Miniature Painting

I went on Etsy and found this cool thing. It was so cool I was excited and inspired and then went on Etsy and found more cool things. And now I’m sad.

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we discuss how the collector module in our hobbyist brain is often working against us despite how it may seem. And we tip our hats to our patrons for their constant and uplifting support!

Ah, the collector module, that little engine of dopamine-powered consumerism tucked away in our little brains that feeds this hobby – actually, it feeds a lotta hobbies – and fills us with transcendent and often-fleeting joy. 

As you know, I paint some miniatures from time to time and from time to time we play games with those miniatures. But we also know that gaming miniatures are just one particular facet of the whole miniature hobby gestalt, right? There are all kinds of facets in this hobby, disciplines and factions and genres. We have gunpla, which I’d like to try out sometime. We have display painting, and busts, and larger miniatures like 75mm and 1/6 scale and there’s dioramas and inside all of those facets are more facets, more niches, there’s just a plethora of stuff to dive into.

So, with a combination of seeing other YouTubers and instagram artists posting some very cool display models online and my own possibly growing frustration with my own physical shortcomings in painting 30mm scale gaming figures, I was cruising Etsy one day just looking at the piles and piles of really cool 3d printed miniatures and I came across this figure, this elven … I don’t know if she’s a druid or what, but it’s a very cool sculpture. 

And I noticed in the drop-downs to place an order for this 3d print that there was a scale option. This is nothing new by any means, but I really just had never considered anything larger than “gaming scale” in these last few years since I’ve gotten back into the hobby. 

However, decades ago, back in the 90s, I had been a fan of and collected what were back then called “garage kits”. These were Japanese resin kits of like anime characters and manga characters and there was a whole hobby subculture of these things – but we’re skirting that rabbit hole for today. I’m gonna go more in depth on that in a future video. 

Suffice it to say that I’m not necessarily a stranger to larger scale models, just that in my current hobbying, I haven’t gone in that direction. Until I saw this scale option for this elven druid. Which was sculpted by Great Grimoire, link below of course, I couldn’t find any information on individual sculptor names, so Great Grimoire it is. Anyway, I saw that I could get this figure at 75mm scale, which is more than twice the typical gaming miniature scale. 

And I was like, yeah, I wanna paint a 75mm display figure! That would be awesome! And this one is just too cool, I really like it. So I ordered it and waited to see what the quality of the print would be like.

And here it is, it’s pretty great. It’s a little bit of a bummer that it’s not in more pieces because some of the areas are gonna be difficult to paint without being in subassemblies – which, yes, I understand the irony of that statement coming from someone who admittedly dislikes subassemblies – but anyway, I think it’s a super cool miniature, an excellent sculpt that has a lot energy and movement to it, in my opinion, and when I got it I was like, super excited. This is gonna be a great project!

And here’s where the excitement tripped that collector module into overdrive and I was immediately hit with this idea that, well, I wonder what other awesome large-scale 3d prints are out there. And just as weird coincidence, at the same time as this was happening, I had either seen some Brom art or something made me look up Brom art. I’ve always like Brom’s stuff and I was thinking that I could use a couple of his pieces as color reference for painting up a miniature. Not this elven druid necessarily but because I was kinda looking at these things simultaneously, Brom art and larger scale miniatures, when I saw this one on Etsy, I was like, BAM, that’s a Brom piece waiting to happen!

This model is from MythReal Games, which again doesn’t seem to list individual sculptor names anywhere but they have a patreon which I linked below. I typically like more realistic armor on my female miniatures but hey once in a while I guess some cheesecake is all right, as long as it’s Brom-flavored. I’ve been collecting some reference images from his artwork that I find inspiring and that I really want to try out when painting this model. 

Which is cool, but of course when I was on that Etsy store page, I didn’t just see THIS model, I saw more cool stuff, which is, of course, how the slippery slope works right? And this model’s cloak just sorta stunned me and I was just like, well, jeez, it’s only like $20 bucks for one of these at 75mm scale, I mean back when I collecting those garage kits I mentioned, those were hundreds of dollars. 3d printing technology, man, who knew! So I ordered both of these kits. 

I call ‘em kits but they’re really just single piece miniatures, right? But here they are and they are very very nice prints. So I’m looking at all three of these and suddenly I’m realizing that that first model I had picked out and so excited by, the elven druid, it’s lost some of it’s luster. That’s not quite right, it hasn’t lost any of its individual luster, it’s just that looking at it now, while I’m still very excited to paint it up, my excitement is a little bit tempered by the fact that I know I have two additional 75mm display figures to paint up. 

For the very short week when I just had this one on the shelf, there was a more concentrated feeling of excitement. Cause now having three on the shelf – which in fact qualifies as a whole new Pile of Opportunity growing right before my eyes – the Pile of Opportunity 75mm edition – because I have more than the first one, these collector module acquisitions have diluted the excitement somewhat. Cause now I gotta be excited about three models instead of just one. 

And I am, but I noticed this dilution and put a kibosh on my Etsy surfing right away. Cause I could have just kept finding more and more cool 3d printed miniatures to buy. But I really wanted to stay excited about the ones I’ve got. 

So yeah, I literally had to stop myself from continuing to shop.

Cause I don’t wanna dilute the coolness I feel about these models now. And if they become just three cool models out of forty-five cool models in a gigantic Pile of Opportunity, well, that’s just sorta taking a big spike of coolness and flattening it out into a tepid pool of coolness. Which is all still cool but you know … how many times can I use “coolness” in another sentence?

I think this phenomenon here I’m experiencing isn’t necessarily the same as when you buy a bunch of miniatures to build up say a warband or an army, but it might be similar to when you’ve collected multiple war bands or multiple armies. Which of course most of us have done.

So, I’m definitely looking forward to painting up these 75mm scale models as display pieces. I mean, I don’t know if the final paint jobs are gonna be worthy of display, but I’m looking forward to trying anyway. Each one’s gonna need a base of some kind, I’ve got a few ideas, and I think I’m gonna try to practice some airbrushing on these models as well, this scale of model is great opportunity for that I think. And even though the elven druid was my first purchase in this scale, I think I’m gonna work on the Brom-inspired gladiator woman first because I have a – almost guaranteed to be erroneous – feeling that that model will be an easier, quicker project to finish.

We’ll see. One cool thing about this whole 3d printing arena is how affordable these models are. I mean, if I completely trash the whole model somehow, I could easily get a second one and try again. But you know, it’s paint, and typically you can just paint over mistakes as many times as you need to.

All right, well, check out some larger miniatures. See what you think. I wonder if any of you out there have considered or worked on larger-than-gaming sized miniatures. 

See ya!

Experiment. A scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis or demonstrate a known fact. 

Let’s take this definition and make it our own, shall we?

Artistic experiment: a moment in time when an artist puts aside all expectation and discipline to feel the freedom of trying something new just for the fun and joy of it. Quickly followed by the inherent discovery and testing of new techniques.

This is the most fun I’ve had painting miniatures in a long time. Maybe ever!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we stumble across something others have been doing for eons and realize we’re very very late to the game. And we thank our patrons for kindly supporting these exercises into newfound discoveries.

Today we’re going full Bob Ross and we’re casting aside any goals, expectations and worries brought about by “having to something right”. My buddy Hoffman was telling me about how years ago – and I mean decades – he would do a lot of his mini painting with inks, specifically the long-discontinued Games Workshop inks. He loved them and I always admired his painting chops, so I promptly engaged that hobbyist shopping module and went and got … too much stuff.

And then we hopped on a FaceTime call just to hang out and hobby. And I’ve got all these inks and new paints on my table and don’t quite know what to do with them. I know people have been painting with inks for decades but I’ve never really used them, so I was like “I want to try these out but what do I try them out on?”

And that’s when it hit me: it was time to leverage the Pile of Shame! I have this group of skeletons from the Cursed City box that I had started with the intention of using them as my first test subjects for oil washes, which is another technique I’ve never tried. I bought all the oil wash supplies like two years ago, maybe longer. 

Lemme alone!

So I pulled one of these guys out and used it as a test subject. I thought, okay, fuck it, they’re just sitting over there gathering literal dust, let’s just grab one and try these inks out on it.

Now, this is the crux of today’s topic. I’ll talk through the painting I did, but here’s the TLDR: it’ll sound dumb but I’ve never grabbed a mini and just messed around with putting paint on it, never without the idea that I’m painting this figure to be a finished miniature.

I’ve never just thought, ok, let’s just play around, I’m not gonna fish this mini, let’s just do some tests and see what happens. And I’ll tell you what, this was so ridiculously fun. Liberating is what I’d really call it. I just used random colors and random techniques and I was just carefree. You’re gonna hear a lot of these words repeated, and you could ascribe that to enthusiastic emphasis. I can’t overstate how awesome this was, for me.

I don’t know the first thing about inks, and it just doesn’t matter. This miniature’s gonna look like a clown – and that simply doesn’t matter.

So I’ve got all these inks but I also, just the other day, picked up some of Vallejo’s version of Contrast paints, which they call Xpress Color. The reason I wanted to check them out is I read a review online that said they dry slower and flatter than GW Contrast paints. If anyone needs more working time, it’s me.

So we’re gonna play around with some of these closet skeletons and just have fun.

I’m also trying out a new camera position which worked nicely, except for the fact that my hair got into almost every shot. Now I know, you’re like, “dude, Ignatius, didn’t you just buy a camera that had live HDMI out so you could monitor your shots?”

Yes. Yes I did, dear viewer, exactly that. And what happened is, when I looked up to check the framing and focus, my hair would leave the shot, so I didn’t realize what was happening.

laugh it up fuzzball

Okay, I started out with some AK Interactive sepia ink for the breastplate. I thinned it down a little with water and just wanted to see what this color was like. I’ve noticed the AK brand sepia and burnt umber are a lot more gray than other brands but all good, this is what experimenting is all about.

