Search the Community

I love doing WIPs. And I've got a lot projects I should finish 😊. And since there is still no progress with Barros and Tempest (this time because I'm still waiting for a new base to be shipped), why not start something new? I've yet to paint my first dragon, so I'll use this opportunity to do it. I confess, I'm cheating a bit here, since I'm going to paint the white dragon by Dark Sword Minis - that's a very small dragon. But still, he's got wings and teeth and claws and scales, so definitely a dragon, yessir! I absolutely love this mini. I bought it many years ago, but the horns went missing. Fortunately, when I ordered some more minis from Dark Sword a while ago, I was able to order some spare horns, so now I'm good to go. Here he is, assembled and prepped: Now I have to decide on a paint scheme, which I can't bring myself to do. There are three ideas I have at the moment: paint him up as an ice dragon. I'm thinking white with pinkish/greenish undertones and a base made with transparent crackle paint. There was a very cool version of an Ice Dragon a while ago on this forum, but I can't seem to find it any more. paint him up as a star dragon using the technique I learned at RVE in Kevin Holderny's class. I used it on a coat so far, maybe it looks very cool on the dragon's wings. paint him up as a real world snake. Now there are so many possibilities... Decisions, decisions... Some more work on the base.

For the ReaperCon MSP Open this year, I painted the master copy of the White Drake I sculpted for Dark Sword (it will be released for sale in 2022). I decided to do him in glacial coloration inspired by a glacier I saw while on a cruise in AK. For the Sculpting story, click here. For the Painting WIP, click here. Oh, and I won a gold medal for him in the Open category. (Bear in mind that that is a 1" base)

I've been working on my drakes/dragons for what feels like forever now. Last week, Jim of Dark Sword brought me a copy of the metal masters for the small versions of them as they are being prepared for casting. He gave me permission to paint one up as my ReaperCon entry, despite their not being released yet. So here goes... If you want to read the whole tale on the sculpting of these drakes, check out this thread in the sculpting section. After prepping the mini, I primed it with my airbrush, using stylrnez. About 6 months ago, I had started painting a resin prototype of this mini that I had printed. That mini was a bit too small and had some errors in the scales on its tail, so I abandoned it. That said, I am sticking fairly close to the color concept I had with that one and will be using it as a preliminary sketch of where I want this one to go. Here is that sketch model: On Saturday, I got together with a bunch of friends to work on our Open entries and I began the painting in earnest, All paints are MSP. The dorsal scales are based in Sharkbite, the sides in Marid Blue, and the belly in Grindylow Green. The belly was washed in a mix of Grindylow Green and Clear Pthalo Green. I have more work to do on that shading yet though. I then shaded the sides down to Sharkbite. I also have more work to do on the deepest shadows there yet after I get the highlights done. I also painted the eyes and teeth. Yesterday, I highlight the sides up to white and based the claws in Drow Skin. I plan on spending every night this week working on it and have Friday off as well. I hope I can be done on Friday, but we'll see. I do have all my classes prepped, so am ready for ReaperCon other than this project and one other metal work project I have going. It is going to be a busy week though.

During my Shelf of Shame Project I started with the fairy. Since there is only room for one project on my wet palette, this one had to take the back seat during RVE. Today I finished another project, at least as far as the palette is concerned, so I can finally continue with my little fairy. Every aspect of this project was created by rolling dice. For everyone interested, here is a somewhat elaborate summary of part one: During weekend I usually put down my brushes. At the moment, painting is a stand in for my job that's on hold because of Corona restrictions, so there will probably be no progress until next week. I just wanted to set up everything so I can start right away!

Recently finished this lovely mini from Dark Sword. Toyed with a few ideas but the winter theme ended up being the one that stuck. I wish I had had more time to spend on it but I am happy with how she turned out.

I haven’t been on the forum much this year. Since joining Anne Foerster’s Patreon I’ve been spending more time on Discord. I’ve been painting this guy following the paintalong she’s done for one of the tiers. It’s the first time I’ve tried to do a “display quality” paint job. Other firsts are NMM, freehand, leather texture, cloth texture, and sculpted base elements. I actually started this guy early this year, but then stopped painting altogether for about 4 months after the pandemic started. I picked him back up in July and am getting close to finishing. I’m posting a series of pics I’ve taken as I went, and will continue to post as I finish him up soon. Feb 29: prepped and primed, with some minor GS work Mar 1: base GS sculpting — LONG BREAK — Aug 2: skin lined, basecoated, and shaded Aug 6: skin initial highlights

This was my main entry for the Painters category at 2019 ReaperCon. This figure was a long time resident of my shelf of shame. Originally intended for it to be an anniversary present for my parents in 2015 but I never got past base coating. For some reason it was just not clicking with me but I was determined to finish them this year. I made some changes to what I had planned and that finally worked. I originally planned on doing green and blue with a larger display base that was more a diorama. After so many years, I determined the base was just not working and one time when I was looking at the base coats, I realized pink would be better than blue with the green. It ended up being perfect because my mother has some art work that these colors match perfectly. Once I got the base and colors figured out, finishing was a breeze.

Male Dwarven Cleric with Warhammer from Dark Sword Miniatures.

One of the newer minis from Dark Sword Miniatures. I saw this at the beginning of December and immediately thought of my best friend. As it took me until just this past week to finally find time to paint her, and my BFF lives in London, it's a much belated Christmas present. But worth the wait, I think. She has a little friend hiding in the flora too.

