Next in a series of posts to show off minis I have painted in the past two years.
When I bought this mini, I was going to paint her like my wind serpent, Raika, who was my raiding pet in World of Warcraft for my character Nabith for many years. But when I got it, I was in a campaign where my character was soon getting a medium flying form and the DM dropped some plot reasons that I could turn into a coutal, so I decided on that route instead. I like how it ended up.
Next in a series of posts to show off minis I have painted in the past two years.
I loved this mini, and bought her without an idea for a character. My husband used her as an NPC we allied with in the tower campaign and named her Brooklyn, so I figured that was her name from then on.
Again, I bought this mini cause it looked cool. While painting her I decided she would be a character from a story named Tiffany. I colored her armour after a bronze dragon, my favorite. She was in the same episode of the tower campaign as Brooklyn. I still haven’t used her as a PC in a campaign.
First in a series of posts to show off minis I have painted in the past two years.
I got the first mini for a character I was going to play named Varon. Later on, I found the second mini and decided that, that mini was going to be Varon. So I painted the first one using the yellow ink I figured I never would use again, and the actual Varon to look good. >.>
When I was still in college, so a million years ago, I had no idea what Warhammmer was. BUT! I saw a set of Britonnian Pegasus Knights. They were horsies with wings, and being the creative type, I bought them. I had no idea what I was doing and thus at the time only managed to paint one white, one black, and one red.
After the timeskip, when my husband and I moved back to Blacksburg, I became interested in minis again. Mostly because our D&D default had shifted to using miniatures, and having a unique mini for ones character was popular.
Enough backstory. I grabbed the unfinished pegasus knights, simple greened most of the paint off of them, and painted them again.
It was only after I ‘finished’ the minis that I found the old box I had bought back in college that had some shields that I never put on. I’m not entirely upset about that. With all the other minis I have to do, I don’t have time to go back right now. Maybe someday.
Notes: These pegasus are colored for three chymera (pegasus with horns) from one of my stories. The white is Prism, the red is her father Fleetfoot, and the purple is Nightwind. Prism and Fleetfoot’s barding is the same color because they come from the same manor. Nightwind is from another.
A few months ago, the other game store in town went out of business and had a sale. That was when I saw this monster turtle mini from a set called Warmachine. I snatched it up with the idea of painting it as Bowser. Despite my enthusiasm, however, it took me until now to actually paint it. I painted the whole thing in one afternoon. Took me around four or five hours all told (sans the spray paint base which I did a while ago) and it turned out rather well. I know I could have done some modding to add hair and horns, but I decided against that. I don’t really like modeling stuff yet, probably cause I’m kinda bad at it. Anyway, results:
Okay, so I showed some people at the store the gryffin from the previous post, and I got quite a lot of amazed reactions, much to my surprise. We are our own toughest critics after all. I know I am good at painting, but I don’t think I’m that amazing. Other people tend to disagree, so I would like to share all of the very simple, but extremely effective techniques I use in order to get the results I do.
Step One: Have your materials. Obviously, you can’t paint a miniature without a few key elements. The paint, a (set of) paint brushes, and the mini…
I use games workshop paints because those are the most easily available. I haven’t used any of the new ones yet, but I hear good things. The consistency of the paint is rather important for a good look. If it’s too thick it clumps and leaves paint lines. Some of my paints are rather poor right now. I do what I can, thinning them with clear Windex (tip credited to Blake).
I get a set of 3 detail brushes from a local hobby shop. Costs $3 and when the tip goes, I use that paintbrush for less important things like washes. If you don’t have a good tip on your paintbrush, then you might as well just flick the paint on there at random.
The mini I’m using for this “tutorial” of sorts is my set of Lotheran Sea Guard from the High Elf Army of Warhammer Fantasy fame.
Step Two: Get the “How to Paint Citadel Miniatures” book from Games Workshop (or have Blake order it) and read it. No seriously. If you really want nicely painted miniatures, looking at well painted miniatures (and the tutorials of those painting techniques) is essential. I mean you’re here reading this right? I’m not even that good. In addition I have White Dwarf Magazines (with High Elf and Empire articles) along with their Warhammer rules books. I look at them constantly.
