After a delightful break from all mini related activity, which involved several days in the woods with my family, I’m back at this kobold (whom everyone calls a leprechaun) and starting to think about wrapping up the painting.
Here is where he stands now, needing gold NMM buttons, buckles, and bits and the inevitable tidying up before I move on to basing him.
Continue reading “Sinister Shorty”I just finished up a wonderful bust from Artik Toys, sculpted by Patrick Masson. It’s a vampire based upon a painting by the great Paul Bonner. You can read some of Bonner’s thoughts on the composition of the painting (and, you know, see it) in an article he wrote for Muddy Colors.
The zombies are coming! Well, the zombie.
This gruesome but lovable fellow shambled across my desk this week. He’s a 1/10 bust from Trovarion Miniatures.
Continue reading “Uggggghhhhhhhh…”When I saw this bust from Lukáš Žaba I immediately wanted to paint it. The face of the miniature was so expressive and the volumes so interesting (especially the horns of his fool’s cap) that I knew it would be great fun to get a brush on him.
How he came to me is an interesting story.
Continue reading “Sad Jester”I’ve been very productive painting lately, finishing three miniatures since I posted WIP shots of the Norman warrior figure nine days ago. I’m eager to share them all with you, but I am really trying to level up my photography and I’d like to give you higher quality images to enjoy.
Anyway, you can see one of the figures here, hopefully looking a little better than usual.
Continue reading “The Shaman Ate Something Weird”I have been knocking out display models at quite a clip lately, and I have another to show you.
This is ‘The Wanderer’ from FeR Miniatures, sculpted by the incredibly talented Raffa Picca (of early Massive Voodoo fame). There are lots of little details on this bust, but also plenty of flat space to practice textures and effects.
Continue reading “The Wanderer”I finished a mini in a week. Gotta be some kind of record for me!
What a wonderful sculpt. I enjoyed every part of the process. Best of all, I jumped into the OSL effect with both feet and didn’t crash and, ahem, burn.
Continue reading “Fear by Firelight”After many weeks of painting and modelling, my Maulg is finally finished.
Though my posting has been sparse, I’ve been getting a lot of time on the hobby bench lately. Progress on Maulg is steady, but there’s often not a lot to show for it, as I’m going very slowly and trying to paint as well as I possibly can. It’s intimidating to approach a figure this way, but liberating at the same time. To just recognize that you’ll aim for your absolute best, but that it’s still a learning exercise, that you’ll fail some things you try, and that it won’t be as good as you can perhaps imagine helps to explode hang-ups and open the doors to improvement.
Here’s my boy. He’s starting to look a little closer to finished, though there are still entire bits left to paint and some major adjustments still to come.
Using a very similar palette on all elements of his ‘clothing’ and ornaments posed a challenge, but I wanted to avoid drawing attention away from the face and other more important sections.
I’m taking feedback from a few sources, which has improved the quality of the painting already. Feel free to add your thoughts, too!
Today ToadChapel is proud to present a tutorial from the amazing Andy Gillaspy, aka AndyG. Andy is a true master of NMM style painting, but he’s always pushing himself in new directions. In that spirit, Andy has developed a way to render heavy rust in a non-metallic setting. Read on to learn how to add this technique to your bag of tricks. Thanks Andy!
I adore non-metallic metals. It’s my favourite way of painting metals. The control on where the highlighting goes, the matte finish which stops unwanted glints from metallic paints so that the mini appears to the observer the way that you want it to rather than how the lighting in the room reflects offs metallic paints is for me worth the effort. This isn’t to say that TMM is not an exacting and difficult way of painting metals well; for example the work of SkellettetS and Megazord Man is superb and they use TMM most of the time.
That said, NMM for me. However, what to do with rust? There I have previously given in and used TMM rather than NMM and I have been very satisfied with the results; the slight application in rubbed spots of the metal concentrates the highlights where you want them anyway so the issues of glints appearing where you don’t want them doesn’t occur as the rest of the metal is oxidized with matte browns and oranges. It was quite a challenge to come out of my comfort zone and decide to see if I could paint realistic and aesthetically pleasing rusted armour with NMM. Continue reading “AndyG’s NMM Rust Technique”