So to see some actual “brown” colored ink, I tried this Daler Rowney burnt umber on the scale mail. Basically each part of the model represents a test area for something, right? So I put full strength burnt umber on the lower scale mail stuff and then thinned it out for on the upper scales, just to see what the difference was like.

One thing I’ve been noticing with inks is they seem to help me with learning glazing. Working with ink is pretty fun because they are so fluid but the glazing is great because they’re highly pigmented as well as thin. So I glazed some Daler Rowney purple into the breastplate just to practice adding some shadow. The purple is cool but what if we glaze some Liquitex burnt sienna and carbon black over that purple? Pretty fun just messing with the colors like this.

Okay, let’s try some of these Xpress Colors – I’m thinning this wasteland brown way down with the xpress medium and trying it out on the skelly’s bones. Two things of immediate note: one, the xpress paint is pretty nice, easily on par with Citadel’s Contrast line; two, this paint smells like Vallejo added some kind of perfume to it – they didn’t of course but there is a definite weirdly fruity sweet smell to this paint. And their inks smell like this too. I’m very susceptible to harsh chemical fumes but this stuff doesn’t bother me, I’ve just never used an acrylic hobby paint – other than Tamiya paints – that have a tangible odor.

Now this line of metallic colors from Vallejo Metal Color is hands down the best metallic paints I’ve ever come across. This copper is awesome. Now let’s try out this dark turquoise ink. I watered it way down to see what it does over the copper. I think it’s pretty cool! Maybe it’s not the correct color for verdigris but who cares?

Now for a great big experiment: what will thinned down burnt sienna do as a wash over all this yellow? Again, this is the luxury of just messing around – it doesn’t matter, we’re just gonna find out! I definitely need to experiment more with trying to get it smooth but the overall weathered look is pretty good.  

How about on the back side we mix purple with burnt umber and try that? I must say I’m pretty happy I have a Pile of Opportunity to leverage this way, this is just so fun! So this mix was a bit too thin to make a dramatic change, so I just got some less diluted and tried adding that to the deeper areas on the tabard. 

I missed capturing putting some green Vallejo ink on this vambrace but here I’m deepening the shadows by glazing some more into it.

All right, how about some Vallejo yellow ink full strength all over the shield? Why? I don’t know. I just wanted to try the yellow ink out somewhere and so there we go! 

Now I also picked up some bottles of Vallejo’s new formula game color. I got some purple because I don’t typically paint much purple and I wanted to see what this new formula is like. So here’s midnight purple on the spear blade, it’s very fluid and nice to work with, feels kinda like a thinner version of Citadel paint.

Also, I swear this is not a sponsored video by any of the companies I mention today.

I used a lighter shade of purple to blend up some highlights and one of the properties of this new formula is it stays wetter longer and I’m really like this stuff. Damn, I might have to get some more colors!

I put some AK sepia ink on the haft of the spear just to see what it looked like full strength. It’s a pretty dark warm gray, I just don’t know why they call it sepia. I could always mix in some red ink if I wanted to make it more “sepia”, maybe. 

I picked up this Daler Rowney sap green ink just cause I liked the color, so I’m trying it out here on our guy’s metal nikes, and this is a great color! Some of this I’m thinning, some not, I didn’t keep track cause I’m a wild man!

All right, for these leather straps I’m gonna try out the AK ink called Sooty Black, and we’ll put it down full strength. It reminds me of a cross between Citadel’s Black Legion and Basilicanum gray, but it’s thinner and flows easier obviously because it’s an ink. I like this stuff, nice to work with.

I wanted to try the dark turquoise ink full strength so why not put some on the yellow shield? Why not try out making a blend from the yellow into blue shadow? Using some water to thin it and smooth the transition really made for a nice gradient. I’ve always had problems doing this with regular paint!

I have this raw sienna that I’ve used like once, but I thought it might be a perfect shading for the yellow, so on it goes. I think it’s a good weathering color for the yellow and at first I thought I wouldn’t put it over the blue but then I thought “it’s a pretty light color, it might just unify the whole thing.” So onto the blue it went.

Now this, my friends, is my new favorite go-to dark steel color – Vallejo metal color gunmetal. This is 100% replacing my standard Scalecolor black metal paint. As I mentioned earlier, this metal color line is staggeringly awesome. Why am I putting purple on the spear blade? Because! And now I’m putting some thinned down xpress color copper brown over that spear just to see what it does, the idea being maybe it’ll create some rusty weathering.

I just kept going with that gunmetal, adding some chipping and little pops of metallic shine on the edges of things. This shield is literally surprising me with how cool it’s coming out. Does it look realistic? We don’t care! The real question is: do we care? No, ‘cause it looks rad!

I like these metal highlights so much I just started adding them to other bits and pieces everywhere. This is another advantage to painting a skeleton, though, right? Weathering and dirty paint jobs are kinda the the effect.

I put full strength Daler Rowney burnt umber and AK burnt Umber on the base, just to check ‘em out. Their consistency and high pigment makes them pretty ideal for quickly covering bases. 

For some specific rust color, I mixed yellow ink, red ink and xpress copper brown and thinned the mix with water. I even put some rust on the shield. As Hoffman would say, we’re going full clown suit. Does bronze or copper rust? Nope, but say it with me now: who cares?!

Someone out there does care, deeply, and they’re having a conniption fit right about now. You’re welcome!

And I’m gonna double down and throw some verdigris on the shield too! Right next to the rust! This guy might be actually usable. I mean like he may be graduating from test subject to tabletop.

Okay, so I originally thought I’d use this guy for the oil test on top of everything else. But I decided I like how he turned out, so I’m gonna splash up two more skellies specifically to try the oil washes on. We’re not gonna watch all that of course – except for these two tidbits here.

I decided to tint this guy’s bones with some green, like he’s a mossy skeleton or something. I mixed xpress color orc skin with dwarf skin and thinned it out and I kinda like how it looks.

I also got what’s knowns as a “wild hair” and washed some purple over that yellow tabard just to see what it would do. It didn’t go on as smoothly as some of the other inks, so i’m just making a mental note of that. Good for chunky weathering maybe.

Now here’s a third skeleton and the reason I’m doing two to test oils on is I’m gonna gloss coat one of them to see how much of a difference that makes in working with the oil wash. But most of the inks dry to a satin finish anyway so this might not be much of a difference test.

But I do want to show you this one thing that works out pretty good. Some thinned down xpress wasteland brown did a pretty nice job of shading the tabard, I was pretty happy to see that. That’s definitely something to keep in mind. 

Ah and one more detail, right here. I mixed some xpress storm blue with the xpress white color and check it out, it kinda makes a decent nonmetallic metal thing right? It’s not contrasty enough but still, pretty cool for a single coat of paint. 

All right I let the gloss coat dry for 24 hours, not sure if that was necessary but you know, relax when you can right?

So I mixed up a wash with the Mona Lisa stuff and a bit of black and bit of burnt umber oil paint and here goes nothing. Right away this is looking too thin to me. So I gonna add some more black for attempt number two, and this is much better I think.

We just slop this stuff on, just making sure it gets everywhere. The gloss coat definitely makes the oil slide off the raised areas way more than it does on the non-gloss coated figure. One huge advantage to oils is they just don’t dry, you have plenty of working time. The main pain in the butt with this oil stuff its trying to keep all the tools, brushes, palette – which is metal by the way – and paper towels with oil thinner on them, keeping all that stuff separate from any water stuff. Having never painted with oils before, all this is new to me. 

I waited 20 minutes before going back over the minis with a q-tip sponge thing that was dampened with a little bit of thinner. I can see already that this procedure is another technique that’s easy to do but hard to master. I also think that this oil wash technique would be good to try on a mini that’s been painted in a more clean and proper fashion to see what it does. Because of the hours-long drying time, the option to go back and add more or remove more remains viable for quite a while.

So, here they are, the subjects of the artistic experiment sessions. They’ve all been matte varnished and based. This was my very first one, the one that kicked off this whole thing. You can see I had a sword here to mess around with and I did most of the inks on this one full strength. And this one my buddy Hoffman did when he came up for a visit and wanted to try out Contrast paints for the first time. 

And here are three we did in today’s video and the oil wash really did a great job. This is the first one and it didn’t get the oil wash. Overall I dig this guy, but I could see now maybe putting an oil wash on him just to get a little more patina across all the surfaces and some better outlining. 

This guy had the gloss coat put on before the oil wash and he looks pretty good too. The oil wash seems to work like a matte coat as well, not insofar as making a matte finish – all of these have been matte coated as the last step – but the oil wash does work towards unifying all the different surfaces. I think I need to try an oil wash on some figures that aren’t heavily weathered beforehand, just to see what it does then. These guys were pretty well weathered prior to the oil wash.

This dude got the oil wash without a gloss coat and I’m not sure there’s too much of difference – between using a gloss coat and not. There’s some for sure, I just need less heavily weathered test subjects to get a more accurate idea I think of what it’s doing. But as far as what the oil wash does, this little bit here, his exposed ribs, I didn’t have any shading in there at all and the wash really filled in those recesses in a pretty nice way. All in all, I do enjoy the oil washes, they just have that annoying 24 hour drying time to consider. Which isn’t really that big of a deal, but it’s a thing.

Here’s the guy with and without the oil wash – the wash is fairly subtle but overall you can see how it unified the feel of all the different bits. And you can see how the various inks and paints have different finishes, from glossy to satin to flat. Now of course the final matte coat does a lot toward this too but the oil wash definitely adds some depth and lining to the figure.

It was just so much fun to mess around and try stuff out with no expectations – and the idea that there just weren’t any mistakes made everything take on this totally carefree, have-fun-with-paints vibe that I just had to share. This mindset is a new one for me and I learned quite a bit. Mostly I learned that I need to paint with this mindset going forward. Well, not really that I NEED to, but I WANT to.

So again, this exercise has been the most fun I’ve had painting minis in a long time. And it’s not like I haven’t enjoyed painting minis, not at all, but I feel like I’ve unlocked a new level in my head. 

