How crap am I?

Well there is a well (?) known figure painting site called Cool Mini Or Not (or CMON to be really cool) where you rate the painting abilities of fellow figure painting nerds. A long time ago I decided it would be a great ego boost for me to put some of my best stuff up on there to make me feel great and let others see how good I am. Unfortunately after clicking through half a dozen pictures of other peoples efforts I came to the conclusion that my stuff was pretty crap!

Five years on from my initial input I have decided to put a few more up on display, partly because I am an eternal optimist but more so because of the 3 main forums I frequent that allow me to put up a gallery, after a combined total of over 30,000 views, no one has rated a single figure.

Undetered I have decided to post like buggery on there to bring up my average rating. The way I will do this -obviously- is by improving my standard of painting, and photography. Well I have 9 pictures up and by adding them all together and dividing them by 9, I get an average rating of 4.95 per figure. This in itself seems an easy task to improve my average. I mean one decent paint job and I should get into an average rating of 6! Well that is my target to achieve a better than shit average rating for all my CMON piccys.

So in an attempt to understand why the people of CMON don't like my painting I will analyse each of my poorly scoring pictures.

Warpfire Thrower team 4.0

First up is my beloved Warpfire Thrower team. The paintjob is (I think) sound, based with static grass and dirt coloured sand. Ok so gloss varnish was used, that was before I learnt that that was soooo unfashionable! The background is equally uninspiring so I have to agree this should have a low score, but 4.0? That's not fair!

Barbarian #1 4.7

Next is one of my Ginger Barbarian. By this time I had discovered the curved-piece-of-paper-that-hides-the-shadows-at-the-back trick. Nice leather loincloth, static grass reasonable, if somewhat bland skin tones. Me likee. Unfortunately most CMONers don't. Score 4.7

Heartbreaker Ratman Warlord 4.7

This one slightly baffles me. When I finished this Ratman Warlord from Heartbreaker (not a heartbreaker of a model, in case you thought it had in fact; broken my heart) I was made up. The unusual colour of armour was acheived by many different ink washes applied one after another a lovely pallid flesh tone and to top it of a border around the picture. Admittedly it was glossy again with that god awful background, but hey! Nobodies perfect. 4.7 for fuck's sake!

Warzone Demon 4.8

Scoring slightly higher was my Warzone demon. Matt finish, minimal shadows and an attempt at a sculpted base. It only got 4.8 so back to the painting table I guess.

Barbarian #2 4.8

I really liked the way this one came out, the figure is from Black Tree Designs and a real pleasure to paint. He has a nice eyebrow ring which isn't quite pictured and a big bloody sword. Still for all his beauty he still only got a 4.8. Sheeesh!

Barbarian #3 5.0

Woop woop! This is the first figure has has a better that shit rating of, wait for it-5.0. It is also the only one that got a comment (nice leopard skin markings). Perhaps the wood on the axe and shield could have been highlighted more, or his nipples darkened to get that extra 0.2 of a score to make it loved, I just don't know.

Barbarian #4 5.1

of all the Black Tree Barbarians this is by far my favourite, he is quite litterally dripping with axes! Big meaty hands and a bald head, who couldn't love him? I suppose giving him pink nail varnish and a bland skin tone helped to lower his score. Sorry old buddy. 5.1.

Imperial Psyker 5.5

My imperial Psyker scored 5.5 with a gloss finish and shit background, but then he did get a frame so it's swings and roundabouts really. Does it matter that it is ever so slightly blurry?  5.5? Really?

Genestealer Hybrid 6.0

My highest scoring model! Also the most recently painted and photographed. A big lumpy base probably helped too! 6.0, yeah baby! Who knows what he would've gotten with a frame? The sky could've been the limit!

I'm not really sure what conclusions to conclude from this rather patchy data, what I probably should do though is to paint a bit better and stop whining about overly critical peers. Frames will defo help though! Best if I don't paint them as Gingers either.