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Hi all! If you'd like to add further customization to your model with decorated miniature bases...here: 'An Introduction to printing miniatures bases with a resin printer'📚 An easy-to-follow guide containing all the simple step to print round & smooth miniature bases. Plus, Freebies to download, check for their orientation and support configuration to learn how to support your own models. Let me know what do you think 😊

Read Me First: This got really long. Keep reading if you want a searchable image gallery of all of your minis. It will seem complicated because I took a lot of screenshots, but I learned everything here in 1 day. If you jump to the end there is a summary of everything WPAA+ will let you do. If you are like me you may have started off being able to keep track of all the minis you owned in your head, but it probably didn't take too long before you needed some help. Enter the spreadsheet. This worked for awhile, but after years of retail purchases, Kickstarters, and Patreons, trying to cross reference everything became nearly impossible. Do you have a female dual wielding ranger for the game next week, or don't you? And if you did where did you put her... What I'm about to go through won't help with the boxes in your closet but it will at least give you a visual way to see what you own. Even if you can't find it. The plan is to make things easy and free. Now when you think of a web page you likely think of something that is hosted on a server somewhere. And while this is true, it would be crazy to edit a page live and break it while customers are using it. As such there are offline tools to create, experiment, and learn what you are doing. We will be using one of these to create our inventory. Could you make this live and show the world your collection? After all is said and done you could if you want. So first things first, we need to be able to run our offline page. There are a couple of free options. XAMPP will make you feel like an IT guy. It straight up warns you that it has no security and is only for offline development. Unfortunately it conflicted with my PCs raid software. On to option 2. Local is designed specifically to run offline WP sites and should be straightforward for novice users. It had the same conflict for me, but has a built in workaround. Download and install Local, sign up if you want or not, and run it. You will get a screen that looks like this, minus the tutorial. That was something I made to learn what I was doing. In the lower left corner is a plus to "Add Local Site." Create a new site. Name it whatever you want. I expanded the advanced options, but you don't need to touch those. Accept preferred. Go with whatever you want. Just remember it since you will need it to log into your offline site. And done. You could "Open site" but there won't be much there yet. Instead go for "WP Admin." At some point around here it should automatically install Wordpress. After logging in it will take you to the dashboard. Basic WP is basic. Of course by now, someone has made a plugin to do exactly what we want. The trick locating a free one. Select Plugins and "Add New". Search for "wp photo album plus", install and activate it. There it is. You may need to refresh your screen, but "Photo Album" should appear at the bottom of the list on the lower left hand side as well as above. Now we need to change a few settings. Feel free to play around if you want. I'll be going from left to right on the Basic settings. First, under layout, increase the thumbnail font size. I went with 15, but YMMV. Eventually I'll be using "Photo of the day". I increased the frequency so I get a new photo every time I visit the page. For the thumbnails I find 100 pixels to be a little on the small side. Feel free to do whatever, but I doubled everything. Too small can't see/too big can't see many images at once. Here are the search settings. We can't do much yet since there is nothing to search, but at least make sure "include tags" is ticked. Before we upload any images, we need somewhere to put them. Under Album Admin "Add New." I created "Reaper Miniatures" and can now upload photos to it. You'll have some limits shown on how much you can upload at once. After uploading them you can "Moderate" them. First make sure the image has a proper name. Then this is where the magic happens. Whatever tags you add can be used later to search for them. Add as many as seem useful. In the example below I have an SKU as a tag, but later realized it would be better in the description. At first you will have to type in all your tags, but if you navigate away and come back they will be added to the drop down menu. Afterwords you can just select the old ones, though you'll have to keep adding new ones as they come up. I tagged 12 Reaper Minis I own and then created another album for Dark Sword so we would have two to work with. Now that we have a couple of albums we need somewhere to put them and a way to search them. WP runs on themes, which can be found under "Appearance". It comes with three but there are literally thousands to chose from. Of course, most of them you have to pay for if you want them to actually be useful. For now we will use "Twenty Twenty-One" as our demo since everyone will have it. If it is not active hover over it and select "Activate". Next go to "Pages". You will see two default pages. Feel free to delete them then "Add New". You will see something like this. It needs a name so we can keep track of it. Hit "Publish" twice to active the page. Repeat a few more times and we now have Home, Dark Sword, Reaper, and The Eagle. The WPAA+ search function says it wants a landing page so that is what the last one is for. Now that you have some pages you can create a menu if you want. The option is found under "Appearances". Unfortunately it appears nice menus is something developers use to get you to upgrade to paid themes. I won't be making use of them. And there it is. By the time I'm done my menu will reach down to the floor. Before we set up any searches let's designate our landing page. "Edit" it. In the upper left hand corner of the WP edit screen is a blue plus. It will open a sidebar with all of your widgets in it. There they are. An an example I have placed a button on the page, though it isn't really necessary. The WPAA+ results will have navigation built in. Look around until you find the "shortcode" widget. It allows for simple commands without the possibility of inserting malicious code. In this case we are just pasting what WPAA+ says should be used to designate it's landing page. Just cut and paste [wppa type="landing"] Now that we have a landing screen we can go back to the WPAA+ options and set it. Once again, make sure tags are searchable. We have made a couple of galleries but they need some place to live. Edit the Reaper tab and go alllll the way down on the widget menu to find "WPAA Gallery" Here are the options I used. If you now "Preview" the page you can see what it looks like. Really narrow, but that is due to the theme. You can see each image displays its name and the SKU I put in the description. The "Delete" option you can make go away back in the WPAA+ options. You will see it's gone later. To our home screen! You can see there is a basic search option, but we don't want to chose that one. We will be using the WPAA one. Here you see the default search bar is still here (don't install) as well as the WPAA search bar. I'll show the options for that in a second, but first add three columns below it. There is a bit of a jump here because GIMP crashed and I lost some screenshots. In the first column I placed the "Pages" widget so I have a list of all my pages (rather than using the menu), in the center I inserted the shortcode for the WPAA Picture of the day - [wppa type="mphoto" photo="#potd" size="0.5" align="center"], and in the left column I inserted the WPAA tagcloud. For both WPAA Search and WPAA tagcloud the first step is to add a WPAA gallery just like we did before. Then you need to select "A search/selection box" as shown below. Then for a search box select "A search box" or for a tagcloud select "A tagcloud box." For search you can set the landing page again, though we have already designated it. Now let's take a look in preview! We have a search, a page list, a tagcloud, and a photo of the day. This theme doesn't look very good though, so let's work on that. Go to Appearance - Themes. Since we're keeping this simple and free let's add "Hello Elementor" to see how that changes things. Go to Appearances and "Add New" theme. (Elementor is a Free/Paid step up from the basic WP editor. Hello is their super basic intro page). Activate it. Now that "Hello" is active we can "Customize" it. In the preview you can see how the page we built looks different with the new theme. It is wider and whiter. Now if you clicked "Home" at any point on one of the albums, you may have noticed you ended up somewhere strange. This is because WP defaults to taking you back to your most recent post. We want to change that. Go to "Homepage Settings." and set the homepage to "Home". Now you will always come back to the page you see below. OK, we've built it and we know we can browse it, so let's try searching it. First search, "Male". This brings up every image that I have tagged as "male". We see their name (you did give your pic a good name didn't you), description (SKU), manufacturer (because that's how I named their album), and what they look like. But I can already do that using the tagcloud. Let's try something more specific, "male monster" Here are all the images I tagged with both male and monster. At this point you have a functional offline website. If you go back to Local, you can now select "Open site" to go directly to your site. And there you have it. We now have the ability to: Use the page list to visually browse by manufacturer. Use the tagcloud to search by a single tag, i.e "archer" or "bugbear" Use search to narrow it down even further using multiple tags. Obviously at this point you can play around to make it look nicer, install different themes, upgrade the editor, hide the page names, etc, but your WPAA+ based organization is underway.

