Ardice

Hi all, I while back I bought the Learn to Paint Kit 3, NNM. Well, I've gone and lost my instructions that came with the kit. Does anyone know if it's possible to get another copy somehow? And if so, how and where? Thanks! Heather

From personal experience, the answer is yes. I cannot draw. I need a ruler to draw a straight line and my stick men are always lopsided. But I can paint minis. In simple terms, I like to consider painting minis akin to colouring in a colouring book. I can "paint within the lines". Of course, it's deeper than that because of shading and highlighting and whatnot. But all it takes is practice. Good hand-eye coordination, a steady hand and patience are key. Other than that, you really don't need to be able to draw at all. An eye for colour and shading/highlighting helps. Welcome to the hobby! It will consume your soul... Heather

Hey, good luck with the polar bear fur. I did a mini with it once, and it was quite the adventure finding the right colours. Basically, I took Vallejo Ice Yellow as the base, then kept mixing it with white to get the lighter blends, a quick wash of a very slightly brownish colour (I don't remember what it was exactly, I think a Tan from the Vallejo line) and then the final highlights in pure White to finish it off. Here's a link of how it came out. Looking at it, I could now do a MUCH better job with the layers, but it was an early piece, so it's just nice to see i've progressed... http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?...489&hl=nyss Heather

Yay! Another update! I've finished most of the highlighting on the outer scales. I'm pretty sure they're good, but I'll wait until the rest is done (or closer to done) to decide if I want to go another shade or two. My next order of business will be the lighter scales and his wings. requisite booty shot (kind of. Hey, he's got a lot of booty...): I'm also trying to decide how I want to do the horns on his head. My original plan was to do a gradient from the beige you see here to black, but now I'm thinking it won't work so well. I think that with the way they are sculpted, it'll just look weird. Any suggestions? And, finally, I've done some more work on my wizard, adding some highlights to his cloak and my first ever attempt at freehand. I think it turned out nicely, don't you? Comments/suggestions/constructive criticisms welcome as always Heather

Nothing like getting in just before the deadline... I lovingly call this guy "Boo!" Enjoy!

Wow. I just noticed it's been three months since I've posted here. Well, I've been insanely busy the last little while - my sister just got married two weeks ago and my mother and I were doing most of the planning/work for the wedding. The good news? The wedding went off wonderfully! The bad news? No painting Anyway, I've got some update pictures to show off. I'll start with a reply to Shakandara's request for a close up of the belly scales. I will admit I'm not quite done - up close you can see how rough the blending is. I want to take a glaze to it to even it out some but I admit I've been a little afraid of messing it up... Soon, though... And here is a shot of the base greens for his body scales. I've not yet done the highlighting on them, but it already looks a million times better just having the colour there. And here, finally, I shall introduce you to Teronus' foes - a mighty band of warriors! They still need a lot of work, but I've begun all of them, so I thought I'd post a few pics We have the brave fighter, The half-orc paladin, and her faithful unicorn friend, a sneaky thief (yeah, I noticed I mucked up his face ) and of course a powerful wizard So, I hope you like them so far. I hope to have more free time to paint now that the wedding is past, so I should be updating more often. Heather

I just want to say "Damn you." Because now I want one. That looks awesome and I'm looking forward to watching the painting process :) Heather

Very nice Fuzzy :) I have been following your progress on Viridius, and I must say I think the colours are absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait to see this one finished. Keep up the awesome work :)

Hi, thanks for the compliment! For the coins, I actually used "fruit" from Woodland Scenics. They come in red and orange, and are the perfect scale for a treasure pile. They're not the most fun to work with (I mean, they're tiny little balls, right? The end up EVERYWHERE) but they are definitely worth it :)

