Miniature Painting Class pt. 2

Elliwyn Heatherlark – Reaper Gnome Bard mini

This painting session, my daughter joined in. Which was an exercise in frustration, haha!

I gave her a Bones USA copy of the mini and I painted up a metal version. The metal one was slightly smaller, which I liked for the scale, but also meant the Bones would be a tiny bit easier for my daughter to paint.

Paint list, Progress shot

First off, I had to move painting supplies, monitor, laptop, etc. downstairs to the dining table. Quite the chore. After everything was setup and the class started, I had to scurry back upstairs to quickly get paints from the paint list. Some back and forth, but finally I sat down and tried to catch up on painting. My daughter kept asking me questions during the session, which caused further distractions.

So, I tried my best to follow along. Again, I find Geoff paints much faster and differently than I do. Similarly to when I took classes at Reapercon, I just tried to absorb what the instructor is teaching, but at times I have to fall back to my old habits to keep up or accomplish something.

The freehand on the shield. Geoff asked for an idea to freehand on the shield. Someone offered up a “bird”. I googled and found the image above. I think I was partially joking, because it looked like too much work for the size of shield. But nope, Geoff said ‘that will work!’. I also didn’t think we would all be painting it *gulp*. Geoff broke it down for us, showing us how to separate the image into its main parts. In this case it was the head, body, wings, and tail. He sketched it out on a scrap piece of paper. That was a nice way of doing it. For the amount of time we had, I think mine turned out ‘ok’. The wings on my bird needed to be a bit longer, so I should have positioned it a bit differently. But going from “that’s impossible!” to something kinda decent was pretty nice.

The class ran over a bit and my daughter ended up having to leave. I was able to stick around and keep painting. Having missed parts of the class earlier, I mainly tried to wing it and catch up where I could. Towards the end, people took pictures of their minis and shared them in the chat. Geoff went through and offered some great advice on each of them. Then it was some open chat time while Geoff worked on completing his mini. I had to leave part way through that, but I found it really fun.

NMM – Geoff did a quick Non-Metallic Metal job on the sword. I tried to follow along, but I was a bit behind and didn’t quite catch it. The key takeaway though, is I got some of the basic concept and it changed my view on the technique. I used to dismiss the technique as “not for me!”. But now I can see how it could be useful. Mostly because I end up putting off metal bits as one of the last items to get done on a mini. This is because I don’t want to mix metallic paints with the brushes, rinsing water, and palette that I’m using for regular paints. With this technique, I could paint metals at any time, with any brush, which could be handy. It also doesn’t look quite as daunting. Granted, I’m not going to be painting NMM at the level that Kuribo does, but something quicker could become part of my tool belt at some point.

Next time: Stargrave 2

• Fantasy minis
• Miniature Painting
• Miniatures