The Medium I personally find the blended fibers medium by Liquitex to be a highly versatile medium. It can be added to any ground mixture to add the appearance of natural roots and similar debris. In this tutorial I will be looking at how to make an ice base using it. It is important to remember that in most cases the ice is hardly crystal clear and instead it generally appears cloudy white. The blended fibbers have a slight translucency which allows for the illusion of depth, while each fiber acts like a crack in the ice. The Ice Step 1: Base colour Use a dark base. Then tint it with the colour you want. In this case I used Cerulean Blue. This step can be skipped if you are going to be tinting the medium instead (thought a darker base colour is still advised) Step 2: Apply Fiber Medium Slather on a large dollop of medium. You can add some colour to tint it, but the colour will change significantly as it dries so be carful to not overpower it (you don't even need to mix it well as streaking colours may be desired). Transparent colours work better for tinting if you still want to retain the depth. In this case I did not tint it. Step 3: Smooth the Medium I did this by wetting a pallet knife and running it over the surface, followed by cleaning up the edges. The Fiber medium is extremely easy to smooth with a wet pallet knife. The thickness decides how much translucency the final product has. Step 4: Let it Dry In this case I liked how it looked so I decided not to dry brush it with white. Drybrushing with white would make it look more frosty. This took a couple hours for me, mostly due to the thickness I chose. You can see how the blue is showing in the photo, that is the undercoat peaking through. The Snow Step 1: Snow Mix some medium with Titanium white. This will make a nice snow texture Step 2: Applying Snow Apply the snow and feather it out with a brush, the feathering out makes it look more realistic. If you don't want peaks use water to smooth the snow (unless you want peaks to represent sticks in the snow.) Step 3: Let it Dry The base is now finished. The Miniature Put a miniature on it. Thats what a base is for. Unless you want to use it as a trap in DnD or some terrain.