Step Three: Cleaning and priming. Ah, so now we’re finally to the actual mini. Never underestimate the value of cleaning and green stuffing your mini. What use is a beautiful paint job if there are mold lines? In addition, what’s the use of a beautiful paint job if the paint chips off. I prime with black. I just like it better than white, yes, even with all those white high elf robes.
Step Four: The crappy paint step. I call it this because I tend to think my mini looks like crap during this phase. This is when I take the colors I have chosen and put on the foundation colors.
The gray is my most used because of all the white high elf robes. Basically I get all the colors down, then clean up the edges. It looks flat and horribly boring. However, it lets you make sure you have the colors in the places you want before you do anything fancy. This is especially important when painting a whole squad as opposed to a single mini. The little details are different on each mini, and you may find yourself changing things.
When in doubt, don’t feel guilty at all about looking up that particular mini and getting ideas. I had the hardest time with the gloves and shoes on these guys, wanting to paint them a metallic and not liking how much metal that was until I saw the ones in the book had brown gloves and shoes. It hadn’t even occurred to me before that. Developing an eye for colors is not really something that can be taught, per say. It’s the whole reason for Step Two. You just have to have the experience, and that comes with seeing what other people, who have put far more time into it than you, do.
Also, note that you want these first layers to be the darkest version of whatever color you want when it comes out at the end. I build up my color from darkest to lightest. You don’t even want to know how long it took me to figure out that technique…
So I continue to be needlessly intimiatated by the tedious detail required for the feathers on my gryffin model. So two weeks ago I just sat down and did the outline for all of the remaining feathers on one wing. I didn’t like it at the time, but now after coming back to it, I feel a lot better about how it looks. So at some point I’m sure I will convince myself to do the other wing…
So I have been doing a lot of work on the warhammer gryffin. Besides the modeling work to put it together, and turn Karl Franz into a high elf with a high elf spear, and Will shaving off the “karl Franz” from the breast plate piece I wanted to use, there was some actual painting.
First thing I did was spray paint it black. I prefer black. Dunno why. White spray paint and I don’t really get along. Then I painted the top of the wings the foundation blue, and the bottom of the wings foundation light gray. (Yeah, I could look up their actual names, but blech.)
And then the blue got a blue wash, and the gray got a black wash. Crazy innovative rite?
Then I put white on the underside of the wings, leaving the dark recesses, but my white and I have never really gotten along (it’s something about that color, I swear) so a lot of places ended up grayer than I wanted. It was horrible and tedious. (The picture below only the chest has the white done, the wings are still only gray with a black wash.)
Then I used pictures of red-tailed hawks as inspiration, and painted on scorched brown (I use that brown a lot, so I remember it’s name!) patterns to the underside of the wings. Also stupid tedious.
But then! After I had painted on the brown, I didn’t like the look of the white, since it was so uneven and streaky looking, so I threw another black wash over the underside of the winds. For a bit I panicked, thinking I had ruined everything, but I went back and outlined the feathers in white, and started making white detail pulled from the outside of the feather toward the inside in uneven strokes, and it’s actually starting to look really good. Just more tedium. So below you can see the brown patterning, and on the right wing (your left) the first five primaries have the new white detail.
Tami is a new character that is actually my 5th Edition character, taken from one of my stories. She is the fighter class. She uses a bow and two daggers that are sheathed in the small of her back. This mini doesn’t really have the daggers, but it does at least have one blade, and it’s in the correct position, so it works for me.
The color of the fabric is actually a mix of hawk turquoise and the different shades of green. I wanted a green-teal color and I think it really came out great. Man did I get lucky with those eyes.
So by the name of my site, you might be able to tell that I like gryffins. Today at the store Blake gave me the new Warhammer: Karl Franz on Deathclaw. I don’t play Warhammer, I just paint the miniatures I like (you’ll see a lot of my high elves in later posts) so I wasn’t really keeping up with the new models coming out. This one was a complete surprise as a belated birthday present. As of now I’ve just cut it out and pieced it together with painter’s tape. It is quite the impressive figure. I’m going to have to do some modding to it to make the rider a high elf (since that’s my favorite army) and make the gryffin’s armour look a little more high elfy.
I’m planning on the body being painted like a black leopard, with blue overtones. Not sure on what bird I’ll model the head and wings, or I might just wing it. Haha. Get it?
