Unpainted Demon

Here's an unpainted Demon I'm working on now. To get a sense of scale, his wingspan is about 5".

Giant

When I sat down to start the Giant I really tried to be as patient as possible. He was the first of the BIG figures I had to paint (he's about 3" tall) and I wanted him to be as good as I could possibly make him. Overall he took me about 20 hours over 4 days. That doesn't include all the time spent just staring at the figure and trying to imagine what colors will work well together. I often carry the unfinished figure around with me, taking it on walks or to the park so I can ponder it as a Tabula rasa. I find the whole thing very soothing.

Since I still only had flesh colors and three shades of blue in my "good" paints, those are the main colors I used. I still have no idea what that orange circular thing is on the front of his left leg. I considered it for a while... painted it orange with a little circle of dark brown and moved on.

This was also my first attempt to paint eyes. It took me several tries to get a result I was happy with.

I tried really hard to shadow and highlight in appropriate areas. Also, this was my first attempt at "wet blending." This is done by laying down a base coat and then washing and shadowing with a dark color. Then I re-basecoated the non-recessed areas and while that was still wet I simultaneously applied highlights. Because the 2nd round of base coating and highlighting were both wet, I could blend them together in a way that made a better color transition than if I'd waited until one color was dry before starting another.

A before and after shot. I really like comparing the painted with the unpainted versions. Makes me feel like I accomplished something.


And now... a fight to the death!!!

Heroes

Since I now had some good paint for skin tones, I finally started to paint the heroes that came with the game. This was a bit more intimidating because the hero figures are smaller than the monsters.
"Red Scorpion" was fun to try to make look sexy. The model itself was only sculpted to have her wear a bikini top and bottom, but I made it a one-piece because dungeons can be so dank and cold. She was also supposed to have a red cape, but I only had one shade of red at the time and didn't want it to be the same color as the rest of her outfit.

With "Battlemage Jaes" I went a bit crazy with some drastic shading and highlighting. But, this was my first experiment with "lining" the edges of his yellow sash with black to make them stand out more. If I could do him over again I'd not use metallic paints on his sword. They look clunky. I've been reading about a technique called Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) which uses shades of black, gray and white to simulate silver (and similar effects for gold/bronze, etc.). It's harder to master this method, but in the end it can look more like metal than metallic paints do. Also, I wish I hadn't painted his base yellow. It's too much.

Landrec the Wise is the first mini I didn't enjoy painting. I didn't like the sculpt... I thought the sitting figure was kind of boring, and I hated the green I used. I've set this green aside and have vowed to never use it again.

So, for "Ronan of the Wild" I used a darker, grainer green. I also tried to use NMM techniques on the blade of his sword instead of metallic paints. It didn't really work out, but its a start. He looks much better in person. At the time I finished it he was the best one I'd painted to date. I'm pretty proud of him.

Not so with "Runewitch Astarra". When I finished her I knew I could have done better. The picture of her in the game that I used as a color guide has her clad in all yellow, but I only had 1 shade of yellow to work with. So, I tried to mix a different shade for her cloak that would match her vest, but it ended up just looking dirty. Also, I butchered her face, but these minis have poorly sculpted faces so I'm hoping its not entirely my fault. :)


The first batch of heroes all together.

Sorcerers

My first attempts at experimenting with manual shadowing and highlighting:




So, with the sorcerers the technique was to base coat with each color and then to wash with a dark version of that color. Then, instead of just allowing the wash to show the shadows by itself, I used the wash as a guide and manually painted in the shadows with a non-washed dark color. Finally, I manually highlighted the raised areas with a light version of each color.

I still suck at facial features, though.

Before the Sorcerers I was using strictly Delta Ceramcoat paints which you can buy in 2 oz. bottles from a craft store for $1 each. However, I had read really good reviews of Reaper's Master Series Paints online and bought two sets of flesh colors and a set of 3 blues that looked interesting. So, the flesh and the blue Sorcerer are used using these paints.

The MSP paints are great because:
1. They are pre-thinned to a consistency that is just right
2. They flow well from brush to mini in a way that the cheap paints never seemed to
3. They come in sets of three (dark, medium and light) which are designed to go together and are used to base coat, shade and highlight.

