dependent on those spots catching the lamp light in just the right way, it’s observed best when the model is rotated around in the hand.
Please see below a few photos of the finished model. If you read up to this point, thank you so much, I hope you enjoyed the journey with me. Onto the next!
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