Dipping My Toes Into Dioramas With A Thief On The Run From The Slightly Too-slow Guards :)

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.

Another dragon! One day I might get sick of painting dragons, but it sure isn't today!

This was a great mini to relax with, its got a lot of detail that just worked great for doing a brass base coat, turquoise contrast paint, and brass drybrush to get that corroded look.

I also did a little wet blending to go from the brass base colour to a redish copper on the tips of the wing membranes, though I might’ve gone a little too subtle. It's real hard to pick out, especially with the shine. I do like it when it's in just the right light to show it off though.

This mini is a Young Brass Dragon from Nolzurs Marcelous Miniatures. Big thanks to @sleepyforestbeast for giving me this mini! Excellent taste right here :D

Painted up a knight... somewhat recently, then took a while longer to figure out how to paint her base. Really happy with how the marble on that one turned out though.

I originally intended to use this figure to try and learn non-metallic metal, but after a couple of tries I decided, actually, I value my time XD

Honestly, I'm really very happy with how it looks with regular metallic paint anyway, nice and shiny.

I'm also glad I took my time with the base until trying out a technique for marble with some dried-out wet wipes and the airbrush. Definitely going to see if I can find more excuses to use that in the future.

This figure is Knight 05 by Galaad. (scaled up by an amount I forget for this print).

Latest mini: Big Snail!

Super fun to paint this one, I did the snaily flesh by airbrushing a greeny-yellow-grey from the top, and a grey-blue from the bottom, then layered some different colour shift paints over that. I think it turned out really good for that glistening snail-skin lood.

I also experimented a bit with some goopy effects, with UV resin, not as happy with those, but I think they work alright, and for my first time using UV resin that way I think I'm happy.

This mini is Slug. the Snail God by Witchsong Miniatures. (I scaled the print down to about 55%, just to print it in one run).

Painted a cute little goblin squire :3

Not much to say about this one, just a quick fun paintjob I did in a night. Trying to get back to painting more regularly, and this is a good step in that direction!

One note for myself is that I think I went a little too dark with the darkest green. Or possibly didn't shade lighter tones across enough of the mini. Particularly the tail I think is a tad too dark for a lot of its surface. I was trying to push my dark/light contrast a bit more, but I think I overcorrected. Something to experiment more with though, because I do love some places with that darker green.

This mini is Goblin Squire by Twin Goddess Miniatures

WIZAR!

I tried painting this mini with a bit more focus on lighting than I normally do. Most of the time I'm just hitting the upward facing surfaces with some highlights, but this time I went for trying to highlight as if he was facing into the light. I'm not sure it totally works, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out all the same.

I also got to play around with foam a bit making the rock for him to stand on, which is always fun.

This mini is Allanor by Lunaris Figures.