So, go grab a mini outta that pile of shame – yeah, THAT pile of shame <snap> – and just have some fun experimenting with it. Try out some inks! Or whatever strikes your fancy. It’ll be a good time, trust me.

See ya!

We hear it all the time: Pile of Shame. Sometimes we wear it like a badge of honor. And sometimes we feel the actual psychological shame at knowing deep down we’ve over-spent our hard-earned ducats on plastic toys.

I’ve pushed – and I’ll keep pushing – the alternate nomenclature: Pile of Opportunity. And this isn’t some underhanded way to trying to put a positive spin on our little failures of self-control. I say “Pile of Opportunity” with the full acknowledgment that that pile of goodies is perhaps the result of that lack of self control. But it truly is a pile of opportunity and even changing that surface level connotation generates much better psychological vibes – and positive vibes actually help the brain with enacting a little more self-control, a little more discipline. It’s hard to get better or grow when you’re under a constant onslaught of negative vibes. This is just we humans are.

But lurking in most of our mad laboratories, deep in the shadows – or maybe right there in the open, surrounding us like a pack of starving, undead wolves – is an actual Pile of Shame. And today we’re bringing down the sunlight to expose this creeping morass of nurgle-tastic foulness and see if we can smite this self-fulfilling assault on our hobbyist sensibilities and stand tall under the bright light of day!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where your host waxes poetic about mundane topics just because he likes to! And where we sometimes face the skeletons in the closet. And we thank our patrons for their blazing vibes of goodwill and steadfast support! Here’s to you! Much appreciated.

All right, enough theatrics, let’s talk about what I think is the tabletop hobbyist’s – and many others’ – true pile of shame: unfinished projects!

I don’t know a single person who knows a person who doesn’t have unfinished projects. We all tread that boulevard of broken dreams, knowing full well we’re the architect of our own dismay. I think we’ve all heard of some legendary person who finishes every single thing they’ve started, but I think that figure is a myth. Or at the very least, inhuman.

Unfinished projects are, at the very least, marks of learning, of exploration, of some kind of creativity. Failures are always part of any process. You know that as well as I do, despite how much we want it to be otherwise.

But I do feel personally like I get more bummed when I see my unfinished, half painted miniatures. Primed and Ready don’t count – for me. Primed and Ready is just a bonus for the “sit in the damn chair” exercise. <snap> Having a primed and ready batch of miniatures represents, to me, the absence of a significant stumbling block in getting myself to work on something.

Here is my current Pile of Shame. Most of it at least. I have some pieces tucked away that are from twenty five years ago when I was last steeped in the hobby. Like this Necromunda figure from the very first release of that game. I’m pretty sure my pile of shame is the largest it’s ever been, for me. And until I start doing something about it, it only has one potential: to grow. Now this might be a laughably tiny pile of shame to some of you and it might be triggering completion OCD in others. All I know is, it’s mine and I clutch it close to my black heart.

Some of these I got stuck with a growing dislike of how the process was going. Some I’m not even sure why I haven’t finished them. Some, like this undead blood bowl team, were too numerous for me to get my head around finishing and I used my trepidation regarding decals to put ‘em away for a few years.

And here’s a real-time confession of a real-time realization: when I pulled these out of the bottom of the Primed and Ready display case to photograph them for this video, I discovered that I just lied to you, straight to your faces. Which was the result of me lying to myself. Miniatures sitting there in primer – some for more than three years – ARE actually bumming me out a little bit.

But all that said, I do try to plug away at these figures on a weekly basis. I’ve started doing a new thing that’s turned out to be kinda helpful in this regard. This is something a lot of other hobbyists do I think, it’s just taken a long time for me to try it out. Which is typical. Being late to the game, that’s what I do best. I’ve been video chatting with a buddy of mine to hang out while we hobby. He’s coming out of a decade’s worth of WoW fog and finding the joys in the hobby again and so I think we’re both kinda helping each other “git stuff dun” as they say.

And the Pile of Shame is definitely hard to face, hard to knock down, hard to attack. Due to its very nature it represents, mostly, just straight up work and that’s never fun to face alone. Typically we abandon projects because we either lose inspiration or we hit a stumbling block that’s gonna take some effort to overcome, right?

But here’s something to consider: the only successful artist, or craftsman, or programer or writer or filmmaker or scientist or explorer – basically any successful ANYONE – is that person who has pushed through whatever block they faced. I think overcoming challenges is actually the only useful metric by which success can be measured. Every single thing produced by humans is essentially just the result of overcoming challenges. Problem-solving. In other words: perseverance. Sometimes in the face of great adversity. In fact the greater the adversity, the greater the achievement. Usually.

We all know what the “ugly phase” is, right? Every miniature – every piece of art – goes through the ugly phase. It’s just one of the many steps in every process. In fact, it’s probably the very inspiration for the phrase: “trust the process”. As in, you gotta trust the process. To get to the “oh, this is turning out okay” phase, we gotta go through the ugly phase, the self-doubt phase. One is the doorway to the other. And if there’s a door, you know we gotta go through it.

Here’s another idea I had, insofar as launching a strategic plan of attack on the Pile of Shame. We could just use some – or all! – of our Pile of Shame to experiment with! Maybe instead of a Pile of Shame we actually have a pile of Testbed Minis. There’s a video on the new found joy of experimentation coming right up, something I stumbled upon that other hobbyists and artists have been doing the whole time. 

I told you, I’m a late to the game pro.

But one thing experimentation requires are willing – or unwilling – test subjects. Viola! Ask and ye shall receive, right?

Of course, mostly what I’m dealing with is miniatures. But I’ve got folders of shame? I’ve got way more unfinished writing projects, art files, screenplays, way more of that stuff than I do unfinished minis. So not every pile of shame operates the same way, or provides the same means of access, as far as experimentation goes. Because we’re talking minis and models, there are certain ideas that’ll work with THIS pile that may not work the same with other piles. 

But that’s another thing to note, too right? We’ve all got piles of something, piles are a very human thing. Products of imagination really. So, it is what it is. The hobby pile of shame I feel is tied more to the subtle wracking of nerves that financial expenditure can generate. We have to acknowledge that and we have to keep moving. Knowing is half the skirmish, right?

What’s done is done.

So in this hobby, returning to old projects is a pretty doable thing. I mean there’s always Ebay, so there’s that.

This guy here I was always excited to paint, I think the sculpt is so cool. But when I started working on him I didn’t really have anything in mind except yellow wings. And I vaguely thought about trying out some lava rocks on the base. But that’s one of my problems – I often lunge forward on half-baked or vague notions that aren’t fully considered and often I become frustrated by my own ridiculous refusal to think beyond a certain point. But I’m trying to get better at that – at least I’ve identified that issue with myself and that’s a big step right? 

Just say yes. “roll eyes”

The last few years I’ve started trying to become more aware of my own thought process. Better late than never? Doesn’t really matter, ‘cause that’s all I got. It’s slow going, surprise, surprise. But it’s going. And that’s something.

So for this guy here I’ve decided to do some experiments and just noddle around with the paint but I’m 100% going to try the lava rocks thing on the base. Hey, he’s part of the Pile of Shame, if I mess it up, well, I’m just doubling down I guess.

I feel pretty good having identified my real “pile of shame”. I kinda don’t like repeating the name all the time, which just sort of plucks those psychic strings and sends out those little bad vibrations that creep up on our consciousness. Words have power and we’d do well to remember that. The important thing is to try to put a stop to yet another frivolous thing that adds unnecessary weight to our psyches. There’s so much of that that comes with just being human that we shouldn’t go out of our way to add more, if possible. 

But an intrinsic part of being human is the ability to problem-solve. And finding ways to better ourselves, to drill down and uncover the root causes of things. We create our own reality, no? Probably.

So, go make your reality better! Find a way to deal with your pile of shame. Understand that’s okay that it exists and then have fun with those old, half-finished ideas! Or sell ‘em on Ebay! 

See ya!

That’s amazing. A freakin’ work of art! That should be in a museum! Look at the detail. Do they use microscopes when they paint these things? How do they do this?! So cool! 

You’ve seen miniatures, you’ve seen terrain, you’ve always wanted a cool mini for your character on the table – or a group of minis for your fellow players. And if you’re a DM, you might have always wanted to slap down an awesome monster mini so you can tell you players that yes, yes it does reach you with its flying speed. <eee face>

Okay, I don’t know if you’re a player or a DM. I don’t know how old you are, I don’t know how long you’ve played DnD or other tabletop RPGs. The only thing I might know is you’ve always, somewhere in the back of your mind – or right up in the front of that thought-cage – you’ve always wanted to paint a miniature. Or at least flirted with the idea.

But you haven’t taken the leap. You’re standing on the edge of that diving board and looking out at the great big Olympic-sized pool and it’s a little bit overwhelming. Where do you start? You know you need paints, that’s obvious, but … what paints? How many paints? What paint brushes can paint something so small? How do you even see that tiny-assed miniature in your hand? How much money does this hobby cost anyway? What if you suck at it?

You’re asking all the questions and I can promise you one thing, and one thing only: I’ll have SOME answers. Let’s see if we can get you started on one of the most rewarding journeys a tabletop gamer can take.

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we tackle an iceberg one boat at a time. And we thank our patrons for supporting such dark humor on a protracted basis, much appreciated, kind humans. Or should I say “enablers”?

So you wanna paint a miniature. Or you dream about painting a bunch of miniatures. Or “minis”. Mini is the technical nomenclature for what used to be called, by my group of nerds anyway, back in the previous century, “figures”. As in, “leave me alone, I’m painting figures!”

But you’ve never painted one. In fact, you may not have ever painted anything in your life! Just like me when I started painting figures.

So, let’s talk about what exactly one needs in order to paint their first miniature. And how much stuff costs and give you some options on how to jump into this big old pool.

I’m gonna go with a plug-n-play, modular sorta package approach to this whole endeavor, hopefully that’ll make things clear and informative and reinforce the idea that these are all just suggestions and you can make any combination work.

