Aard Paints: Fungal Forests!

[Aard_Rinn]

For quite a while, the Shrieker has been my favorite miniature produced by Otherworld Miniatures. Their animals are lovely, and their other dungeon monsters are excellent, but their Shriekers are a fantastic sculpt of a monster I love using and really haven't seen one I like of anywhere else. They're really true to the art, which I appreciate:

 

 

So when I got my set of them, I waited a few days to paint it, because I wanted to be sure I'd do it right... Also it took a bit to figure out how I wanted the tentacles on the Violet Fungus conversion...

 

Then, last night, I said screw it, and painted them all up over the course of like 6 hours. It's been a long week.

 

 

Aaaayyyyy!

 

I'm really pleased with how they turned out, needless to say!

 

 

Painting these was actually one of the more multi-step processes I've done lately - most of the stuff I've done this month has been pretty basic, since I've been focusing on getting stuff off my desk and finished... They weren't hard, though. I went in with a pretty good idea of both my end goal and my process, informed by some other miniatures I've painted - Reaper's mushroom men.

 

I painted those up a long time ago, and I wanted to get basically the same stem effect on these as I had on them. I didn't remember how I did it then, though... but I knew that it involved a green, a white, and a wash. So I started with basecoats: a sort of army-green that has long since lost it's label for the body, and a pastel violet for the crown. Like a lavender.

 

Then, I drybrushed - an even paler purple on the crown, and Osirian Sand on the trunk. After that, a wash on each - Druchii Violet on the hoods, and Army Painter Soft on the trunk - to darken and add depth to the hood, and knock down the green of the trunks. 

 

After that dried, I filled each hole with the same green as the trunk, then used Osirian Sand again to fill in the area under the hood and to rim each hole. From there, a simple wash of Soft over both areas had the mushrooms themselves finished. I picked out the shelf mushrooms on the sides with red, to better match the artwork and add a little more color contrast - I quite like them, although the idea of mushrooms growing on mushrooms is... odd.

 

 

This lucky chap got the horn conversions for the Violet Fungi. He was painted the same way, and then I used  Walnut Brown and Osirian Sand to fill in the horns. I only got one set of horns for all three sets of fungi I ordered, but I placed a second order (I decided I really wanted the wonderful Attercops they do, and some of their Carnivourous Apes) and mentioned it in the comments, so maybe I'll get the other two with that. I didn't want to make them mail something all the way from England just for that.

 

These guys will probably get some of the same green flock I use for all of my cave minis at some point, but I wanted to make sure they were really, really dry first, since I'll never get a mis-applique out of that texture. Stilll, they're a lovely garden for my drow...

 

 

Which is probably where they'll see the most use. Wonderful, wonderful monsters, easy to use as part of a low- or high-level campaign... Basically, they're the opposite of some of the more broadly useful monsters. They do one thing, but they do it amazingly, and that makes them stars. Am I going to use them for anything other than alerting enemies and hiding Violet Fungi? No. Do they need to do anything else to be perfect? ...Nope!

 

Next up will probably be some beetles, but those will have to wait until Friday... I ran through a 100-pack of bases in the last month, and my next one doesn't arrive till tomorrow, so who knows what I'll do today...

[Glitterwolf]

[KruleBear]

These really look nice. Great job of accentuating the sculpted texture. 

[Darcstaar]

Nice clean painting.  Love the violet color.

[Iridil]

These look really great! I love the violet caps.