The following are video tutorials from YouTube contributors that have been organized into categories for easy reference. I have created many great works of art from the following: How to Paint Miniatures: Complete Painting Tutorials The Basics: Painting Segmented Tutorials Airbrush Basics: Tutorials & Techniques Bases & Terrain: Designs & Ideas Cast Fantasy Miniatures Using Rubber Molds Make a Painting Video Make a Round Surface Sander Make Barbed/Razor Wire Make Hose Pipes and/or Tentacles Make Rope, Cable & Chains Make Washes Paint a Fire Creature Paint a Frost Creature Paint Armor & Weapons on Miniatures Paint Blood & Gore Paint Crystal Sword Effects Paint Eyes with Glowing Effects Paint Faces, Eyes & Hair on a Miniature Paint Frail or Textured Cloth/Material Paint Gems and Jewels Paint Force and Power Weapons Paint Fire Effects Paint Ghostly Effects Paint Horses & Steeds Paint Lighting Bolts on Weapons Paint Metals: Non Metallic Metal - NMM Paint Metals: True Metallic Paint - TMP Paint Metal Effects: Rust Paint Metal Effects: Weathering Paint Object Source Lighting (OSL) Paint Skin Tones on Miniatures Paint Skin Wings on Miniatures Paint Tartan Patterns (Kilts & Flannels) Paint The Color Black Paint The Color Gold Paint The Color Red Paint The Color White Paperclip, The Unusal Useful Tool Restore Dried Out Paint Static Grass Applicator String a Bow On Your Miniature Transfer Citadel Paint into Dropper Bottles

A lot of times, I see people asking for advice on how to do a conversion, or expressing uncertainty about having the skills to do one. So, I decided to create (what I hope will be) a helpful topic to cover that area. I'm aiming this primarily at beginners, or those that 'don't think they can', but hopefully everyone will find something useful or interesting here. First off, let's dispel the 'I can't/I'm not good enough' myth. Nonsense! If you can operate simple mechanical devices, you have all the skills you need to perform simple conversions. It's easy and fun, all it takes is some practice. Just remember, you're going to want to practice on some inexpensive figures before you start in on anything really crazy. Bones figures are great for this. So, here's what you'll need: 1.A hobby knife with a new blade--new blades are easier to use, and safer. Caution: these are sharp, please be careful. 2.Some green stuff, or whatever type of sculpting putty you prefer. This will be used for filling gaps and/or sculpting new details. 3.Some victims volunteers figures you want to convert. In this case, I'm going to be using some Bones Goblins (remember the practice on inexpensive figures part?) for 2 reasons; they're cheap, and I have a horde of them and don't like having a bunch of clones on the table top. 4.Super Glue; the stuff in my picture is the best that I've found for working on Bones, and it's not too shabby on other materials, either. There are many other types out there; find the one that works the best for you. 5.Something to pin parts with; in this case I'm using paperclips. They're plenty strong enough for what I'll be doing. Again there are a lot of things you can use, go with what works for you. I use brass rod for bigger and/or metal miniatures; it's stronger. Not pictured: A razor saw for cutting metal figures. Mine is missing right now, but the one I use is made by X-Acto. 6. A drill and bits for making holes for pinning your figures. 7. A bits box. This is where you keep all of your spare parts for conversions. I've got around a dozen of these things, all full of weapons, shields, body parts, and all sorts of other things.If you buy a figure that has different head or weapon options, the pieces you decided not to use go into your bits box. Got a figure that you've already cut the head and both arms off of to use elsewhere? Keep it. You might want those boots for something next summer. Never throw anything away. Here we go! The first conversion will be a simple weapon swap; a spear into a halberd. Here, you can see I cut off the spear head in order to replace it with something else. This brings up a good rule: try to find a 'seam' to make your cuts at, if possible. Here, the 'seam' is where the head of the spear meets the shaft. Other good 'seams' are wrists, especially if there is a sleeve/gauntlet/wristband that will provide a guide for cutting and leave a nice flat space to attach the new part. Not quite as good of a seam here, mostly because the top of the hand/fist isn't entirely flat. It's still a very good spot to use for weapon swaps, though. (I'm sorry, I forgot to take pictures of these guys, but you can see them completed in the group pictures down below.) Now, let's do some shield swaps. This is the spear goblin. What I want you to notice here is that I was careful to cut the shield off in such a way that the straps were left intact on the goblins arm. Sure, you can just chop the shield off however you want to, but: a) you'll have to re-sculpt those straps, so why make extra work for yourself, and b) that shield might come in handy somewhere else. Never throw anything away. Here he is with his new shield: : This is he mace goblin; I couldn't get a decent shot with his shield removed. This shows the new shield in place. Note that I made certain to preserve the straps on the shield arm again. And from the front: 'Wait a minute!' I hear you cry, 'I just started this hobby 5 minutes ago, I don't have a bits box with lots of neat stuff in it for me to do conversions with' No problem, the next 2 are for you. These 2 goblins got a literal weapon swap. I cut the weapons off (again, I tried to do the cutting at a 'seam') of each figure and reattached them to the other figure. And here they are all glued back together: The sharp eyed among you will notice that the bottom of the spear is a slightly different color than the rest. I accidentally cut into the bottom portion when i was trying to clean up the points where it was attached to the figure.(See? I make mistakes, too. No matter, carry on! That's why we're practicing.) I used a little bit of modeling putty to smooth it out. These next 2 are actually the first 2 that I did, before it occurred to me to document the process for others, so I don't have in progress shots of them.They are included just to provide more examples of what can be done in a few minutes. You'll notice that these fellows have some green stuff on them. The goblin on the left has had his arm from the elbow down swapped with one from a pathfinder goblin. I made some wrappings out of GS to hide the join between the 2 parts. The goblin on the right had his shield and arm from the elbow down removed and the arm from the first goblin grafted on. The 2 parts did not align very well, so I gave him a chain mail sleeve from GS to hide the join. Detail of the added armor. And finally, here they are all together. Added weapon, swapped spear for mace,swapped shield, changed weapon tip pathfinder goblin arm, shield swap, weapon swap, swapped mace for spear Was this useful/helpful/informative for you? Is there anything I could do better? Is this something that you'd like to see me continue doing? Please note that I made this an open thread; I'm not the only person that does this, and I am by no means a master at it. If you've got some tips/tricks to add please do so. Step-by-step pictures of what you're working on would be great; I'm still learning, too! I hope that this inspires at least one person to give converting a try.

