Another Print That's Been In My Backlog For Far Too Long, Is Now On My Shelf!

Another print that's been in my backlog for far too long, is now on my shelf!

I printed this, I think a year ago? And I've been really excited to paint it the whole time, but just never got around to it.

I am really happy with how it turned out though, especially the base! Funnily enough, I hadn't even considered the base at all until I'd finished painting the model, and I wanted to have something a bit more interesting than just a plain base. I'm pretty happy with what I came up with! I little bit of messing around in blender to get the bamboo too look cut was well worth it!

I also originally thought I'd try learning non-mettalic metal on the sword, only to start and realise that trying to do it for my first time on such a large, flat surface was maybe not the best plan XD. Its still something I want to figure out at some point, but maybe on something a bit less intense.

I did have some minor printing issues with the bottom section of the base, and I'm just now seeing in that first picture how poor my attempt at smoothing that out with green stuff went. I promise it doesn't look that noticeable on the shelf XD.

This model is Samurai - Professionally pre-supported! by Greg Kourakos on My Mini Factory.

Latest project, this big dragonborn guy.

I took the opportunity to do that classic red scales/yellow underbelly dragon scheme since I realised I've never actually painted a dragon(-like creature) that way yet. I struggled with getting that yellow tone right, but I'm happy with where it ended up in the end.

The original print is supposed to have two horns, but I had a misprint, that fortunately was easy enough to just lean into. I like the asymmetrical look it ended up with, so call it a bit of good fortune.

This mini is Gunnonth The Life Taker from Miniatures Blueprint.

I'm holidaying at the beach, so of course I painted something in a snowy theme XD.

Pretty happy with this result! Probably could be a little cleaner in spots, but for a one day paint job I'm not complaining.

In particular the icy base turned out way better than I expected.

Big thanks to @dropattackbear for sharing his paints when I forgot to pack my metallics XD.

This model is Skadi the Barbarian by Twin Goddess Miniatures

New mini! The cutest lil wizard :3

This is my character Noda for an upcoming game! They're a racoon folk student mage who definitely got their invitation to wizard school through 100% legitimate means.

I painted them a little rough in places, but its a small mini so its less noticeable :D

I'm also experimenting with the picture-taking process a little. Got a glossy piece of black acrylic, which is cool by holy cow does it like to pick up every little spec of dust around. I really need to do some serious dust-busting sometime XD

It also jars really badly with the backdrop I've been using. I might need to pick up some black felt or something. I should also probably look at actual guides and stuff rather than yoloing it, but oh well :)

This mini is Callum the Tabaxi Wizard by Twin Goddess Miniatures

Dipping my toes into dioramas with a thief on the run from the slightly too-slow guards :)

I had a lot of fun putting this together.

It was a bit of a challenge painting to make the scene look like nighttime. I tried desaturating my colours a lot, and mixing my highlights with blue-white to try and get that lord of the rings, 'its night because the light is blue' effect. I'm not sure I got it quite right, but I'm still happy enough with it.

Doing some foam carving for the bricks was a nice change from just printing everything I paint. Its a little rough in places, but learning new skills is always worth it.

The real hard part though was wiring the LEDs for it. I got some flickering candle tea lights to resolder for this (though unfortunately the flicker ended up quite subtle). Glad I got a fair few more than I needed, because I broke the circuit boards for four before figuring out my solder iron was set too low for whatever solder they had on them. Then I yolo'd soldering the LEDs to some wires and realised I'd misunderstood how the circuit boards had to be attached and uh. Adapted. It all worked out, but I can't say it was neat. Fortunately, copious amounts of hot glue cover a multitude of sins.

Behold my solder sins:

The guards in this piece come from Town Guards Bundle by TytanTroll miniatures.

The thief in this piece is from Adventuring Party by Across The Realms.

BEEG undead dragon! (I gotta stop painting dragons, I only have so much shelf space 😭)

The model is Undead Dragon by Clynche Art on MMF.

I ended up painting this one one and a half times since I started doing a black base and working up with reddish purples for the flesh. It looked ok, but a bit too cartoony for what I wanted.

So I started over with a dark red base, added brown, green and blue splotches, and then dry brushed black all over, which I think looks a lot more like rotting flesh! It was a lot of fun working on those colours though!

I just did a mix of an off-white, bright green and brown for the bony sections, followed up by a burnt umber ink to get that old bone look, and to help blend between flesh and bone.

The horns, teeth and claws I struggled with a bit, before deciding to do dark silver+dirty down rust+drybrushed dark silver. I really like the effect of rusting horns for an undead dragon, but I do worry that it is a tad lacking in contrast, with all the other dark reds and blacks going on here. I considered redoing it with a tarnished bronze look, but tbh after having already had this on my desk for over a month, I was ready to just get it out of the way so I could move on to other minis.

I'm also still messing around with camera settings, trying to get nicer pictures, but it's a bit of a process since I don't super know what I'm doing. Getting everything I want in focus, especially on a mini this big, is hard and I didn't really manage it in the end. It's fun to play around though, even if there's a lot of "is it better with setting A or setting B? hmmmmmm" repetition.