I’ve got three tiers plus one that I’m gonna break everything down in. And already you’re like, dude, three plus one, it’s already confusing! I get it, but you’re gonna get it in just a second. The tiers are “Dipping A Toe”, “I Think I’m Gonna Like This”, and “Cowabunga!” plus “Capital B Basics”. Which is the tier we’re kicking things off with. ‘Cause this is the fundamental gear you need regardless of whatever else you decide to purchase, beg, borrow or steal. 

Tier Zero, Capital B Basics starts with Number One: A place to paint. You’re gonna need a desk, table, porch, TV tray, sideboard, card table, stack of bricks, clearing in the pile of laundry on your bedroom floor, whatever. You need a place to paint. Think about whether or not you’re going to have to pack your stuff up in between painting sessions or if you’ll be able to leave it all set up. If you’re gonna have to pack it up, which is sometimes unavoidable, maybe keep one of those Amazon boxes I know you’ve got, and you can put all your stuff in there in between painting sessions.

Number Two: Lights. You gotta be able to see what you’re doing. This sounds like a giant duh, but it’s not. You’ll need some sort of desk lamp, something that can get a light source close to your miniature, unless you’ve got like industrial overheads in your house or garage. There are lots of lamps out there and a lot of them will work just fine. Investing in a cheap extension cord is highly recommended too, just to make things a little easier on you, give you some flexibility. The only real factor you need to try to get is cool or daylight colored bulbs or LEDs. You CAN paint under tungsten light – or “warm” light, which is typically labeled as 3000k, which stands for kelvin, and now we’re balancing on the edge of a rabbit hole we’re gonna refuse to go down – but if you have to, you can paint under warm light. But daylight – or cool light or 5000 kelvin – is much better at rendering color for you. Warm light will cause colors to look a bit different than what you expect, that’s all.

Now there’s a ton of minutia we could go into about light quality, but right now, we’re just talking Capital B Basics. These are the lights I’ve been using for around six years. They’re relatively cheap and the long bar format means that with two of them you can get some decent coverage across your painting area. If you’re gonna use a light with a standard lamp socket, consider picking up the highest wattage LED bulbs you can find – within reason! – they’ll give you a lot more light than the typical 40 or 60 watt equivalent bulbs.

Number Three: Paint water cup! For rinsing brushes while you paint. You could fork out some ducats for some dumb thing marketed as an actual “paint brush cup” or you could just be normal and grab a glass or jar out of your kitchen. Just make sure you consider the “tip-over” factor of any vessel you choose. You’ll want something with a flat bottom and, preferably, bottom-heavy. I’ve used plenty of different containers, but the one I currently use has been my favorite. I think it was originally sold as one of those glass vases (or vahzez) home decorators fill with glass beads or decorative rocks or something. It’s square, which adds to the overall stability, and it’s relatively heavy too. Really, though, you can use anything that’ll hold water.

Number Four: Paper towels. This isn’t exactly eco-friendly but then neither are plastic miniatures and all the packaging they come in, right? Tabletop Alchemy, where we call things what they are. Sometimes. And you’re not gonna go through paper towels at some kind of crazy rate, you just need ‘em for wiping brushes on. I prefer the type that are perforated into half-sheets, this is the perfect size, for me, to fold in half and in half again and you can use all four sides as you fill it up with color and water and it’ll fit right next to the next thing in the Basics list – 

Number Five: Paint palette. You don’t want to paint right from a paint pot, or more likely, you’ll have a dropper bottle that you’ll need somewhere to drop paint onto and thin it with a little water. Or mix colors or whatever. If you’ve never painted miniatures, you can find a ton of videos on why you want to avoid putting undiluted paint on a model. But we’ll cover that in a basic painting tutorial at some point too. 

Now, your palette can be literally anything that doesn’t absorb water. We’ll talk about wet palettes in a bit but you can absolutely use a cheap plastic palette from Hobby Lobby or a piece of tinfoil or a ceramic or glass plate from your kitchen or a piece of glazed tile from a hardware store. This one costs like a dollar.

Number Six (optional): Eye-aid. Or focus aid. Or magnifiers for your peepers. If you have good eyesight, get outta here, I’m jealous. But if you do have good eyesight and can see sharp enough to paint a mini unaided, then I recommend doing so. But if you need some magnification – like I do now – there are all kinds of flawed headset things out there, contraptions can you strap to you face but I’d recommend starting with reading glasses. You can get super cheap non-prescription glasses on eBay up to +6.00. I’m currently using a pair of 4.5s but I have 5s and 6s on hand. Regular glasses are just way more comfortable than the headset things, unless you need like some crazy magnification. You can test out reader glasses at most drugstores and get a sense for what power you might need. Bear in the mind though that most retail stores aren’t gonna much beyond 3.0s. 

Number Seven: Glue. Super glue, AKA CA glue, is a pretty universal staple in any tabletop hobby endeavor. And medium viscosity is totally fine, whatever you can pick up from wherever. You may also want to have some PVA glue that can be useful for certain things but if you have to assemble a miniature, you’ll use the super glue. We’ll touch on specific plastic glue later on. 

Number Eight (another optional one): Hobby surface. You’ll want something akin to a desk blotter to work on. Desk blotter. I bet you have to be of a certain age to know what that is. Basically you just want something you can put down to protect whatever surface you’re working on. A piece of cardboard, a chunk of foam core from the dollar store, an old wood plank, a piece of craft paper, whatever. I mean, you know what you have, if you’re okay with possibly spilling paint on it, then carry on soldier. A lot of us use cutting mats, which is a nice way to work but it’s not a necessary expenditure. At the basic level this is just about protecting your work surface.

Number Nine: X-acto knife. And replacement blades. Don’t touch the pointy end and be deliberate when using one of these ridiculously sharp tools. They are extremely handy and you’ll probably definitely want one of these in your gear box.

So, I think that covers the Capital B Basics. Now we’ll get into some cost plus enthusiasm-based tiers. Again, one thing to keep in mind is that all the elements of this breakdown are mix-n-match, everything’s optional and really just suggestions. I’m just trying to give you an idea on how to begin.

Tier One – Dipping A Toe

This is for those of you out there either on a super tight budget or uncertain about whether or not you even like the idea of painting a miniature. Or both.

First item on the list is, of course, a miniature. I would suggest a plastic miniature from Reaper Minis or a 3D printed miniature from Etsy. The main reason for this is the likelihood of getting a miniature that doesn’t require assembly, other than maybe gluing it to a base. But, you know, find a mini you like and take the plunge. There are links to some miniature manufacturers below but you can also maybe visit a local tabletop game store to find something you can look at in person and take right home and get to work.

Item Two: Paints. So this is where controversy begins, but we’ll put on that +4 armor of opinion and steamroll ahead. This is just a guide from one nut’s perspective, remember. Now, from the perspective of having no paints at all, trying to work with a budget and decide what colors to buy is always a challenge. When you’re dipping a toe you don’t want to spend too many hard-earned ducats! So this is what I suggest: grab a black, a white, a silver, a dark brown, and then pick two or three other colors you might want to paint on the figure. 

Now, what BRAND of paint should you buy? To be honest, at this tier level, any paint line designed for miniature painting is fine to go with. I wouldn’t recommend Games Workshop or Citadel paints but only because of their retail cost, the actual quality of their paints is decent. A lot of folks recommend The Army Painter brand for budget-conscious painters, but I personally don’t like their paints very much and you can get Vallejo paints for basically the same price. But for affordability, those would be the two brands I’d look for first. Now, all these companies are going to have enormous color charts – meaning they’ve got hundreds of colors. Just pick out a couple colors you like. Both The Army Painter and Vallejo market boxed sets, so a basic colors set could be the way to go. If you go with Vallejo, I would recommend their new formula Game Color line, because they have brighter more saturated types of colors, perfect for sci-fi and fantasy miniatures, and Army Painter does have a great selection of colors.

Item Three: Brushes. Here, for the absolute budget-conscious toe-dipper, I suggest something like this. If you can drop a couple more bucks maybe get two different sizes of these. The most important thing you want from your brush is a point! And most big box art stores – Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, etc. – will have 50% off sales on their brushes like every other week. If you’re getting cheap brushes, you can a couple different sizes just to play around with. Side note: it’s easy to think that to painting tiny details requires a tiny brush, but that’s not true – it requires a fine point on whatever brush you’re using. Larger brushes – and I’m talking like size 1 here or size 2 – with a great point are easier to use than triple zero sized brushes.

Item Four: Primer. Now this one has some variations that depend on what material your miniature is made of. If it’s metal or resin, you’ll need primer of some kind, but if your miniature is from the Reaper Bones line or is regular injection molded plastic – that usually means it comes on a sprue – you don’t even need primer. Most of us do prime our plastic miniatures but that’s almost more for visual aid and artistic choices than anything technical. 

Now, most paint brands will sell some kind of small bottle of brushable primer, like this by Vallejo and this by Reaper. You can also buy a can of aerosol primer – what we affectionately refer to as “rattle can” primer. Army Painter has a bunch of colors to choose from, or you can get a can of primer from a hardware store, brands like Krylon or Rustoleum are fine. This stuff is totally usable, but if you want to pony up a few extra ducats you can get a slightly smoother result from one of the hobby brands. For just starting out, and if you only want to spend money on one color of primer, I’d recommend going with white. Black would be my second choice, colors lay down brighter over white but again, we’re just talking starting out here. 

Now, you’ll only want rattle can primer if you’ve got an outdoor, well-ventilated space you can spray this stuff in. If you don’t have an outdoor space, if you live in an apartment like me for example, the brush-on primer is the way to go.

