Fighting the Gray Tide (Miniature Painting)

[el-remmen]

Here's my Ral Partha white whale. It's an ogre mage and it came with the option of holding a damsel in distress or a sword. A friend of mine had this one in the 1990s and I'd love to get my hands on it again. This was most definitely not painted by me.

My old friend Sean (with whom my mini collection once comingled with freely while I was in grad school) had that mini. I think he went the damsel route. I would snatch it up in a second if I found it again, too. Classic!

I was able to regain a couple of minis with nostalgic value based on using them in play during the 90s when I started recollecting in 2020. Nothing as special as that oni, but that I painted as I remember them from back in the day.

Last year I actually did throw a few miniatures away that I knew I'd never paint. Don't worry, they weren't particularly good miniatures, mostly WizKids and Reaper Bones. Early Reaper Bones. It was tough tossing them, but it's gotten progressively easy to get rid of things.

Next time put them in a flat rate priority USPS envelope and mail them to me, I'll paypal you the postage.

 

[MGibster]

Painting it in metallics would make me nervous; I find it much harder to keep texture with metallic paints because of how much they reflect light - your proof of concept is well painted but looks kind of glossy to me, for example. Could maybe approach it like a weathered vehicle?

Upon further reflection, I won't be painting the entire dragon in a metallic red because it'll just look ridiculous. It worked for the Archon Studio dragon because the entire thing is covered in scales, but this dragon really has a lot of what looks like exposed flesh to me. So that means one red for the skin and the metallics for the scaly bits. I'll be able to use my airbrush to some extent, especially on the wings, but the bulk of this will be good old fashioned brush work.

 

[Simon The Hunter]

I painted a smaller dragon gold and even with attempts at darker shades such as copper and brighter gold highlighting, it just looks like a statue you'd find in a $2 shop... Admittedly skills are poor here, but I often struggle with getting blocks of metallics to look nice, so these days I often use Army Painter Metallic SpeedPaints and some washes on the smaller mini's and on large ones I kinda avoid making them metallic.

Have you ever tried your hand at NMM techniques @MGibster? They look soooo good, but for me, the blending is the issue (and selecting the right colour scales)

 

[MGibster]

Have you ever tried your hand at NMM techniques @MGibster? They look soooo good, but for me, the blending is the issue (and selecting the right colour scales)

Not a bridge I'm interesting in trying to cross right now. It seems like such a time sink and there are other skill areas I'm working on. I won't say I'll never do it, but probably not any time soon.

 

[MGibster]

Here’s my first logistical problems. This is the end of the stub of the tail that connects to the larger section of the tail that wraps around the base. When I tried connecting them, they did not fit at all, and since the model is so large, my usual solution of putting it in hot water to get it to fit didn't work. My next solution was to start hacking off some pieces until they fit together and use a combination of pinning, epoxy and prayers to hold it all together.

I started cutting into the plastic and hit something hard. A magnet. How do they work? Who knows? But I was actually able to attach the tail.

WizKids made two versions of this model. The first is fully painted and the second is unpainted. For those pre-painted models, this tail is genius because it allows for disassembly and boxing when the model isn't in use. That's the only magnet I see, but the base and the wings are also designed with disassembly in mind. This is a great feature for someone who bought the pre-painted model with the intention of using it for gaming purposes alone.



It's not so great if your intention is to enter it in a competition because it leaves unsightly gaps. As big a gap as that is, it was even bigger before I did a little trimming, and this is much easier to handle. I understand there's always a little work to be done with a model, but since this bad boy retailed for more than $300, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect things to fit much better than they do. But this is actually manageable at least. I'm going to epoxy the tail in this position and use some putty to fill in those gaps, doing the best I can to make it match the texture of it's skin. With any luck, you won't be able to see where I filled the gaps once painted.

Not counting the wings, the model has some very minor gaps and lines from production that I'll need to take care of as well. I'm not seeing any major mold lines, so WizKids did a pretty good job on that front.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Here's my Ral Partha white whale. It's an ogre mage and it came with the option of holding a damsel in distress or a sword. A friend of mine had this one in the 1990s and I'd love to get my hands on it again. This was most definitely not painted by me.

That guy comes up on Evilbuy every so often, but it's hard to find a complete one - all three of the hands are separate pieces, so you usually find the body with anywhere from 0-2 of the hands on it. However, he's about the right size that you could maybe find some larger GW hands (like a power fist or something) that would be the right size...

 

[MGibster]

And now for something a little different. This is a 1/10 scale skeleton bust made by Mindwork Studio. MS is what I’d describe as a boutique vendor producing high quality miniatures in limited runs. I’m elite now.

This is my first bust, and I picked a skeleton because they don’t have any flesh! It doesn’t hurt that I like painting rusty stuff. I tried something new with the sword. I painted base of GE Typhus Corrosion in three layers because it has a light texture. I sponged on a metallic and then applied Dirty Down Rust. Once dried, I reactivated the rust with water, clearing enough away to show some of the metallic paint.

 

[MGibster]

I just wanted to quickly show how dry brushing can make a big difference. In the first photo above, the base color for the bones is is Army Painter Bootstrap Beown. I dry brushed some Army Painter Paratrooper Brown which is much lighter.

Why not just start with Paratrooper Brown? Dry brushing color upon color gives the miniature a bit more depth. I'll continue with at least 2-3 lighter tones, apply a glaze, and then apply a final brush of my lightest tone at the highlights.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the teeth. From what I remember about my physical anthropology course, the teeth tend to be a bit brighter, maybe because of the enamel. I'll want to make sure they're not too bright though.

A secondary thought was to add an eerie green glow emanating from the skull. I've had mixed results with glow effects, so I'm rethinking my idea. I might just keep this one really simple and attempt to make a lovely skeleton that would make Ray Harryhausen proud.

 

[MGibster]

Final highlight before application of a wash. I’m definitely not going with glowing eyes.

 

[MGibster]

I finished the skeleton bust.

It was fun working in a different scale. I wanted to make the red on the helmet look like decorative leather, but it didn’t turn out like I’d hoped. I’m also wondering if the shield should be darker, but I can always do that later if I want.