Our Anti-Hero Rictur Diehn the Assassin (2430) has decided to build a Wet Palette** PARTS LIST: Peanut Butter Jar Lid, 90mm, culled from recycle bin Peanut Butter Jar Lid, 85mm, culled from recycle bin Paper Towels, Bounty Brand, nicked from kitchen Parchment Paper, Reynolds Brand, nicked from kitchen Copper Wire, Solid, 3mm OD, purchased from Home Depot for $0.63 / foot QUANTITIES (In Order): (1), (1), (4 half sheets), (2 layers), (10--12 inches (255-300mm) ) #Searchwords TGPTGP; acid washed; Palette; Recycle Bin; Scratchbuilt; Plastic Lids; Copper **With some off camera help from Pendrake The Griffon

There is a Kickstarter going on until January 7th, 2019 for the English version of the book “The Art of Miniature” by Mohand Art. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mohandart/the-art-of-the-miniature-miniature-art-tutorial-bo

Hi friends! We have another project to share with you in our continuing series where Buglips and I paint the same figure using our own very different from each other approaches to miniature painting. If you're not familiar with this series, you can check out our previous topics: 03100: Thanis the Bonecaller 01614: Con Crud 2017 Convention Zombie 02818: Bugbear Warrior For this project, we decided to paint Scorpius Rex Dracus, which is an older figure in the back catalog of Reaper - just look at the number! 02017! He's one of the OG's of the Reaper catalog! Our usual method for picking a figure is generally that one of us already owns it and suggests it and then the other of us goes and orders it. However, for Scorpius Rex Dracus, we actually both already owned him because he's a really neat figure with a lot of personality. I know a lot of people are a bit intimidated by the thought of painting dragons, but I promise they're a lot of fun and this guy would actually be a great starter dragon, as he's on the smaller side. I didn't have a Sir Forscale, but here he is next to Queen Illeosa of Korvosa to give you an idea of his size. So you can see, he's a far less intimidating size than the dragons you see in Bones. (Spoiler alert, I'm going to assemble him a little later. ) But for now, here he is straight out of the blister: As we've done with our previous WIP posts, I will be tackling this guy with my method of painting for display and I'll do my best to take y'all through all of the steps that I go through from start to finish and share my thoughts with you as I go along. As always, please feel free to comment or ask questions - I'm always glad to help out in whatever way I can along the way. I'll try not to take too many blurry pictures....but no promises.

So people have been talking about airbrushing again, and since being on the hangout, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a live tutorial? I did some research with the help of the First Lady Thing & and the Forum Mascot, and it seems that the noise levels of needed equipment is low enough to not bother my household, or overpower the audio of the hangouts. (I can airbrush inside due to my airbrush station...) If people were interested, I would try to schedule it for a Friday or Saturday night, around 9pm EST. I would start with the basics, this is an airbrush, these are the parts of an airbrush. This is how I mix paint How I spray the paint How I control the spray of paint HOW I CLEAN THE AIRBRUSH Etc etc etc I think that people might be less intimidated by airbrushes if they could see something done live, and be able to ask questions. .. Disclaimer! I am NOT an expert, but would be more than willing to impart my meager knowledge... Maybe some experts could show us things as well. .. So chime in if you are interested! George Link for class, 7/1/2016: https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/ldkk52klardgzouzdquzheyj7ye?hl=en&authuser=0 Class is over for 6/24/2016 Class is over for 7/1/2016 People are still hanging out as of 11pm est..... ***Wondering If anyone would be interested in my reprising this?***