Item Five (optional): I’d recommend these three specific bottles of what we call “washes”. Again, every paint brand sells some kind of wash, which is essentially diluted paint in a clear medium. What does that mean? It just means it’ll do this cool thing of settling color down in the recesses of a miniature and leave the raised areas only slightly tinted. And the greatest thing about a wash is that you literally slap it on, no precision necessary. This is a super easy, beginner way of adding depth and shadow to your miniatures. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend putting these washes over areas of a miniature you’ve painted that you want to look “bright and clean”, but a typical way we use washes is by putting down a base coat of color, putting the wash on and then after that dries, going back with the original color to add some highlights to the raised areas. It looks pretty cool and when I started out painting minis, I had no idea what a wash was and I really wish I had learned about them sooner. So, you can make your own washes by watering down your paint but if you have a few ducats to spare, I’d recommend these three Shades from Army Painter, they are pretty great for beginners. 

All right, let’s kick things up a notch. Maybe you’re like “I’ve wanted to paint miniatures for a while” and you fancy painting up minis for all your players, or maybe even some bad guys for your party to fight. This tier might set you up for success in the long run.

The “I Think I’m Gonna Like This” tier tackles some larger financial investment, but is also a bit more detailed as far as the hobby goes. It should give you a decent base from which to advance pretty quickly, along with all the youtube painting tutorials you’re gonna watch.

But let’s insert a Public Service Announcement here: watching painting tutorials and actually painting your miniatures are two very different things. Watching tutorials is optional and painting minis is not – actually painting is necessary for learning and growing as a painter. Let’s not confuse the two.

Building on the Capital B Basic tier, we’ll start with 

Item One: Miniatures. You might go for a boxed set of bad guys or a cherry-picked selection of 3d prints for heroes. There’s a lot to choose from in this little magical world of ours and that’s a whole video topic in itself. Maybe three or four videos. But here are some places to start for sets of miniatures. And of course links are below.

For boxed sets, you might check out Northstar Miniatures, they have a pretty big catalog in all different kinds of genres. Check out the stuff they have for Frostgrave and Stargrave and Oathmark along with all their other stuff. If you’ve got a little bit more of a budget, check out Games Workshop, and don’t miss out on the smaller boxes they sell in the Boxed Games section. Both of these companies produce plastic miniatures on sprues that require assembly and you may want some plastic glue. We’ll touch on that in a bit. 

There are probably hundreds of miniature companies, so I’m sure some simple google searches for plastic fantasy miniatures will return tons of results. But when you’re searching for boxes of bad guys, you might want to search for terms like “skirmish game miniatures” or “wargame miniatures”, you’ll find things sold as “units”, which means you’ll get 20 goblins or orcs or elves in a box. 

For individual heroes I tend to stick with Etsy for really cool 3d prints, just searching up race and class. But there are a ton of companies out there. 

What if you’re looking for a monster for your table? Again, some of the bigger war-game companies like Games Workshop and Privateer Press have some great offerings, but you can also go right back to Reaper Miniatures of google search for DnD monster miniatures or dragons or whatever you’re trying to find. Finding just the right miniature is almost a side hobby in and of itself!

All right, Item Two: Paints. This time I’ll give you some of my personal preferences, but again, there’s tons of discussion on this topic out there and thousands of reviews and comparisons, but I’ll say this: if it’s paint designed for miniature painting, you probably aren’t gonna go wrong. The suggestions I’m gonna give you are typically easy to find in local game stores and online retailers – and one suggestion that might warrant some further exploration on your part.

Reaper Master Series, available in sets or as singles. Vallejo, especially their “New Formula” Game Color paint range. AK Interactive 3^rd Gen, these have the best caps in the business, which sounds like a dumb metric, but they are pretty cool. The Citadel Contrast paint line and its direct competitor, Vallejo Express Color. These last two are a special type of paint and I think it’s actually pretty interesting stuff. Ostensibly they are formulated so you can kind of use them like washes and get pretty striking results without too much effort. They are definitely fun to use but just keep in mind that they don’t function like normal paint. It would be good to watch a tutorial or two of someone showing how they operate. Vallejo Express Colors are much cheaper than the Games Workshop paints, but Citadel’s line has way more colors. Which ultimately may not really matter. My only extra suggestion is that if you grab some of these “contrast” paints as they’ve kind of collectively come to be called, always grab a bottle or two of whatever Medium goes with those paints. That way you can thin out a color if you want to lessen the intensity for any reason. You can always put on multiple coats to build up thinned out color. But we’re rabbit holing into painting tips and that’s just not what we’re doing today. Today’s all about the gear.

Item Three: Brushes. Here we’re going to step gingerly into some more controversial – or, you know, discussion-worthy – territory. Cheap synthetic brushes are always good to have on hand, but for this tier I’m going to suggest you pick up one or two more expensive, but in my personal opinion, worth-it Kolinsky sable brushes. There are quite a few expensive brands out there that make really nice sable brushes, but my suggestion is to call up Wind River Art Supply – their site is old-school, you can’t order from it, you have to call them to place your order, but the owners are super nice and they ship stuff super fast and packed well. AND it’s the only place you can really get Rosemary and Co brand Kolinksy sable brushes here in the US. You can go directly to Rosemary and Co in Europe. Specifically I recommend the Series 33 #1 brush with the short handle, but the series 22 and series 8 are very similar.

I’ve also heard good things about Monument Hobbies special synthetic brushes but I haven’t personally tried those yet.

Couple of tips for taking care of your brushes: store them in a way that doesn’t put weight on the tip – like I used to do when I was just a savage. Do your best to not let paint fill into the ferule, this part here. Paint that gets in there will dry and force the fibers apart and eventually split the tip of the brush so it won’t be able to hold a point. And a point is the literal point of these brushes, you wanna keep it sharp and healthy. Pick up a little container of brush soap. Doesn’t matter what brand, it’s just a soft detergent and you can clean your brushes periodically, keep ‘em in good shape. But again, these are tools, so don’t be afraid to use them. But that’s also why having a few cheap synthetic brushes is a great idea, you can use those for a lot of stuff and not worry about beating them up.

One last suggestion is picking up some cheap makeup brushes from Amazon or the dollar store. You can use these for a technique called “dry brushing”, and if you google that, you’ll find a billion tutorials on it.

Item Number Four: Primer. Feels like we were just here. In fact, let’s just pull over the Primer bit from the “Dipping A Toe” tier, it’s basically the same for this tier. But if you’re thinking of painting a bunch of miniatures and you want to be able to prime them fast, you’ll want to go with a rattle can, if you can spray outside where fumes won’t kill you or your pets, OR … you might pull in the Primer Item from the next tier. But of course brush on primer will still work and remember, if you’re painting injection molded plastic miniatures, you don’t HAVE to use a primer.

Item Number Five: Palette. For this tier, I’m recommending you go with a wet palette. There are a lot of expensive ones out there that look pretty slick, and they probably are, but don’t bother with those. Jump on Amazon, pick up this Masters wet palette and a package of antibacterial sponges like these. And a roll of your preferred brand of parchment paper. When you get that palette inside your house, throw that yellow sponge away (or keep it for something else), replace it with one of your new antimicrobial sponges – and put a couple of US pennies in the corners – or if you have some copper wire for some reason, put a couple pieces of that in the palette – copper cuts down on the time it takes for mold to grow in this thing. Then cut some parchment paper into pieces smaller than the sponge, fill the palette with water so the sponge is soaked but not entirely submerged and lay down your parchment paper. Good to go. When you’ve filled the paper with paint, toss it and put down another piece. 

You can always use one of Capital B Basic tier’s palette suggestions too, and you might want both to experiment with. The wet palette keeps your paint workable for a lot longer than a dry palette, that’s really the bottom line.  

Item Number Six: Washes! Again, almost every paint brand has some kind of wash line or you can make your own by thinning your paints with water. That takes some practice to learn how to do just right, but it’s a thing. There’s a bunch of paint tech surrounding washes and for me, I just drop the cash for ready-made washes. Games Workshop has an excellent line of washes, and so does Army Painter. They’re just handy but not required.

Item Number Seven: Painting handles. For all tiers I recommend getting a package of these. And maybe a package of matching lids. And some poster tac. There are several advantages to these versus other types of painting handles, like the ones sold from Games Workshop – ridiculously engineered – or these other things, there’s quite a few out there. Essentially, you will want to fix your miniature onto a separate object you can hold while you paint it. The reason I recommend these little cups is they come in two sizes, they are super cheap, disposable but also comfortable to hold (for me anyway) and they are reusable. Unless you melt it with something, you can just keep putting miniatures on them and you can also of course use them as actual containers for things. I end up using them for holding basing material like flock and dirt and sand.  Anyway, there are specific products out there called painting handles, just keep in mind you want something that won’t tip over when you set it down.

Item Number Eight: Clippers and sandpaper. Get a pair of clippers you can use on plastic and then don’t use them on anything except plastic. That’ll keep ‘em sharp enough for a long time and you won’t ding the blades on metal. Clippers make cutting models from sprues much easier than using an xacto knife or twisting the parts off with your dorito-stained fingers. Pick up a cheap pack of 250 or 320 grit sand paper and tear off a small square when you need some and you can use this to smooth out the miniature where you cut the sprue off, or these things called mold lines. You don’t have to do this but once you get into painting you’ll probably wish you had. 

Item Nine: Basing materials! So miniatures typically stand on round or square bases and you might want to add a little bit of texture or grass or leaves or rocks. You can easily do this with some dirt or sand from your backyard or little sticks or pebbles or clean cat litter even, but there are also tons of companies that sell what’s called flock and static grass. You don’t need very much of this to start out with and you can water down some PVA white glue, put it on a base around a miniature’s feet and sprinkle this basing material all over it. Let it dry and you could even paint over it if you want or just let it be as is. Decorating the bases of your miniatures really adds a lot to their overall look. Check out the company Woodland Scenics online or in model shops, Army Painter sells flock and basing material, so does AK Interactive and Vallejo. There’s a lot of stuff out there. But don’t go ham at first, just pick up a couple things you think might work and then after you’ve worked with some stuff and done some more research you’ll start to see where you can save money from brand to brand. 

