Panzerbjorn

I am pretty happy with how this bear turned out. Sculpt makes me think of the panzer bjorn from The Golden Compass / His Dark Materials series.

I tried to build up to something I was happy with via layers. I did added coats to lighten the fur and darken the armor. (The spikes on the armor are the remains of the original color for instance).

 

The "target area" for the paintbrush on many of the details was incredibly small.

 

The chain mail on the kilt was dry brushed, which took two attempts before it came out acceptably.

 

This miniature is pretty incredible. It looks like the concept art was done by Chris Walton, who has a deviantArt blog. I haven't found the sculptor yet unfortunately.

Druid #2

I next painted the second of druid pair I bought. More practice. Instead of dry brushing the raised texture on the arm, leg, chest and shoulder armor I directly painted it.

I somehow never took a picture, so will update this once I get one in tomorrow's daylight.

First druid in macro mode

I got some help on how to get macro mode and re-shot the first mini I completed. Clicking the picture shows it in detail.

 

I wanted to record this green one again on the blog because up close I can see how when I tried to dry-brush the gold raised edges of the armor over green, the result was a bit sloppy. It looks good on the table though.

Tale of Two Drakes

Next I wanted to add some detail to a guard drake mini I had been getting some fun out of, by doing a simple wash and brightening up the colors. The difference on a table is pretty striking.

Notice the as-is drake doesn't have eyes!

After that one druid with the green & gold armor, I fished out a plastic mini that was strangely unpainted despite being a bit detailed. The paint job is obviously pretty flawed, though I did get some experience with watering down my paints and trying to get better with my brush control. When I saw the photo I noticed I completely missed the detail of the broken heart on the giant thing on his chest.

 

To be fair, the thing looks okay set on a table from the distance of actual use, which is the quality standard I am trying to meet with these things.

Big Mini update

Some miniature painting I've done. Documenting my learning curve. Older stuff first.

About painting... I like the focused state involved, both mentally and physically. There feels like a transition to go from normal movement to the ultra fine motor control, and an interesting perception shift where the area being painted seems to fill the visual focal point. It isn't the same as using a magnifying glass.

The pictures on the blog page can be clicked to actually see the blown up version of the image in detail.