Fighting the Gray Tide (Miniature Painting)

[MGibster]

So this is my first negative comment about a product. This Army Painter Vampire Red has about the worse cover I’ve ever seen. When I applied a coat onto the flag, it worked more like a glaze. I’ll stress here this is the old Army Painter formula which has since been updated.

 

[el-remmen]

FROGHEMOTH!
(My most recent mini)

 

[MGibster]

My attempt at some heated metal armor.

 

[MGibster]

So this is the Phoenix from Dungeons & Lasers. Well, these are the wings at least. I’m still working on it. So two things. I've been using an airbrush since 2020, but I still feel as though I'm learning. They say your airbrush paint should be the consistency of skim milk, but apparently I don't know what skim milk is. But if you over-thin your paints you end up having problems. I think I got this one right, but you gotta be patient and take the time to apply 2-3 or sometimes even more layers to get the affect you're looking for.

Let's talk about the Phoenix miniature itself. The long and short of it is at $35 retail it's a pretty good deal. If you're interested in items produced outside the United States you're in luck, this is made in Poland. This is a difficult model to assemble. There are really fiddly bits on the base and the head and it's difficult to figure out where exactly to glue them to. This one might be frustrating if you're a new painter/modeler, but at $35 the price is pretty good.

 

[el-remmen]

So this is the Phoenix from Dungeons & Lasers. Well, these are the wings at least. I’m still working on it. So two things. I've been using an airbrush since 2020, but I still feel as though I'm learning. They say your airbrush paint should be the consistency of skim milk, but apparently I don't know what skim milk is. But if you over-thin your paints you end up having problems. I think I got this one right, but you gotta be patient and take the time to apply 2-3 or sometimes even more layers to get the affect you're looking for.

Let's talk about the Phoenix miniature itself. The long and short of it is at $35 retail it's a pretty good deal. If you're interested in items produced outside the United States you're in luck, this is made in Poland. This is a difficult model to assemble. There are really fiddly bits on the base and the head and it's difficult to figure out where exactly to glue them to. This one might be frustrating if you're a new painter/modeler, but at $35 the price is pretty good.

View attachment 402541

Nice!

I have minis I got early on in my mini painting career that were so fiddly to pin and put together that I gave up and have returned to intermittent years and have given up on repeatedly. I finally assembled one of them successfully but I think I still have 2 in a bits box somewhere. In between I painted around 1000 minis.

I do find assembling larger minis a lot easier. But that’s probably an obvious statement.

 

[MGibster]

I have minis I got early on in my mini painting career that were so fiddly to pin and put together that I gave up and have returned to intermittent years and have given up on repeatedly. I finally assembled one of them successfully but I think I still have 2 in a bits box somewhere. In between I painted around 1000 minis.

This is a good sized miniature, about 6 inches tall with a 10 inch wingspan. I'll post some more photos later, but the main parts of the miniature are easy enough to assemble. It's just some fiddly little bits that are difficult because it's not clear where they're supposed to attach to on the main body.

Back in the day, metal miniatures were a pain because you had no choice but to pin them if you wanted to avoid random body parts falling off because you looked at them funny. I much prefer the plastic models today because they're so much easier to deal with.

 

[el-remmen]

Back in the day, metal miniatures were a pain because you had no choice but to pin them if you wanted to avoid random body parts falling off because you looked at them funny. I much prefer the plastic models today because they're so much easier to deal with.

These were metal minis. .. so that tracks.

 

[MGibster]

More progress on the Phoenix wings. I decided I need to add some other colors besides reds, yellow, and orange, so I put a little green up there on the smaller feathers. For the wing on the right, I went ahead and colored those little smoke/flame tendrils. I wish they hadn't sculpted these into the miniature because I think the feathers alone look better. I applied a diluted Speed Paint of Fire Orange over the yellow and red areas to add some depth and I'm somewhat happy with the results. I attempted a smokey color at the top of the tendrils which pretty much failed in its entirety. Ah, well. Live and learn.

 

[el-remmen]

More progress on the Phoenix wings. I decided I need to add some other colors besides reds, yellow, and orange, so I put a little green up there on the smaller feathers. For the wing on the right, I went ahead and colored those little smoke/flame tendrils. I wish they hadn't sculpted these into the miniature because I think the feathers alone look better. I applied a diluted Speed Paint of Fire Orange over the yellow and red areas to add some depth and I'm somewhat happy with the results. I attempted a smokey color at the top of the tendrils which pretty much failed in its entirety. Ah, well. Live and learn.

View attachment 402556

They look amazing to me! Nice work.

 

[Clint_L]

Last chance to back:

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/archon-studio/dnl7-porthaven

I'm a huge fan of their work, and they always overdeliver, on or ahead of schedule.