Posted on December 27, 2012
Christmas present and painting stuff I’ve been testing…
I’ve been trying to paint a bit between all the other holiday stuff going on. I find that if I give myself a bunch of very different miniatures then I can try out a bunch of stuff and I won’t get bored as easily. And then when I keep painting, I get better at it. I still dread the idea of painting X number of Ys, but if it is just a bunch of minis I like, it seems doable. Since seeing The Hobbit, my yen has been to paint a bunch of dwarves. I have a couple of really great dwarf minis, so I might do some of them next. Â My christmas present to the Rise of the Runelords game group is that I’ll paint a miniature as best as I can to whatever specifications I can manage. Bring me a mini, I’ll paint it. This is of dubious value, especially as some of our players enjoy (and increasingly excel) at painting their own miniatures. But do with it what you will. Â I could not get the lighting in my house to be anything close to conducive to taking pictures of small things and at this point of the year, there isn’t much use in waiting for sunshine. Anyway, here is the latest batch of experiments in various things…:
Above: I kind of love this guy. It is an old (mid-80s) Citadel “Fighter” back before everything had to adhere to a list. So he makes a good adventurer miniature because he has a bunch of gear. Axe, purse, arrows, bow, dagger. I like this generation of Citadel because they just threw everything on, not to look kewl or to conform to a game mechanic, but because they thought a dude should look prepared. I worked quite a bit on the tartan on this one (Leslie, btw) and I’ve now got the process down. It involves inks covering small flaws and pointillism. I hate pointillism in 2d art, but it seems to work a bit better at this scale.
Left: 87? 86? I think so. After all that shit about Citadel making miniatures that look geared up, this guy forgot his armoured boots and any kind of gear. He just brought a badass hammer and a badass wolf hat. So I guess his errand has a pretty tight scope of expected encounters. Right: Plastic dwarf that I like a lot. After the ninja I did a while ago I realised that a lot of miniatures get more boring if you paint them in dark, albeit realistic colours. When I think dwarves, I think dark green, rich browns and maroon, as though all the dwarves in my frame of reference wear Carharrts. Where’s the fantasy, man? Anyway, I didn’t want him to be bright in the other way that you make miniatures bright and pop, by using heraldic colour combos, so I went with orange and pale blue, which you rarely ever see in heraldry (Netherlands aside) and not together.