Yarrr!

Yarrr!

I've been painting this awesome pirate figure over the past week. I've been trying to get myself back into the habit of painting consistently over the week, rather than waiting for 'the perfect time' (which never comes), because my pile of shame is growing at a concerning rate.

This was a really fun model to paint, with some great details. Though I did get slowed down a bit trying to figure out how to navigate the tip of my brush into some areas. Theres a lot of semi enclosed spaces with awkward positioning, and in the end I left a few spots unpainted. You can't see them without turning the model upside down and at odd angles anyway, so I've decided to just not care, and save myself the hand cramps.

Besides just being a fun model to paint, it was also a chance to play around with how I paint metalics a bit. Theres so much dark metal involved in the cannon that I didn't want to just paint it all with a solid metal colour. And while I do want to try my hand at painting non-metalic metal at some point, I don't quite have the confidence and patience for it just yet. So instead I tried out painting the bits I wanted in a dark-steel/iron colour with straight black paint, and then just drybrushing dark silver metalic paint over it, and it worked beautifully. It really helps the metal look a bit more beaten and dull, its only shining on the edges and ridges, where its maybe been polished a bit by rubbing against its environment. This is a technique I'm going to try and remember in the future.

For all the other metals on this piece I just did straight metalic paint, and I just love how the gold contrasts with the reds and browns its up against!

I'm also really happy with the skin. It wasn't that long ago that I dreaded painting skin and always hated how I made it look, but now its one of my favourite things to paint! Getting to play with skin tones and highlighting them is just fun! I've still got room for improvement with where I place my highlights, but I can see progress in every mini I paint, which is really rewarding!

This figure is Miss V. Gomez , by Cast n Play.

While I'm posting things, I just painted this neat little ruined portal terrain piece! Just a real simple paintjob on this one, took me about an hour total, including waiting for paint to dry.

I had fun freehanding the little runes, and I really enjoy how the metallic paint lets the blend in most of the time, and show really strongly if the light is just right.

I did end up only putting them on one side of the portal. Because uh... it shows which side of the portal you're meant to stand on... yeah... not at all because my hand was getting tired, and i was starting to run out of ideas for runes.

:T

This is Ancient Stone Structure - Portal Gate 3D print model by Odgardian

I was playing with a cheap necklace I got off wish a while back, and managed to break this starry cabachon off it (I threw it into a fan on accident, no further questions).

I thought it was a cool little piece, so I went ahead and put together a wizardy table for it in fusion360, printed it out, slapped some paint on it, and here it is! Just a quick little scatter piece. I guess the ruined portal from my last post has me in a wizardy mood.

I like using fusion360, I'm still fairly inexperienced with it, but that just means I can learn new things each time! This time I figured out how to use the sweep tool to create the swoopy tubes running up the sides of the table.

Also pictured, Edwin, my sorcerer PC from a Curse of Strahd game I'm in! He was the most wizardly character I had on my shelf. I should fix that at some point.

If you want to get the file for this, you can find it here.

A Y'shtola figurine I painted for @yoshikagequeen as a Christmas gift.

I don't know much about FF14, but this was a pretty cool model to paint. Especially since that orb in the staff gave me an excuse to play with the gloss varnish I've had banging around for a while.

Its kind of fun to paint stuff using a reference for the colours, though sometimes finding a good angle to work out what colour a specific thing is can be frustrating. The model was very accurate to the references I found though, which was very helpful.

This model was made by EllaArt.

Double post! I realised I never actually made a post about this halfling smith I painted last week, which is a travesty, because she's cool as heck! Also, she's a four fingered smith now, because I'm a clutz and dropped her while carrying her over to take pictures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One of the great things about 3d printing, is that when I want to paint a mini like this to display on a shelf rather than use on a table, I can just scale it up a bit before printing, rather than having an oddly sized mini on a shelf next to a bunch of larger figurines!

I really like how all the different colours and materials came together on this paint job, I think I managed to keep everything cohesive but distinct.

I'm also pretty happy with how the skin tone came out. I tried something a bit different to what I usually do, by mixing my favourite light skin tone paint with a little bit of reddish brown paint to get a slightly more tan colour as a base I could work up from. I think it turned out great, and really suits this halfling smith!

This print is Helen, the Blacksmith Halfling by Bite The Bullet

BOO! Spooked yah, right? Don't worry, these ghosts aren't real, just miniatures. :P

I mentioned in a previous post that I found I could dye clear resin prints colours with alchohol inks, and these ghosts are actually what I figured that out on!

I did these quite a while back, but then I left them for a few weeks until I made some bases, and then I left them sitting in my light box for a couple more weeks before actually taking these photos, because for some reason I really just didn't want to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the transparent ghostly effect is cool, but I also really like the bases I did for them too. This was me trying out adding little extra bits to them, going for a bit of a haunted manor theme. I'm pretty happy with it on the whole, although I think the beer mug and the pot are just a bit too big and attention grabbing. I really want the focus to be on the mini, with the base elements blending in more. I am quite happy with how the kitchen tile bases came out too. I started out trying to freehand sculpt them out of greenstuff, then when I figured out that I am not by any means a compenent enough sculptor to make that work, I quickly designed and printed a little tile impression jig to make clean, straight tiles for me. I made and printed it fast enough that I didn't waste my greenstuff, so thats pretty cool I think.

On the whole, I'm happy to have these translucent spooky ghosts in my collection.

Miniatures in this post are made by:

Townfolks ghost male and Townfolks ghost female by Titan Forge Miniatures.

Ghost by Great Grimoire.

Base in this post are made by:

Gothic Tombstones by Medusa Miniatures.

Table Scatter, Extra Dining Items, Books, Piles & Rows by Darkest Desire.

Candle Holders by Pellinor.