By Chris Parsons
You sit down gripping the freshly primed miniature who is about to be brought to life with a few strokes from your tiny paint brush that has been dipped in droplets of paint. It's gratifying in a very peculiar way. I had been painting for the better part of my nearly 3 decades on this earth and after taking a few years from really doing anything creative, I decided to paint miniatures with a friend for our upcoming show, Dungeons and Dumbasses. What a sweet little addiction it has become.
As mentioned before I have been painting for most of my life, not that I'm particularly good, but I love it all the same. Anyway, Sitting down with a tiny toy soldier (a halfling) and painting a miniature for the first time was frustrating at first. I noticed with the first few strokes of my brush that I was out of my element. That and the employed techniques of painting statues or miniatures is very different from canvas or a mural. I did find my groove, and i found that I was able to place the brush where I wanted it with greater ease as I continued to paint. I was pleased with the final result. Now, I am not an expert painter and compared to some of what's out there, my work looks like a child finger painted one of his action figures.
Zorn before adding a clear coat looking extra shiny even in low light.
My friend also taught me about the Army Painter Dip method, which I have bragged about on the ETG podcast. Basically you take a miniature that you have put base colors on, (flesh tone, hair color, etc.) then dip it in this magical concoction and boom! The miniature is shaded and the finer details are filled in, resulting in a glossy finished looking product, which you can apply a anti-shine clear coat to and call it a day. There is also the option to go back and add highlights and what not, but I don't really do much of that, so I will not be getting into much detail on that.
Miniatures after clear coating look at the detail from ton the chainmail and axe from the Army Painter dip.
The lighting is different in both photos, so this doesn't justice to the clear coat, but you can tell that one is shiny and the other isn't. It makes a big difference and drastically changes the look of your mini. If you want your character to look wet, don't apply the clear coat. If you don't want it to look wet, clear coat that shit! If you click the pictures, you can see how much work the dip does for you. It's amazing!
The process of turning these into the characters that we will be embodying brings a level of satisfaction that I can hardly describe. Now that I'm obsessed with Frostgrave, I find myself building a small army of tiny adventurers, I am painting more, honing skills and learning techniques that are taking my little characters to the next level. If you guy want an article on tips and tricks that doesn't involve simply dipping your heroes in super soldier serum, let us know in the comments below and we can try to find a way to make that happen for you. Thanks for reading and as always, stay geeky!