So I was asked to do a step by step tutorial on how I did the rust on my Wyrmgear [located here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/56248-77177-rusty-wyrmgear/ ] so this morning I did just that with three of my Secret Weapon bases from my Bag O' Crap. I hope you find it useful! Here's the three I chose, washed and ready to be painted. Six paints are used [pictured] and two brush sizes [pictured] So first I cover them in brown liner and let that dry Next, I dab at it with my Ancient Bronze. Throughout this whole tutorial, I dab with my brushes. It's a bit rough on the brushes, I recommend using slightly ratty ones you don't mind getting a bit worse. I dab using the side of the bristles, not the ends, but it still is a bit rough on the brush. You don't want to entirely cover the base, but do a decent amount of area in bronze. you'll cover most of it up later, but it gives you a brighter surface to put rust on than the brown liner. I did varying degrees of bronze on the three bases Now you'll add your base rust on the bases, using an orange. I used Lava Orange. Again, i dabbed with my brush. I find it gives a more organic and sporadic feel than brushing the paint on. You'll want to leave the underlying colors visible in areas. This is all about layering the colors to make a glorious mess of colors now you add some dark areas to your rust. I found Bloodstain Red to be great for this! You'll again want to leave areas of orange peeking through. Don't be afraid to use a paper towel and wipe at areas of your base as you go, to get a gritty or smeared look. I did this heavily on the smallest [middle] base below Now I go back over some areas with the Lava Orange to bring out a bit of brighter spots that got covered up too much by the red Now we're going to use a metallic silver, in my case Shadowed Steel, to give a hint of underlying, un-rusted metal beneath that rust. You'll put this over the areas that you left the rust off of, where the dark brown liner is still visible. Don't be afraid if you end up doing too much silver, you can go back over it easily to rust it up. Even though you're actually putting this ON TOP of the rust colors, when you dab with your brush the contrast of shiny to not shiny will make it look underneath, like so: Now we use the small brush that I haven't touched yet for this tutorial. Yellow will add some realistic color to the orangey red rust, but you don't want too much. My yellow doesn't like to put out paint so i have to take the cap off and dip my brush in the cap, so I usually end up with a thick yellow. I deal with this by wiping it gently with a paper towel after dabbing small amounts onto the bases This is a touch up step, where you apply small amounts of orange and red. I did this because I felt that the effect I wanted wasn't completely there, and i needed some more rust over the silver. At this point, I'm rather unhappy with the manhole cover, because it's complicated, textured surface is making it difficult to get the effect I want We pull back out the Ancient Bronze now, to add some shiny rust effect to the duller rust. You can note the difference especially on the manhole cover We use the brown liner again! We're nearing completion. I use the brown liner to imitate dirt, shadows, and to get detail to pop. I put it into the detailed areas of my Wyrmgear's base, the cracks in the metal for example, and wipe away the excess to leave only the dark gap filled We go back to the yellow, because I felt that i had gone too dark again. I went a bit heavy with the yellow on the man hole cover, especially the letters, in an attempt to bring the color up a bit. We're done now, save for some small steps I used Pure Black to go around the edges to cover the paint strokes and to give it a neat look. This actually helped the manhole cover immensely, I think Final sealant coat! I love how sealing them brings the colors out. We're done! I hope everyone finds this tutorial useful for doing heavily rusted bases/miniatures! You can easily adapt this to do less-rusted stuff by increasing the amount of visible metal underneath =) Look up pictures of rust, it's very useful. Rust is so colorful, there is so much variation in it, and my frustration with my Wyrmgear that resulted in me painting him rusty was a boon in disguise because I hadn't realized just how much fun rust was to paint and how beautiful it can be