Item Ten, last but not least: Plastic glue. Some people like to use superglue to glue up their plastic models, and that’s fine. You’ll need super glue for resin and metal miniatures for sure. And you can definitely use it for plastic models but plastic glue, to me, is just nicer to use on plastic miniatures. It melts plastic together. This is the brand I use, but there are different brands, like everything else. Just stay away from the thick Testors stuff that comes in tubes – their liquid plastic cement is probably fine, I just never understood the thick goopy stuff. 

All right, this brings us to tier 3, the “Cowabunga” tier! You’ve got a big appetite for miniatures and you’ve got a budget to match. Although I think everyone who enjoys mini painting will aspire to this tier over time. Really, this tier is just a single big ticket upgrade: and that’s an airbrush and an air compressor. 

This pair of contraptions is very useful – at the beginning of your mini painting journey it’s useful for priming miniatures, but from there you can head down the airbrush rabbit hole as far as you want. Airbrushing zenithal highlights with primer is a perfect beginner exercise for starting out and from there the sky’s the limit. 

Here’s a set I recommend to start out with. Now, I’m not an experienced airbrusher by any means, but because I’ve got the compressor, I can upgrade to any airbrush I want in the future and in the meantime I can practice airbrushing as much as I want with this cheap airbrush. There are smaller, cheaper compressors that don’t have a tank like this but I think it’s worth investing the extra ducats to get one with a tank. The tank allows the compressor to run periodically rather than constantly the whole time you’re working, which in the long run is much better. I live on the second floor of an apartment building and this thing is quiet enough to not bother the neighbors.

Airbrushing acrylic paint is really tame fume-wise – and I’m pretty susceptible to any kind of chemical fumes – but I still wear a simple dust mask when I run the brush. If you’re gonna spray enamels or lacquers, you’ll 100% need either a genuine air scrubber or filter system but I’d say just don’t bother with anything non-acrylic until you’re much more familiar with painting in general. And really you could go your whole painting career without ever putting anything non-water based in the airbrush. 

Working on miniatures means the overspray isn’t really much of an issue and plenty of painters just spray airbrush right at their main hobby desk. But I like to spray into a backdrop just because. I made a very simple “booth” out of foam core and tape that folds up flat for storage. You could use a cardboard box if you wanted to. 

A lot of paint brands sell an “airbrush” line of paints, which is just pre-thinned paint, because you’ll always thin whatever you’re putting through the brush. But I’d suggest just learning right out of the gate how to thin your paints for spraying. Or, you know, buy some airbrush paints – you’re in charge!

You’re also gonna want some varnish, specifically some matte varnish. Clear coats can protect your minis a bit more from abrasion but one of the best things about putting down a matte coat is that it unifies the finish of all the paints and washes you’ve put on the miniature as well as sealing it. And you can always continue painting over a clear coat too, as long as it’s had time to fully dry. 

I use this Mecha matte varnish from Vallejo and primers from Badger Stynylrez and Vallejo but there are lots of brands to choose from. And remember, you’ll probably want to thin any varnish or primer you spray as well, so you can get a bottle of airbrush thinner and use it for pretty much everything. There are youtube channels that discuss how to make your own homemade thinner for much cheaper, so that’s an alternative to keep in mind. Just make sure you stick with acrylic varnish, not polyurethane, which seems to be cropping up more for some reason. Unless you know what you’re doing of course.

Side note, I keep some gloss and satin varnish on hand too just for, you know, whims. You can mix gloss and matte varnish to create your own custom satin varnish if there’s a particular look you’re going for. Personally, I use gloss only as a finishing effect on certain parts of a miniature if I want that look, overall most folks would agree that a matte finish is really the best looking finish for a miniature or model.

So, I’m 100% sure I’ve forgotten to mention something in this ludicrously long video and I’m 100% sure you, as a new miniature painter – are gonna have questions. This video is really just intended to give you some clear advice on what materials and gear to collect before you start painting your first miniature, but as I’ve mentioned multiple times, you should definitely feel free to mix and match and collect stuff as you see fit or as needed. 

One last piece of advice: when you paint your minis, don’t sweat making them perfect or get upset if the first few don’t turn out the way you envision. If this is new to you, it’s new and you gotta just try it out. Don’t get discouraged, everything takes practice. And perfection … doesn’t exist. Here’s proof. <snap>

So, set up your work space, grab a mini, and just. have. fun.

See ya!

Frustration, failure, punishment, embarrassment, these are a few of my favorite things. These are also all potential symptoms of the famous FFT. First BARKing Time.

So let me tell you a little story, a tale as old as time.

A man walks into a workshop. He sits at a table cluttered with the tools of his trade. He takes a deep breath and cracks his knuckles. For he is to attempt this day that which he’s only seen others do. Did he study these other artists’ techniques? Did he pour over the examples of his betters? Did he prepare and plan for this singular new exercise? Did he pause to consider his own fundamental lack of understanding?

Nay! He is simply deciding to leap without looking! The best kind of leap.

Alas, the laughter from the crowd haunts him still.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes your host tests his resolve – or perhaps rather tests his capacity for embarrassment. And he thanks his patrons for supporting this exercise in inanity.

So when I happened to glance into the Pile of Opportunity: Primed and Ready Edition display case back when I was putting Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars away and grabbing that dragonborn to paint up – well, to be honest, I had initially grabbed this miniature to paint up in a leisurely way. And thanks to how this went, I ended up grabbing that dragonborn and that one became the subject of the video at the beginning of the month. 

Yeah, this pair of videos got real squirrelly. As you’ll see soon, the dragonborn would have made a much better model for today’s exercise and this model would have been fine for the earlier video. 

Have I talked enough nonsense at you yet? 

All right, so I’m always thinking about how I want to improve my painting, and about techniques I want to learn or get better at and how every miniature presents on opportunity. The other side of the Desire coin is Action. If we always leave this coin face up and never flip it over to the action side, well, you get it. Wishing for something never generates results. Actions always generate results. Of some kind, right?

So I told myself – it’s time. You’re gonna try out Non Metallic Metal.

Now, quite a few of you, dear viewers, have expressed a mild appreciation for how I tend to show my mistakes and learning process in my videos. This video might be taking that sentimentality a bit too far, just a warning. Dear viewer discretion is advised.

We’ve all seen examples of non-metallic metal in miniature painting. Do I think it’s super cool? Yes I do. Do I think it’s necessary outside of highly competitive painting competitions or display pieces? No. So why do I want to try it? See question number one.

So I started out painting the figure’s face and actually doing a little shading on it and darkening the eyes, etc. At this point I’m still thinking about color scheme, ‘cause I have no idea going in as per usual. I thought I’d do her cloak up in red and I’ve never tried out this Sigvald Burgundy Contrast paint so to see what’s it like, I painted the whole cloak in it thinking I’d highlight it up to red. This Contrast color turned out to be really nice, I dig it. 

And then some Basilicanum Gray for her actual clothing under the armor, I just kinda wanted that stuff to go dark and let the cloak and her hair and armor be the brighter parts of the model. A mud brown for the leather bits, which of course I’ll wash down later and some wildwood for her boots, for a little bit of a darker leather look. Then out of habit I went in with a black contrast paint to base coat all the armor. This was probably not the way to go for doing non-metallic metal, but we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

I put some red down on the leather wrappings on the haft of the warhammer still thinking I was going to take that cloak up to red, but you’ll see how that panned out later too. I highlighted the leather in preparation for the dark brown wash, again this is pretty typical leather process, I’d like to get better at leather but this has become such an easy few steps that it’s hard for me to think outside my own box. I threw this wash onto the hammer haft as well, cause I was not liking the red against that purple or burgundy cloak color.

Choosing hair color is another constant stumbling block for me but I thought I’d try out a realistic blonde, so foregoing my usual noob choice of yellow, I went with a sandy tone. I’ve done this once before on a miniature and it turned out really nice. The only issue I have is the lack of contrast between her skin tone and the hair color, but hey, one thing at a time, I’ll try to consciously get better at painting faces sometime in the future. 

I’m not sure why I went with a gray on the hammer, but I thought I’d be able to glaze in some depth to it later with some darker blue-ish tones. 

So now I came to the whole point for this miniature, this non-metallic metal thing. And here’s where we can discuss a number of things.

One, how watching hours of youtube painting examples and tutorials is a substitute for exactly zero hours of actual painting practice.

Two, there are typically additional concepts incorporated into any given specific technique, like for non-metallic metal (or NMM as we in the hobby call it), we need a grasp of how light interacts with materials and objects. At least on some kind of basic level.

Three, painting of any kind, even most digital painting and illustration, is partially a physical skill and getting good at anything physical requires physical practice.

So I obviously have no idea what I’m doing here. The first thing that occurred to me was that this was a terrible miniature selection to try learning nonmetallic metal with. It doesn’t even have a sword, which is typically a long flat surface that makes for, arguably, the best object to paint NMM with. But no, I’ve chosen a figure without a sword and lots of intricate armor that’s full of small details and filigree. You can see that my planning ahead or actual thought process is microscopic at best.

One major issue is that I can’t visualize what this piece of armor should look like as real steel. I know that the general format for non-metallic metal is all about high contrast – small bright highlights graduated into very dark shadow, roughly speaking. I also know – keyword, academically – that highlights and shadows are about describing 3D volumes.

These armor pieces have so many ridges, I have no idea where highlights should go. Let’s be honest: if they’d been perfectly smooth slabs of metal, I’d still have no idea where to place highlights. In the end, because I’m working off this black base coat, I’m not even painting non-metallic metal, I’m much more painting this as if it were black enameled armor (you know, as if the miniature were wearing black armor).

So maybe I should have base-coated the armor in a steel gray as opposed to the black, but honestly I have no idea. I might try that in a future attempt.

Another thing I’ve been noticing is that I’m personally getting worse at painting tiny details. Getting older is fun, ain’t it? This is partially due to aging eyesight but it’s also partially due to what I guess is a reduction or degradation of fine motor skills. I mean, I was never gonna be a surgeon, right, but still. I’m noticing it. I’m actually looking forward to painting up some kind of larger scale miniature just because of this. 