This last feature was really nice. Up until this point I had been mixing dark shades by adding black and making highlights by adding white.

The down side is that they cost $2.25 for a 1/2 oz bottle. Well worth it, though.

Razorwings

Three "Razorwings". They look tough, but in the game itself they do hardly any damage and they die quickly. A bit disappointing. Fun to paint, though, and I think they look kind of cool.

They were all made with a very dark shade of each of their respective colors as a base coat, and then a dry brushing of a very light shade of that color. There's not much of a middle ground with these. I was aiming for a pastel highlighted look over a black-ish background.

I'm pleased with them, but looking back, these were the last minis I used dry brushing on. It was about this time when I was reading technique and theory articles that I noticed that the most beautiful minis used a technique called "blending" to achieve color gradations in a way that dry-brushing mimics, but is really a cheap substitute for. So, after painting the Razorwings I vowed to start experimenting with more advanced techniques.

Hellhounds

Who couldn't resist painting Hellhounds? Not me... and not Simon, as it turns out. He helped me on these.

Brown Hellhound with flaming hair and tail.


Simon picked the colors for this blue one one, and painted it himself. I think he did a pretty good job. I talked him through it, but the only thing I did myself was the eyes and teeth.

And, finally, the "master" Hellhound:

The body is supposed to be purple, but its hard to see in this picture. The body is a base coat plus a wash and a final drybrushing. The flaming hair is a base coat of yellow with a wash of red.

I was still uncomfortable painting facial features so I just painted the eye sockets yellow and the teeth white.

Beastmen

While painting the Beastmen I had my first feeling that I was starting to get the hang of mini painting.With the Beastmen I started to combine the techniques I'd begun learning on the previous figures and began experimenting with a new one: highlighting.

First I lay down the base coat, then I washed with a darker version of each color, then I took a lighter version of each color and tried to highlight the raised areas. Thus, each part of the figure has three tones of each color, a base coat, a dark wash and a light highlight.

It is hard to see in these pictures, but you can notice it a bit in the muscles of the arms.

You can tell I had no idea what to do with the faces, though. I just washed them and walked away.

Still, these are the first minis I painted that I felt proud of.

Skeletons

With the skeletons I started to experiment with a technique called "washing".

Washing is an easy way to bring out recessed details. It works like this:

First lay down a base coat on each part of the figure. In this case, white for the bones, brown for the bows and leathery bits and different colors for the clothes. Then, choose a darker shade of each color (or one dark brown/black) and water it down until it is the consistency of low fat milk... very runny. Saturate your brush with the wash and dab it around carefully. Because the wash is so think, it tends to collect in the recessed areas, but be rather translucent on the raised areas. Thus, the recessed areas look darker, as if they are in shadow.

I didn't do any dry brushing on the skels... they are basically just a base coat, plus a wash of red. I used red because I wanted to create a bleeding effect, as if the skeletons are seeping.

Spider

Next up, also from the game Descent, is a Spider.

The basic technique involved in both the spider and the naga are a combination of the following:

1. Basecoat with black
2. Drybrush with a lighter color to highlight the ridge details
3. Detail out other features
4. Add a puddle of "blood" because you think it'll look cool, but really it just looks like you spilled paint on the base.

My first Mini

This past May I picked up the board game Descent, which came with about 80 unpainted plastic miniature figures. I've always wanted to try painting minis, so I bought some paint & brushes and got started. Despite the fact that I suck at it, I'm really enjoying it.

Here's my first paint job, a Naga:

Let's be completely honest here... both the mini and the photography are terrible. I might as well have just dunked the thing in a bucket of paint and then drew a picture of it with a crayon.

This is really the combination of two hobbies, as I used to be really into photography. My first few pictures before this one turned out really poorly. It turns out that my normal 35mm camera with all the automatic bells & whistles was bad a focusing on tight closeup shots. So, I dug out my old totally manual Pentax K-1000 that I've had since my dad got it for me on my 18th birthday. It is much better at closeup stills, but is finicky about lighting. This whole roll isn't as well lit as I'd like. My old flash for the camera doesn't work anymore though, so I'm stuck with multiple floor lamps in my make-shift garage photo studio.

Hell... its a start...