Standby for massive dump in 3... 2... 1... Chopping this up into a few pieces for easy posting/consumption. Where I've been: Video games (Xumenicus#1118, if you're on Battle.net), bought a new house, running a fly fishing tournament for a treehugger non-profit, part-running my treehugger fly fishing non-profit local chapter, some other random stuff, and yeah -- here we are. I promise to paint more. Seriously. I just need to paint and sculpt more. I also need to fish more. And game more. I guess this is a thing: Apparently, I need deadlines in order to get anything done. This time around, since I couldn't make it to RC2017 (travel budget blown on BlizzCon), I aimed for a couple different challenges over at Massive Voodoo: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2017/07/mv-challenge-2017.html Objective: Make a water-themed base. No central miniature, no real focus -- just a base. And it has to be mostly water. Disclaimer: I'm not at all confident, or consider myself proficient with clear resin. I wasn't sure how good/bad/terrible this piece would turn out, so I didn't spend days painting this. It's got a few rough layers of highlights, a few rough layers of shadows, and basically I just wanted to turn something in, have fun doing it, and not stress about being good enough to win. The MV crowd is amazing -- I was just trying to get closer to touching the sun. :) Supply List: Wood, coping saw, cyano super glue, wire, green stuff, sculpting tools, paint, brushes, old brushes, Ease Release 200 Mold Release Agent, plastic Solo cups, nitrile gloves, popsicles sticks (fox mixing resin), Castin' Craft® Clear Polyester Casting Resin, small sheet of plasticard, duct tape, Tree House Studio Clear Acrylic High Gloss Coating spray, sandpaper (100, 200, 400, 600, 1000 grit), Woodland Scenics Lichen, Woodland Scenics Water Effects, fly tying thread, level for leveling the curing area I did a few sketches one night so I could figure out what to do, and this is where I ended up. I thought about doing a waterfall, or something cooler, but I was kind of in a time crunch, and only had 3 weeks, especially since things are still calming down from moving. [pic_00] Picked out a piece of wood from my scrap pile... [pic_01] Went to work with a coping saw until I had a pleasing, interesting shape... [pic_02] Learning from past mistakes with trying to get green stuff to adhere to wood, I opted to seal the wood this time. I used cyano, and 2 old brushes. It actually works really well as a wood sealer ( http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/cyanoacrylate-everything-you-need-to-know/ ), but you need to be extra careful due to the amount being used -- more of a chance to glue yourself to something, glue to project to something, and the fumes will sneak up on you real quick, and burn your eyes or nose. Fair warning. Be careful. [pic_03] I opted to use green stuff for the project. That's where my comfort zone still is, even though I'm trying to work more with Beesputty and ZBrush. The bit of twisted copper wire there is to support an additional column. Do an image search for "limestone underwater caves", and you'll see where I'm going with this. [pic_04] More... [pic_05] A little more... [pic_06] Starting the tree. Do a search on "limestone cliffs trees roots", and you'll see where I'm headed even more. [pic_07]

I'm going to try again here, and just leave a link to my channel. I have almost 100 videos at this point, and have covered a lot of stuff. Production is improving with each video. I'm a one man operation whom started filming about a year ago. So, you will realize very quickly that the newer videos are much clearer, more in-camera, and concise. Patrons are 3 weeks ahead of the regular release schedule. I release a new video every week. Ghools' Channel

I'm starting to get lost here, so I figured I'd make an index of stuff I've posted. Many of these are loaded with enough pics and text that they're almost mini-tutorials. Questions and comments are always welcome. If you don't get a reply within a couple days, find me on Facebook, or add me on Battle.net (Xumenicus#1118). ReaperCon Final Photos 2016: https://reapercon.com/mspopen/2016/artist/Joshua Anaya 2015: https://reapercon.com/mspopen/2015/artist/Joshua Anaya Projects Massive Voodoo Water Base (No Minis) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/77445-massive-voodoo-water-base-no-minis/ Pathfinder Seoni Bust (ReaperCon 2016 Open Gold) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71475-pathfinder-seoni-bust-reapercon-2016/ Dagon's Emissary (ReaperCon 2016 Diorama Silver) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71496-dagons-emissary-reapercon-2016-parts-03707-and-03497/ Grudge Power Armor Bust (ReaperCon 2015 Open Gold, Bronze Sophie) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71528-grudge-power-armor-reapercon-2015-bronze-sophie/ Dark Sword Mole Alchemist Diorama (ReaperCon 2015 Diorama Gold) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71534-dark-sword-mole-alchemistdiorama/ Ork Timberwolf Vehicle (WiP) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71497-ork-timberwolf-half-scratch-half-gw-stompa/ 14479: Dryad (Heavily adminned because she's female. Haven't gotten around to fixing.) (WiP) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71536-14479-dryadbut-more/ Power Armored Dwarves (WiP, and possibly forgotten and/or lost) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71652-power-armored-dwarves/ Caddisfly Larva (Fishing) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72652-caddisfly-larva-something-completely-different/ Completely Failed Tower Implosion Diorama (Dead) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71535-completely-failed-tower-implosion-diorama/ Informational Me hijacking somebody else's thread, and using it to track conventions in Colorado http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/77238-colorado-cons/#comment-1636600

Hi All, So for those that pay the least bit of attention to what I paint, you may have noticed that I paint mostly Ral Partha figures, which is a brand I really do enjoy quite a lot. I've been painting figures for their online catalogue for a number of years, and I just recently tried my hand at my first little tutorial, which was posted over at their site. If you are at all curious, you could find it here: http://www.ralpartha.com/index.php/blog/119-painting-guide-eyes-and-faces It is by no means the end-all, be-all of painting eyes, but just shows the way I typically approach painting eyes with four recent examples of figures that I've done. I think it almost feels like a WIP for four different figures. So anyways, have a look, hope you enjoy it, and hopefully somebody somewhere can get a little bit of eye-painting inspiration!