Of course I’m simply may not harbor any great talent in the miniature painting realm, and rather I might harbor a great talent for making excuses. Which do you think is more likely?

My feeling at this point in the process was total frustration. Maybe a dose of existential defeat hung around the fringes of my fragile ego. I flirted pretty heavily with the idea of just putting a color down on the armor and calling it “fantasy colored armor”. But something made me push through the aggravation, the gnashing of teeth and the wailing of the damned.

Oh, there was wailing, trust me. I could play you some of the scratch track audio recorded by the painting camera, but my capacity for embarrassment has as about the same limit as youtube does for profanity.

The thing that gave me just enough resolve to hammer through was the notion of “content”. 

Yes, I was sick to my stomach as well. Never say social media isn’t good for anything. 

So this is an example of utter failure. And exploiting public humiliation for views. 

But it’s also an example of the first step in any journey. A necessary, predictable, appropriate human reaction to the first step in learning something new.

Remember – to get somewhere you gotta start walking, even if it’s in the wrong direction. I’m just practicing what I preach, dammit. Or at least I’m ordering one of these right now and I’m gonna wear it! You’ll see.

Everyone’s got a different baseline of talent or baseline of skill – attribute score, if you will – in all different kinds of endeavors. But just like in a role playing game, just because you have a lower attribute score doesn’t mean you can’t succeed at an attempt to accomplish something using that low-scoring attribute. My first attempt at taking photos and shooting video were much better than this nonsense of a first attempt at non-metallic metal. That just means one thing comes easier to me than the other, but so what? We’ve all drawn that crappy first stick figure, or missed the ball when trying golf for the first time.

What? Yeah, I did that, I missed a lot of times and I’ve never tried golf again.

But whatever, right? If you wanna learn how to do something, you either try and quit or you go Lieutenant Dan – you call this a storm! Come and get me! – And you dare yourself to just jump off the cliff again and again until you grow those wings. Me and my ridiculously convoluted metaphors. Either way, it’s your choice. Be happy with it. I don’t wanna play golf, but I do wanna paint some damn non-metallic metal someday.

Even though today is obviously not that day. So here’s the finished model, and I don’t know what to say about it. But I’ve got it documented now and it’ll be useful at some point for comparative purposes, in some way. I’ll watch some more tutorials on the non-metallic metal process and look at some more examples and I’ll try this again, but I think I’ll almost certainly pick figure with a sword to try it on next. 

So, dare yourself to learn something new, initial results be damned! And then, understand that that feeling of frustration and nightmares is completely natural and a part of the learning process.

See ya!

We know the truth: it ain’t the gift, but the thought, that counts. And even though we might want to argue that point in certain situations, I think we all think it’s fundamentally true. 

Once you’re older than, you know, like twenty or something.

So, while this idea I’m sharing with you today is about a possible Christmas gift idea is mostly for miniature painters, I’ll toss in an idea for writers and Dungeon Masters too, ‘cause at some point, giving a present often feels way cooler than receiving one and we all have something to give that stems from our creativity.

And this gift idea goes both ways! Cause mini painters are always looking for ways to shrink that Pile Of Opportunity!

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes it’s Christmas in July! And we thank our patrons for their generous spirit that happens with or without Christmas, always much appreciated.

So a few months ago I promised you we’d have a bit of Christmas in the summer. Unless you’re in Australia, or, you know, elsewhere south of the equator. Then just, you know, counter swirl that statement.

Yes, I know the flushing swirl thing is a myth, but you know, I’m just riffing here.

So out of my decent sized immediate family, there are only three tabletop gamers – myself, my daughter and my oldest niece. For the record, I’ve got three brothers and four sisters. Nearly all of them have spouses and kids of varying ages. And for those of you wondering, yes, I’m the oldest. Huh, I guess I was born a 19 Delta. That’s an Army reference.  

A few years ago, while growing and cultivating my Pile of Opportunity like a good hobbyist, I came across this mini from Steamforged Games’ Guild Ball. Which I’ve never played but I do like quite a few of their figures. Immediately I was taken with the character and the sculpt, which is pretty unique in the skirmish game arena, there’s just so much character in the sculpt and the flying beer is an awesome detail. And before I even bought it I started thinking about my brother who brews beer in his basement. He’s as deep into the homebrew hobby as we are in the tabletop hobby. He makes straight up legit beer that is on par with all kinds of commercial and craft beer. I know. He’s got 10 taps – that’s right, ten – in the dining room that always have something crazy good on ‘em. I saw this figure and I was like, well, that’s my brother’s mascot right there.

So I put that mini in a Pile of Opportunity and just figured I’d get around to it at some point. But that’s the first time I started to think vaguely about gifting a miniature to someone. Fun fact, my brother has a handful of terribly painted minis I gave him probably 30 years ago. I saw ‘em the last time I stayed at his place. They are legitimately awful in that kinda nostalgic “this is a first time painter” sorta way.

But then sometime later I picked up this figure from Privateer Press, it’s a special edition mini and I just thought it was cool. And then I realized that it would be a perfect gift for my brother’s wife. She has basically her own meme going, she’s famous for this exact interaction: “Hey, you want some beer or some wine?” “Yes, please.” I wish I could have inscribed that on the miniature’s base.

Now, I’m probably making my brother and sister in law sound like a pair of dysfunctional party animal alcoholics, but that’s not the case at all. They are an exceptional pair of functional party animal parents and their home is the best place to vacation. And yes, you should be jealous. 

On an entirely different occasion, again, years later, I actually needed to give someone a painted mini and I needed some way to format that for them. So I went on Amazon and found these bell jar display glass dome things. And it worked out pretty cool. And that’s when the idea of painting up those two minis to give my brother and sister in law bloomed into my full blown Christmas project. Which is a project you could do too.

Now, as I mentioned, most of my family is … how do I say this diplomatically? Most of my family is unfamiliar with DnD. And if a skirmish game blew up in their face, they still wouldn’t have any idea what a skirmish game was. But they all, to a person, love the Lord of the Rings. 

So the first thing I did was make a list of all the folks I was gonna paint up minis for. Like I said, I have quite a few nieces and nephews but I decided to draw a line and only do this particular round of gifts for those over the age of sixteen. Hey, the youngsters get Lego, so, whatever, now I’m jealous. 

I had this vague idea about photographing the finished miniatures as a group and it’d be like this family portrait of adventurers or something. So I felt I’d have to also paint up a mini for myself too, otherwise this family portrait would be weird, right? So my full list came to 14 miniatures. But it’s cool, I started this project in August which is why I was able to get everything done on time.

Now the coolest part to me about this gift idea was personalizing each figure for the gift-ee? Gift recipient. And I also wanted this to be a big surprise for everyone. My family lives all across the country and I thought this would be such a cool thing for everyone to share in this communal surprise at the same time on Christmas Day. So I wanted to keep the whole thing as secret as I could and I needed two pieces of information from everyone – one, I needed to pick figures according to what each person might like, thematically, and two, I needed to find out everyone’s favorite color. For the paint schemes, right?

So I contacted everyone on the list separately and asked something like, “hey, if you were gonna be a character in Lord of the Rings, what would you be? Like would you be an elf with a bow or would you be a magical wizard, or an axe-slinging dwarf? Please don’t say you wanna be a hobbit.”

This sound familiar? Course. I used the same technique here as how I approach getting new players into DnD, there’s a video on that right here.

That’s how I went about selecting a miniature for each person. To find out their favorite colors, I went a little bit lateral with my espionage techniques. I asked various people what other people’s favorite colors were, while swearing them to secrecy and making it sound like I was just getting this one thing for this one person. With all the recon done, my list was complete.

I did some shopping and leveraging of the Pile Of Opportunity for the figures and then I spent a couple months painting them all up. This is why you start this project in the summer. Or winter, if you’re down under, right? You want plenty of lead time, ‘cause if any project has a hard deadline, this is it.

Now the painting part is one side of the project, the other is the presentation. There were all kinds of little factors I had to figure out. I wanted to alleviate as much hassle on the recipient’s end as I could. I wanted each figure to ship with it’s own glass dome and all that stuff to stay safe in transit. What worked out super perfect was that a mini wrapped in a nice little burrito of bubble wrap fit inside a glass dome. This meant I could ship each mini and dome inside the OEM dome packaging, which was itself already designed with styrofoam inserts to protect the glass from demented Amazon drivers. 

I also wanted an easy way for a recipient to secure the mini in the dome once it was unpacked. And I wanted the mini to be secure on the plinth when it was placed on display. I briefly considered including a chunk of poster tac in each package but that’s not very elegant, it’s subject to user error and it would end up being a mess after a few years cause it like melts right? That’s when I figured magnets would be the way to go, they would make for the best user experience.

Of course that meant I had to counter sink a magnet into either the wooden plinth or the mini base and either another magnet or a piece of steel into the other. It’s a pain in the ass no doubt but overall, it’s worth the effort. It took me some time to figure out what size magnets to use and specifically I was looking for a magnetic bond that was strong but not too strong. I had a, perhaps irrational, fear of someone trying to pick their mini up and some part of it breaking due to the strength of the magnets. I eventually settled on these and I installed one on each of the plinths. And I got these steel blanks, which are really quite thin, and installed them in the base of each miniature. There’s really a whole bunch of ways you could do this and varying sizes of magnets and whatnot, but I went with this combo to alleviate the strength of a double magnet system and also the depth or thinness of each would allow me to fix them where they needed to go without too much trouble. 

To drill the sockets for the magnets in the plinths, I bought a set of dremel bits made for woodworking, specifically getting one of these that matched the diameter of the magnets I wanted to use. These bits carve out a flat-bottomed hole that’s perfect for dropping the magnet into. I drilled a pilot hole to accommodate the guide nub on the bit and then just did my best to not mar the plinth and to not drill too deep. Here’s a plinth I messed up on and yeah, I had to order a replacement.