In an unusual turn of events, I ended up painting the same miniature three times this week. First one was for a customer who wanted the bard from Dark Sword Miniatures but without the pipe in his hand. So it was replaced with a glowing musical note. Red armour, blue clothes, yellow cloak. While I was working on it, a different customer wanted the same bard but just a quick paint job for a sidekick NPC in his D&D game. Of course, no pipe for the second bard either. Brown armour, green cloak. I think I spent more time on the base than painting him. While I was working on the second one, the first customer decided he didn't like the colour scheme and could I change a couple of things. No problem, I'm happy to do it. But there is OSL and all kinds of other stuff, so it was actually much easier just to start again from scratch. So I painted him a third time. Red cloak, grey clothes.

I painted these three dark elves last week. Always a popular subject. Priestess of Lolth, Priest of Vhaerun, and a Paladin of Moradin.

This is the end result of me trying ~2.5 sources of light for OSL. Red from magic runes below, teal from a flame in hand, and some moonlight from above. The character is our magic user (archivist/wizard/mystic theurge for Wee Jas), who got pretty beat up last session - but he got better. Hence title "revived". His familiar is an Aussie magpie, which was so vexing to paint, because instead of just a black bird, she has some spots. Gah! The character is pale, with black hair, and wears black and gray.... so I had a bit of an adventure trying to work around that too. The figure is a converted version of Dark Sword's Stephanie Law "Male Mage". I took it off the base and put it on a new one (I think MicroArtStudio?). I also filed off the tiny beard to make it just a little more different. I then took off the staff, and took the Bird on a Rock from that kickstarter and put it on the hand. That thing is on there with superglue, greenstuff, and prayers. The red OSL specifically wouldn't have been possible with my Reaper reds; that's Kimera paints. I tried Reaper Blood Red and it just wouldn't go bright enough. On the palette, it looks the same as Kimera's "The Red", but The Red is just sooooo much more vibrant. I thinned the heck out of it and started glazing it in. Weakest point I think is the bird, but eh, that's okay. Photos aren't perfect, but still better than what I used to get. Going to fiddle around with stuff again soon.

This was one of my diorama entries for ReaperCon featuring miniatures from Dark Sword Miniatures. I had diorama ideas centered around the female figure occupying my mind for a while before I settled on this one. I tried a few other figures with her but nothing fit until I got the male figure and then added the wolf. I am very happy with how it came together and was very pleased that it received a Gold medal in the Diorama Category. I also was honored to receive second place diorama from Dark Sword.

My second ReaperCon diorama started as an idea of having Jason Wiebe's Tiger Lily Mage holding a stop sign. When I started looking through the rest of the Dark Sword Miniatures Critter Kingdoms line, I quickly realized that there was potential to build a multitude of scenes. I planned out a simple story: Tiger Lily stops traffic, which would be another animal of some kind, and another animal crosses the street. The Squirrel on a Turtle was perfectly awesome for the traffic, and the Pretty Princess cat noble was great for the pedestrian. I also had a bunch of resin groceries and dressing that I wanted to use, and the Hedgehog Bard made for a great half-oblivious grocer. Oh, and the streets on the sign are named after Mr. Wiebe's other dogs. This diorama won 2nd Place overall Critter Kingdom Anthropomorphic Animals award, which came with a pretty great store credit prize at Dark Sword. I was honestly so blown away that it was chosen, I barely remember walking up to accept the award, lol.

Dark Sword Miniatures DSM7461 Male Warrior with Crossbow, sculpted by Jeff Grace. Painted this up for one of the players in my D&D game. I'm painting every day, with lots of interesting projects I wouldn't have thought to try thanks to people who have been sending commissions my way.

Got a little bored with the half-finished things on my desk (which explains why they're all half finished and over two years old... Or eight years, in one case...), So I decided I'd start on something I've wanted to paint to a high level for a long time. Jeff Grace did a magnificent job sculpting this snake lady, and offering a lot of wonderful opportunity for painters. Although I love love looooooove Marike Reimer's subtly colored studio paint job, I wanted something with a bit more color... Beautiful as they are, Diamondbacks aren't the only snakes in the world, and I like snake-folk that aren't just Brown or green. So I'm talking inspiration from the lovely Redbellied Snake, a small species of the Eastern USA. Maybe too docile a species to expect as a Gorgon, but I don't mind. Look at the color! So the plan is to go with the highly saturated red-orange of her scutes, abdomen and face, the relatively dull brown of her back, and a pale bluey green for her dress (I suppose the dress is more or less a chiton, but the more I've looked at it, the more it starts looking like a peplos with sleeves and a very small himation...I dunno). I also intend transparency on the garment, which is why I stayed inside the lines about as well as a kindergartner on Red Bull. This is about 15 minutes of work, that's all I had during lunch today. I also did not write down my paints, so I'll get that formula tomorrow. I am super excited about that red-orange, though!

Stuff I painted this year.

My mom and I did a side by side painting of this little Dark Sword demon frog dude. We agreed upon a color scheme and limited palette. She used my Reaper paint, and I used her equivalent Vallejo Game Color paint. She got acquainted with her nice new brush. We did these in ~1hr. Fast sloppy job for me, and enough to encourage her to start highlighting more than previous paint jobs. Not my best photos because we are painting at the kitchen table together where I set up picture booth. Tough!

Dark Sword Miniatures Female witch with wand, sculpted by Jeff Grace.