Hi guys, So, I've decided to post the lenghty process I am embarking on in the painting of Teronus, the Ultimate Dragon. First, though, I shall bore you all with a little background story. Teronus is part of the old Grenadier Dragon Lords line. If I remember correctly, you had to buy all the other dragon lords, send in your UPC codes, and you could get Teronus. He's big and heavy and beautiful :) My mom used to paint when I was a kid (let's say about 20 years ago, I think that puts us in the right time area) and she is a great lover of dragons. Anyway, she's painted up a whole slew of other dragons (all of which we still have, and they are very nice) but she never finished Teronus. So, a few years ago, when I started painting, I offered to "finish" him for her. She said I could have him. So, I started my project. All went well, the wings looked lovely, the main body was nice, and then I worked on the belly... and it looked like crap. I tried very hard to fix it but nothing I could do worked. So, Teronus, now dubbed "Arthur" got "The Bath". I have now fixed some problems there were originally with the sculpt of his belly (not enough definition between some of his scales, for one), patched some holes, pinned that long pretty tail so it would stop falling off on me, and I have now begun again from the very beginning. I now have him planned as part of a very cool (at least in my head it's cool, let's hope I can pull it off!) diorama, the creation of which I would like to share with all of you. This first post includes pictures of my progress so far. I hope you like and I apologize to those with slow connections for all the pictures :) Any and all comments/suggestions as I go along would be welcome and appreciated. Heather So, pictures to begin. Here are the original base layout of the piece, minus a few figures. I've decided Arthur will be facing off against a group of adventurers out to steal his treasure. This was my first ever attempt at doing anything with pink foam and, while I admit using my foam cutter is tons of fun, I wish I'd researched the process of getting it painted more. My first attempt at primer ended up with melted foam! Luckily, I was brilliant and came up with a solution, as you will be able to see in the next pics. Here, to start, is the unpainted (and unglued, I think) layout (the written marks you may be able to see are the placements of the adventurers in relation to Arthur, the layout with Arthur, and then the layout with polyfill used to create the beginnings of the cavern floor. Okay, the beginnings of painting. Here I've done the majority of the painting and highlighting on the base. I want the cavern to be dark, so that the figures and other objects stand out more. Once I finish all the pieces and glue them in, I'm going to finish highlighting the base to complete it. I think you can see how some of the stones look different. Some are the ones that melted when I first primed the piece. I decided, since they would be too hard to remove, that I would keep them. I covered the pieces of foam with green stuff, and I find I like the effect of "melted rock" that they now have. It's like he was breathing fire and melted some of the rocks around him, whereas the non-melted rocks have only recently fallen - perhaps in this very battle :) And this is a close-up of the pile of treasure at the dragon's feet. It is mostly complete - I have a couple of items that are not on there yet as well as some "gems" I bought at Michael's which I will add later as well. I adore the way this pile of treasure has turned out so far. I wanted it to look like mostly just a huge pile of gold coins, and I tell you it was not easy finding something that would be small enough and still work. And finally, the last pics to bring us up to date. I have begun work on the dragon himself. I decided to start with the belly scales. The dragon is going to be mostly green, with golden/yellow belly scales. I wanted to start with the belly because I need practice with my yellows and I figured if I mess it up, it's easier to start over :) Here is a picture of the belly with only the base yellows - the very dark and then the mid tone. He's resting upside down because I find it easier to work on him that :) And this is the completed belly. I must say, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Of course, I just spent 2 hours doing all that highlighting, so I'd better be happy! I think I just want to put a light glaze over it to smooth out the transitions (you may not be able to see it so well in the pics, but it's kind of rough). Anyway, that's the end of my post, to begin. I hope to keep at this one regularly and I'll keep you all updated :) Comment away!

Yes, that is awfully tall. Of course since he's meant to be used as the figure on a trophy, bigger IS better

Right, I never did talk about the details, did I? He's 54mm tall from boots to the top of his helm. He's holding a pipe in his right hand, an axe in his left. Sorry Dragon Snack, he's not for sale. If you want one you have to come to our convention and win a trophy :) We have a limited number of "unpainted" (ie not gold like the trophies) that we've put aside. Most have gone to our Organizing Committee (at cost) in thanks for all the hard work over the years. The rest we are considering giving as prizes to the winners of our figure painting contest, but thar decision has not been finalized yet. If you'd like to know more about us, you can check out our website, www.cangames.ca

Hi all. It's been a while since I've posted here. I wanted to show off a figure I finished a few weeks ago. But first, a small backstory... I run a games convention in Ottawa, Canada called CanGames. This year was our 30th anniversary and we wanted to do something special. One of the things we looked into was having our mascot, a dwarf, sculpted to be cast and put on our trophies. It's something we've been wanting to do for a long time, but being a non-profit organization we didn't really have a lot of money to pursue it in the past. So, I went and emailed Sandra and to my amazement she came back to me with a very reasonable price. So, a few months later I received this amazing green - she caught him perfectly on her first try. He's now been cast, and the originals returned to Sandra. Our convention was last weekend (May 19-22) and the tropies went over spectacularly. Here is one that I painted up just for myself (the trophies were just painted gold). Comments always welcome :)

I finished this one up a couple of weeks ago and just now got around to posting her. Its not the greatest picture, but feedback would be nice. I made my first ever attempt at NMM on her lantern and then decided it was much to hard to figure it out on her sword. I'm not too happy with the way the "water" on her base turned out, but at that point I was just trying to finish her. I have plans to base her in a mini vignette facing off against Dark Maiden, but that project's being left until I finish my two dragon projects (I plan to start posting some WIP pics in the WIP thread later this week on those). Anyway, hope you like :) Heather

On the note of using 5-minute epoxy, here's a little tip. Mix the two parts together then wait about 2 minutes before gluing the pieces. That way the glue has begun to set and sticks better (and you don't have to hold the pieces together for what can feel like forever!). The trick is to not wait too long and have the glue set too much. I did that once. What a waste of glue...