I used thick CA glue for both the magnets and steel blanks and a little bit of baking soda to fill in where I needed it. Once these were all done, everything was pretty much ready. I shot individual photos of each figure and then staged the group shot. Then I packed everything up into the dome packages and then I did one last thing.

I created this little insert in photoshop with this holiday message and the URL for the photo gallery. I even turned the URL into a QR code, just to make it that much easier for people to quickly jump into the gallery. I thought folks might like to see everyone else’s miniatures, especially the group shot. I printed this out on my black and white printer and just slipped one into each package.

The final step was to actually wrap each dome in Christmas wrapping paper, add a little name tag and then I sent out large single boxes to each family’s address. I sent them out early too, I think right at the beginning of December, and on Christmas Day, everyone opened their figures. And it was pretty damn cool.

Now, I think if you’re a writer, you could do the same sort of thing with short stories. Regardless of the medium you work in, there’s just something super cool about sharing your creativity or your hobby with your friends and family, especially those who are not exposed to it. It all just takes a little planning and some enthusiasm to get it done. I think the idea that what you’re working on is a gift creates some energy and drive beyond your normal hobbying engine, so to speak. Plus, you’re just doing more of what you enjoy. How do you go wrong with more hobbying?

So! Go make some gifts. And have fun sharing some of yourself with those you love. I bet you’ll feel pretty stellar about it and I’ll be your gift-ee’s will be pleasantly surprised.

See ya!

I don’t have an appropriate clip for today’s painting subject, so I just grabbed one of my old highlights from back in the day of a game by the same company that’s inspiring today’s painting project. And I don’t have an appropriate clip because I kicked that addiction cold turkey twelve years ago, and that was back before I ever captured clips of anything. 

I’m a late adopter, what can I say.

I found this figure a couple years ago on Etsy and immediately knew how I wanted to paint it up. And that’s Warcraft style!

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we paint a mini just for fun and without any particular game in mind! And we thank out patrons, the wind beneath our bbq wings. Tabletop Alchemy, get your spray can cheese here. 

All right, how many of you dear viewers were addicted to – I mean “played” – World of Warcraft? I played the first two expansions and, here’s a little personal nostalgia, I first downloaded it thinking my oldest daughter would dig it, she was 11 or 12 at the time. And it was both of our’s first experience with an MMORPG. And when we started it up for the first time, we sat side by side at my desk and she chose the race – Night Elf – and I chose the class – Hunter. And while I will always argue with my buddy about the insipid nature of the term “member berries”, I’ll always have a fond memory of that now-defunct night elf starting zone Teldrassil.

That environment was so atmospheric and gorgeous to roam around in and the music and sounds were just fantastic. And for the first couple of days my daughter and I split the keyboard. One of us drove while one of us punched the combat buttons. It was silly, but it was fun and just an awesome father-daughter moment.

This troll warrior miniature is straight up World of Warcraft, there’s no doubt about it. And I have two specific things I’m looking forward to painting that I think will really sell the WoW factor – that’s World of Warcraft factor.

So this guy’s been sitting in primer for a year at least, hanging out in the Pile of Opportunity, Primed and Ready Edition display case, and he’s on one of those bases from Micro Art Studio. Right off the bat, I’m going for some classic WoW, blue troll skin tones. Now obviously trolls come in a variety of epidermal shades but I wanted to go with the classic blue both because it’s sorta classic and it’s gonna be a good contrast for the other colors I’ve got planned.

Red’s another pretty classic WoW color, at least for the Horde, right, but to keep the armor a little bit differentiated, I’m putting down a more rusty red on the pants here. I’ll use some of the brown I mixed into the pants color – trousers for you Brits – I use that brown for the base leather tone. 

And then I added a little bit of purple for the pants shading, again, to keep playing with variation in the red tones.

As always you gotta do some touch up when you’re gonna put down either transparent paints or lighter colors and I like this AK 3^rd Gen Pale Gray for that. In fact, I’m liking this AK 3^rd Gen paint line more and more as I use it more and more. 

This Shyish Purple contrast paint goes on almost black, so while I wanted to give some color to the boots, I didn’t want them to stand out too much, even though bright armor pieces are definitely a wow thing. You’re always looking all mismatched until you hit the higher levels in the game – transmog wasn’t a thing back when I played. Some wildwood contrast for the banner staff and then it’s on to highlighting the skin.

I’m pretty terrible at painting muscles and bare flesh, this is something I need to work on. For some reason, the fact that it’s not actual “skin tone” makes it a little easier but still. I put down a second highlight knowing that I’m going to wash this all down with a blue shade. I used drakenhof nightshade, but it is the old formula and it’s a pretty old bottle of paint. I’m not sure it worked the way it was supposed to, it seems to have introduced a lot of texture over the top of the highlights rather than smoothing them like I wanted. 

Oh, right, I forgot to the hit the banner headpiece with the red and I use more of that pale gray to pick out the raised detail in prep for the gold metallics.

Which we put on now, starting with this darker, dimmer gold from Scale 75, I typically use their metallics the most. And painting all these spikes and armor trim is definitely as much of a pain the ass as it looks like it is. And there’s quite a bit of gold going on with all these bracelets and the sword hilt and the banner thing. I used a slightly lighter gold to kind of hit the tops of all the spikes and introduce a tiny bit of highlighting. Not that it’s really noticeable.

I have no idea what this spikey ball thing is, it’s like a cross between an incense censor and some kind of fantasy bomb slash morning star thing. I think dark iron has the right feel and we’ll put some rust on it in a bit.

Some purple highlights for the boots, again, just to bring up some of that World of Warcraft flavor and I also have a color plan here, kind of. Little touches of a brighter purple to seal the deal, even though I still want the boots to be dark but just with a hint of that purple vibe.

Now for some typical leather highlighting, I kinda use this recipe for most leather accents, putting in a first highlight and then adding a second highlight that I try to put down with some scratches and stippling techniques for texture. 

Then some washes, Army painter soft tone for the leather and Citadel Sepia – the old formula – for all this crazy gold. I just cover the red armor in it too cause it would be a nightmare to try NOT to hit those reds. Washes are always my favorite part. 

While the wash is drying I hit the cloth straps on the banner staff – I’m sure they’re supposed to be leather but I wanted to get some brighter contrast in the colors there, so I decided they were some kind of canvas strips or whatever.

In the wash mood, I figured smudging down this pain censer with black contrast would be about right for the end look.

And then again while that dries, it’s back to the strips for some tiny highlights.

And now it’s time to highlight the edges of the gold and the armor trim and the sword hilt. This just took a long time, there’s so much of it everywhere. I typically hit finished miniatures with a matte coat, which always dulls down any metallics and I always have to go back after the matte coat to retouch those metallics. With all this gold, that’s gonna be a lotta work. I should have thought about that and finished and matte coated everything else before doing any of the gold. 

As we say in the industry: oh well.

To highlight the armor, I intentionally wanted to make it a brighter, more rich red than the pants. Trousers. With all the spikes and stuff, the red highlights are just kinda little dabs here and there, but I think it’s working. And I finish with my favorite red, popping little dots in the middle of all those little dabs. 

So here we go, how about a little rust to add insult to injury when you get hit with this thing? Ain’t that just like a troll, slinging tetanus around as a parting gift?

And now the answer to that purple boot question – a huge swath of purple for the banner. It took me a while to decide on the banner color, and I don’t know why but I think it’s gonna work with the two signature color features I’ve had planned from the start. As an afterthought I realized the banner panels are stitched together and maybe they should have some variation in color or texture. So I just quickly darkened one of them. 

And then purple contrast over the whole thing for shading which actually kinda desaturates the purple while it darkens it, and that is all right. 

In preparation for the coming contrast treatment, I added some white highlights to all the sharp edges of the jagged sword hoping they’ll do their job under the transparent paint. Also adding some of these white highlights for the same reason to the hair-do. The hair-do? To the hair.

There’s always another little detail to hit, so some quick picking of the stitches on the banner with that same canvas color.

And now, time for the first of my two initial ideas for this guy – a bright green sword! How WoW is that? This is a great contrast color too, in fact, I kinda like all the greens in the Contrast line. But weapons in the game are typically standout features and this green is pretty stand out-ish, right?

And the second initial idea – you knew that magenta hair was coming, c’mon! I mean, if you’ve played wow for five minutes, you probably knew it was coming. I think if you google WoW troll, this is all you’re gonna see.

Highlighting the hair I wanted to try to maintain the saturation of the brighter color, but that’s a tough deal when you start working with pinks or very light colors into a mix, because white in general has a tendency to desaturate stuff. While I was doing this I kept thinking that I probably need to pick up some fluorescent paints to try out.

I added some very subtle white highlights to the sword, just to pop the edges a bit more, but I tried to be really careful with this step, I didn’t want to have to try to retouch contrast paint, that’s always a problem because of the transparency. 

And for this dude’s eyes, I just darken them, they’re so small I’m not gonna sweat highlights or anything like that.

And then it’s time for the base! I just slap some dirty green and gray all over it, even some brick red but you don’t get to see that cause my camera card hit capacity and I didn’t realize it had stopped recording, so, you know, bask in the professionalism.

A bunch of dry brushing with neutral gray and pale gray to bring the detail back and then it’s time for the washes. Washes always make everything better, they gotta be the best crutch in the armory, right?

And there he is, the World of Warcraft inspired troll, with tufts applied! That pink hair and green sword were the two ideas I had from when I first saw the figure on Etsy. I’m not a huge fan of all the gold but I think it ended up working okay, especially from the Blizzard aesthetic. Now I didn’t do my standard finishing matte coat, and maybe I will at some point, and then of course I’ll have to go back in and retouch all the metallics, so for now, he’s going on Instagram as is.

Pretty fun mini to paint and it’s always nice to knock something out of the Primed and Ready display case. Put another check in the done department, right?

So, you know, go paint something fun, maybe even something not game-specific!

See ya!