We are doing a video tutorial series on how we have been painting figures. The past couple years we have been working out a way for those who are inept (like me) and those who are adept (like Christie) to be able to paint figures fast, and well enough that they look good in person and in a photo. We have made substantial progress incorporating and modifying techniques we have learned from others (many on these forums, classes at reaper-con, etc.) Here is out latest video, step two of our pre-shading process. Feedback and questions always welcome!

What could be a more essential wargaming terrain piece than the common hill? No matter what period, no matter what setting, hills will be featured. They add visual interest and tactical complexity to any gaming surface, may it be modular boards, gaming mats or just a green table-cloth. They may be an essential piece of gaming terrain, but making naturalistic looking hills that not only allow easy placement of models, but also easy placement and removal of trees or other terrain features, can be a challenge. In this post I show you my take on such hills and try to solve some of the problems one may encounter by using the fantabulous power of magnets *gasp*! Obviously this tutorial can also be used for terrain boards. Over hill and lofty mountain – how to make magnetised wargaming hills

Anybody have any tips, or know of any good tutorials for painting gems? I have a lot of figures with little gems on them and I'm just not sure how to get the gems to really stand out. The small surface area of the gems in particular makes it difficult for me. (Being a noob doesn't help, but figured a good tut might at least get me trying the right way!) As always, thanks in advance for any assistance!

EDITED: I tried to fix the pics since the originals were on photobucket. Apologies if they're a bit off! Ok, face painters! Have you always wondered how to get nice smooth skin blend? I'm going to do my best to take you step by step through a face. I could probably be persuaded to also move on to other skin areas, but let's start simple. Now, while snapping photos I realized this blending is not going to be as neat and clean as I usually like it because the photoing process did interfere with a few layers. But, we'll get it smooth in the end! Are you ready?! First things first: A large model, to better illustrate what we're doing! And our materials. We have Yephima, cloud giantess, a W&N #2, and RMS paint! I used fair skin as my flesh color, and I'm going to shade with porcelain rose and spattered crimson and highlight with pure white. This should give us a nice warm flesh tone. I'll also use walnut brown on the eyes. After snapping this, I also realized I wanted blue eyes- so I added ashen blue for the iris. Porcelain is a retired color. You can sub punk rock pink or just mix spattered with white and it'll work just fine. But I had it, and I like it, and if I keep using it, maybe reaper will bring it back! 1. Step 1: basecoat the face with fair skin. Hey! My model has a little face blemish! Oh no! What can I do to fix this? Never fear, face painters! Just take a little bit of brush-on sealer and cover the blemish with a nice layer, and it will smooth out. You can then put another layer of basecoat on top. I did a total of 3 layers of flesh, mainly because I forgot to wash this model and I had some adherence issues on the chest. 2. Step 2: The eyes! Line with walnut. Doesn't have to be perfect. You can always touch up with flesh. Paint the sclera white. Pure white probably isn't as good as linen or leather white, but I'm trying to limit our palette. Add the iris- ashen blue, as you can see. Here's where we pick the direction of gaze and try to make the eye "look" in the same direction. Takes some practice to figure our what works and what you like. Again, if paint goes where you don't want it, just touch up. Hmmn... I could have sworn I took one with just the blue... at any rater, after the blue is down add the walnut brown pupil. Then dot the pupil with white. Sorry, that back eye is hard to see. Usually there's an easy eye and a hard eye. Some people start with the hard eye. I start with the easy eye, so at least one will look the way I want! 3. Step 3: Breathe. Don't forget to breath again now that the eyes are done! 4. Step 4: Shading. This is a lot messier because I'm pausing to photo- sorry! First I lay down a thin glaze of spattered crimson all the way to the edge of the walnut, then clean the brush and just smooth the edge out using a damp brush and some feathering type strokes. Thin is better. See how nice and translucent this layer is? You can easily see the flesh underneath. I went back in with a thin glaze of my flesh to reclaim some of that cheekbone from the shadow. Then proceeded to put some crimson on the side of the nose and smooth it out. I really tried to catch each specific step. But- you can see how thin the layer is, then how it smooths with a damp brush. I usually do a few layers of this and reclaim my flesh with a thin glaze if I feel I have too much shadow tone. The crimson will mesh nicely with the walnut so that it looks like she has nice intense Maybelline lashes! Er- probably don't want quite this much contrast with a male face. If I were doing this on a male model, I'd pick something like ruddy brown to line the eyes. More soon!

