I’m struggling a little with how to proceed with these posts about miniatures I’ve worked on. I feel that I lack the experience to offer meaningful tutorial-esque information and the patience to chronicle and catalog the colors I’ve used and techniques I’ve tried on a regular basis. At the same time, I want to keep a record of my progress and yes, maybe show it off a little… but in a way that doesn’t become boring or repetitive for anyone wandering into this little corner of the interwebs.
So when I do post an NMPPM entry, it will probably come at a point where I feel I’ve reached some skill milestone or another, or have found some interesting technique or process I haven’t seen elsewhere.
I’ve also found that while mini painting can be relaxing, I actually take more enjoyment from making my own detailed bases for some of the more iconic creatures. So a fun base project might also prompt a post.
In this particular case, it’s a little of all the above.
Showing some improvement
I think I’m making some decent progress at improving my painting skills. Since my last post I’ve painted up quite a few figures, including multiples of all the ones shown here, most of them relatively simplistic. (Not the best photo – they do look better in person.)
In front are awakened shrubs; I tried a few different green shades for them.
The second row, with the exception of the magmin that’s second from the left, are all mephits, of the ice, lava, steam, and smoke varieties. The ice ones were done with white heavily dry-brushed over light blue, with some PVA-and-baking-soda snow applied to the bases. The rest are mostly contrast paints with a little added shading here and there. I added little bits of cotton to the steam ones as well.
The back row is a manticore (head tilted a little downward, so the pink blur you see isn’t his face) and fire and air elementals. The air elementals were originally done in dry-brushed streaks of white and gray. I thought they needed something more, but I wasn’t sure what until I started applying my grout and soil mix to their bases. I realized the spinning vortex should be picking up dust and debris from the ground around it, so I streaked a little white glue here and there around the mini and drizzled some dust onto it.
I also worked through an assortment of ogres sculpted by several different artists at varying levels of detail, and these represented my most complex and detailed work to date.
The flesh tones on the highly detailed models were done with contrast paints. On the low polygon count females I just brushed on a flesh tone, gave it a coat of Army Painter “flesh wash”, and then dry-brushed more of the original flesh to mask some of the blotchiness caused by the wash. I tried to pay attention to small details like bone-colored spikes and shiny rivets, and think the high-poly ones turned out very well overall.
Not feeling blue about my dragons
I also completed two different sized of flying blue dragon, based more or less on the process used in this video but adjusted for the paints I actually had available and the fact that I was working on a lower-detail model without as much texture going for it.
When I printed the pedestals for them, I didn’t have any clear resin available. I decided to try to depict the dragons as flying low across rocky surfaces and just trying to camouflage the pedestals themselves amongst the surrounding stone.
I started with the larger one by cutting a hole in a hunk of XPS foam and gouging a rough circle out of the underside so the foam would slide down onto the pedestal and base. I randomly chipped away at the edges to create a rocky look.
I liked the idea of trying to hide more of the pedestal by building up some more height and making it look like this dragon was soaring just above a mountain peak. I tried a few different variations of stacking more layers of “rock” on the existing one, but they all had the same problem: they made it look like the dragon was about to painfully whack his knees against the stone.
In the end I just went back to a single foam layer, and used a thin sheet of cork in a similar way on the smaller model. I added a bit of rocks and gravel to both and painted them up with craft paints, then attached the dragons via the mounting holes in their undersides.
Presentable blue dragons from free STL files… completed! Now I only need to do… er… about 6 more dragons, just based on plans for the upcoming campaign…