My First Foray Into Miniatures

Apparently I have too much free time on my hands, so in addition to writing, crocheting, watching TV & movies, boating, exercising, and raising a family, I decided to start a new hobby–painting miniatures.

I’ve always been a little bit curious about it. I seem to gravitate toward crafts that involve fine motor skills. But there were a few obstacles that stopped me from getting involved. One is cost, which is part of any new thing. Miniatures are relatively cheap. More expensive than yarn and a hook but less than robotics or cosplay. Another is that it looks really hard. I don’t have a steady hand, and I’ve never been much into art.

But that changed when I bought the Deep Rock Galactic board game. Deep Rock Galactic is my current favorite video game. I’ve got more than 400 hours into it. Dunno why I’m so into it–maybe the dwarves, the sense of teamwork, the mining, the procedurally generated levels, the nostalgic FPS factor. But anyway, I thought I should get the board game too.

And it came with a bunch of beautifully detailed tokens, but they’re all uncolored. Just dull gray. So I thought “I’ve got to paint these.” I like Deep Rock Galactic that much. The problem is, to do justice to them, I can’t just slap some Crayola watercolors on. These things are supposed to look like this:

How do you do that? Such lighting, such dimension, such energy. Look at that axe! Look at the edge–that’s all paint, not light. How am I supposed to make that? I have no artistic talent and I have to try to make this real:

Look at that thing! It’s got a mech suit and a beard and flesh and metal and glass. It’s like the final exam of miniature painting.

So… I’ve got to start somewhere, so I looked up what the first steps are–some paints, special brushes, and patience. I asked for and got these items for Christmas with the intention to start with miniatures from various board games we have as I gain experience.

The first game I tried was Dungeons and Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt, which I got a long time ago. I figured since we’ve barely ever played it (no one in my family is into the fun fantasy or RPGy games), it would be okay to take it out of rotation. And no one would care if I mess them up.

So here are all my little guys. The first one I picked was what looked the easiest–a blobby guy. I thought since there was no hair or flesh or metal, it couldn’t be too hard. To my surprise, this creature is actually yellow, not green or purple like normal ooze.

What you’re seeing is a zoomed-in picture, but make no mistake, this thing is about half the size of my thumb. I had the most trouble with the eye, which is probably not uncommon. But my brushes were not cutting the mustard. And I learned all about washes and priming and shading and highlights. It looks all right for family play, but I’m a creator–all I see are the flaws.

I worked on three minis at the same time, since I had to wait for things to dry: the blobby thing, one of the feral trolls, and a drow spider (I thought I’d start with the moderately big ones for ease). The green one is the one I started with. The red one was completed near the end of the process. I made a lot of mistakes, had to repaint a lot of bits over and over again. I tried layering but it didn’t really show up at all. And if it did, it looked bad. The big problem was I was still getting the hang of washes, so the green troll has some weird purple coloration on his back. It looks like he was caught in a violet rain. And I wanted his bumps to be more orange and pus-filled, but that didn’t work out.

They’re holding hands, because they’re in love

Here is a drow spider guy. If I knew more about miniatures, he’d probably look a lot better, with edge highlights and definition. And eyes.

Here are some drakes (big lizards). I was hoping for the wash to bring out the scales, but that didn’t work out. One thing I’m noticing is that these guys are all turning out kinda dark. They don’t have the bright, high contrast coloration that all the other pictures of miniatures have. The game takes place in the Underworld, so at least its not supposed to be bright. But for the future, I’m going to have to work on that.

Now for some goblins. Sorry they’re blurry, I also don’t have any photographic talent. Again, lots of tiny bits here, trying to be high contrast and interesting, but that’s hard with the colors I’ve got. And it doesn’t make sense that crypt goblins would have purple shields or orange loincloths.

Here are some boring spiders. At first, they were all like the center one, but I thought that was dull, so I tried bright colors to see what that would look like. I didn’t add much detail because I could have gone crazy with all the little legs and thoraxes and abdomens.

Now for the Drow, as famously portrayed by Ken Jeong on Community. They have black skin and white hair. Again, evil guys aren’t known for bright colors, but I did my best.

These are some minions. I made one their “captain” so they wouldn’t all look the same. He got some gold armor touches and a red belt & white gloves instead of purple. Each drow has some purple on him or her. It seemed like a good way to tie them all together thematically.

Here’s the drow magician. I figured wizards should have more eccentric costuming, given that they see the world a little bit differently than others. More mutable, less constant. I kinda biffed the gold trim around his chest armor. My grasp exceeded my reach on that one (or however that saying goes). His purple/silver cape is pretty cool though. You can see a little of it peeking on the left. But I wish I could have done something cool with the ends of his wands. I was going for a fire and ice thing, but I guess I didn’t have the right paints for cool glowy effects.

One of these drows is supposed to be a… pirate? Of course, I looked for references on all these to figure out what colors they are in their official art. I pretty much copied those. This guy, I tried the layering again on the pants. I guess it’s hard for highlights to show up on something so small. I imagine he’s very *ahem* flamboyant.

Here’s a drow witch queen of some kind. At this point, I started going above and beyond the references. No one did her crown or belt in more than one color, but I wanted variety. I’ve found the hardest part about painting minis is trying to figure out what each part is. Like where the dividing lines are. What’s skin and what’s clothing? Is her midriff exposed or is that clothing? Are her shoulders bare? Is she wearing long gloves or short sleeves? That’s why I kept looking up references–deciphering what I was looking at.

Then there were a few transparent/translucent minis, and I had no idea how to paint those without covering up their translucency, which I didn’t want to lose. A water elemental and a hypnotic spirit are supposed to be translucent. So I just put some blue wash on the water elemental’s eyes and mouth to bring those out and left the spirit alone. When I tried to do a glazey gray for her cloak, it looked like she had gray scabies.

Now for the heroes. Saved them for next-to-last because these would be the most frequently used. The assassin (Artemis-something) ended up way too dark, but since he’s an assassin, I left it alone. The archer woman turned out well, once I figured out what was her cape and what was her quiver. And the black panther’s a black panther.

The barbarian was hard to figure out. His official art says he’s from the frozen north, but most examples give him brown fur. There’s enough brown in this set, and I wanted an arctic wolf thing. So I gave the fur a blue wash instead of a more realistic brown. Maybe it looks funny, but it keeps the polar theme. The little guy with the muttonchops in the center is a halfling rogue, so I gave him a black cape to contrast his bright halfling clothing. It’ll make his thieving easier. Drizzt’s colors are much more boring than I expected, given he’s the star. All he’s got is a leather jumpsuit and green cape.

I’m partial to the dwarves myself. I especially love that one of them has a beer on his shield. I gave him a metal theme, as if he were putting on random pieces he found around the dungeon. And I like how the guy with the two maces turned out, even if he’s mostly brown.

The second biggest piece is a dragon named Shimmergloom, a shadow dragon, which are all black… again. Nothing’s very showy or bright under the Earth, is it? For this one I had to figure out dragon wing membranes (by figure out, I mean watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials–it’s not like I did any detective work or experimentation.) Given that, I aimed for something like Maleficent. Its neck scales are a purple-silver mix because they look armored, and I tried to gradient the purple to black and back again on the tail. Now that I look it, it looks like its back foot, which is supposed to be on a rock, is stepping in golden poop.

The final challenge (final boss?) was Errtu the Balor, which I guess is a Balrog knock-off. He’s not that hard–mostly red–but it took a long time, especially the wings. And all the bits between the wings and body that it’s hard to shove a brush into without messing everything else. Boy, that fire whip sure turned out nice, though.