Bob in the role as Tim The Enchanter. I saw parts of the movies, seeing Bob throwing fire around and knew I need a Fireball for him. :-) Small Fireball Tutorial: 01. Get a ~0,65mm needle and glue a small plastic bead on it. Some have balls at the end. 02. For the fire around the needle and the ball I used a small hotgluegun trying not to get a to smoothed surface. 03. After the hotglue was cold I tried with the hot a more uneaven surface on the hotglue, again. 04. I drilled a 0,65mm hole in the hand. (better use a hand drilling tool, not a machine!) 05. Bended the needle a little bit 06. used 2-epoxy-glue to glue it in the hand 07. to make it sure it does not change the position I put the fireball on something. 08. painted it white 09. painted it yellow 10. painted it orange 11. painted it red while orange is wet 12. painted it black on the jet near the hand while orange and red are wet

So - this is my first time "painting fire". It's not bad, but it's not good either... Advice for how to do it better next time? PS. I know that this figure is supposed to be a water creature, but I "made it work" to be a fire elemental lady who's an "ash mage" of sorts or whatever...

So I was asked to do a tutorial on how I painted the marble on my Coraldrax [seen here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/54577-coraldrax-sea-kaladrax/ ] like I did with my tutorial on painting rust: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/56249-siris-guide-to-painting-rust/ So here we go! This isn't going to be as good as my rust tutorial I think, it's using acrylics [since that's how I did it on Coraldrax, and I wanted to show how I did that] and really on Coraldrax it's barely visible underneath him, so I didn't worry about doing a pretty job with it. However, I think it can easily be done with hobby paints instead of craft, and be done much nicer than the way I do it, by using the same basics as i'll show below So I decided to use two flat surfaces, which are two half objective markers from my Secret Weapon Bag O' Crap and another base from the same Bag O' Crap that could pull off the marble look and actually has texture The colors I use are white, a light gray, a medium gray, and a very very dark green called Wrought Iron. I have black there as well, but I didn't use it My first step is to cover them completely in the medium gray color Then you use white and streak in the same direction. I usually go from one corner to the opposite corner. Don't be worried if the lines are fuzzy or blotchy or thick. Marble is seldom symmetrical and perfect, and this is just the base coat you're applying Now I break out my light grey and do the same thing, streaking in the same direction. This helps clean up your white lines a bit, and blend them a bit better so it's not so stark This next step will look very messy. Don't get discouraged! You're going to use a very small brush and your dark color. In my case, that is Wrought Iron. Your'e going to make spidery veins in the same direction as your streaking [you will notice I screwed up on one of my objective markers and went against the streaks >.< ] You'll want to dip your brush often, because plenty of paint means it doesn't get fuzzy edges. We want lots of crisp lines Now you'll go back to your light grey and white. I tend to mix them in even parts, and then dry brush it over the entire thing. At this stage, you don't HAVE to follow the streaking, but I still do anyways just because. This makes the veins fade Using pure white, we streak once more. Be careful not to entirely cover up your faded veins of dark color Now you're going to apply dark veins once more. You'll want them very thin, very crisp. If you look at pictures of marble, you'll see plenty of them have both faded and crisp lines through them And you're done! A final seal gets us our final marble look. As I said, a bit messy, a bit imperfect...but I'm sure with this tutorial you can get the basic marble look down and then improve on my own technique =) Finished markers: Finished little base:

Hiho, to add some variety to the gaming table and depict some smaller shrubs I wrote a tutorial detailing how to go about making shrubs and brushes for both 15mm and 28mm. I went for hazel bushes this time as they have a distinct bark and also allow to decorate the bases with some hazelnuts and squirrels ;). A step-by-step tutorial and plenty of pictures can be found on my blog: Squirrly Goodness – Making Hazel Shrubs for 28mm and 15mm Here is the final result:

A few years ago I did a quick tutorial of painting red hair with Reaper's red hair triad. Since then I have painted quite a few more red heads and hopefully am better at it. The first tutorial http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/46120-tutorial-for-the-red-head-triad/ used mainly just the red hair triad with a few other colors to give it some depth. I wanted to expand upon the first and still focus on the red hair triad. So here are the colors I selected to use for my victims. Here are the three victims freshly primed and waiting to cure a bit before painting. From left to right the miniatures are Dark Sword's Female Mage DSM1192, Reaper's Dain Deepaxe 77074 and Reaper's Valloa Female Elf Thief 03566. I don't usually prime my bones minis but I did put a quick layer of Tamiya primer on him so I can paint with thinner paint. I plan to paint one of them a deeper auburn and one a bright orangish red. The third will be hopefully somewhere in between. Any and all input is welcome. This will be how I paint red hair and hopefully give some of the newer painters ideas of how to approach red.

Hey reaper mini forum! Got another beginner video about basing your miniatures! Please give any feedback regarding the content/video :)

This is a Young Forest Dragon I painted last year. You can find my video tutorial for the painting project here: http://www.mageknightkevin.blogspot.ca/2014/11/video-tutorial-painting-green-dragon.html Kevin in Edmonton http://www.mageknightkevin.blogspot.ca