Mini No. 1

This is my very first mini, I am totally proud of her. actually gave her a long braid too and dubbed her “Commander Shepard” (Aka Commander Jane Shepard from Mass Effect).

I chose a Space Marine because it seemed something really simple to start with. The plastic material is easy to cut out and clean up, the armor ensures that blocking color and shading will be easy. I did a lot of research online to see what I wanted to paint her like and came across this blog post. I like how the gold and red works together. and I like the blue coming in from behind the emblem on the chest. Unfortunately the turquoise on my mini ended up almost disappearing completely. To the left is an image that I used for inspiration for my own. So here we go. Firstly I cut all the parts of the mini out and cleaned it us using an X-cato blade, I used plastic glue to stick it together and then primed her in black.

I was pretty stoked at this point. Its the first time I had ever done this before and I thought she looked pretty good. It also felt good to assemble. Kind of like completing a puzzle. So next I needed to get the base colour down, which for this model is gold. Following that I applied a turquoise wash to get the blue/green colour in the recessed areas. As you can see as an all over colour its a little much so I did some gold dry brushing to bring it back.

The body of the mini looks good for now so next I focussed on the shoulder pads. I wanted a deep bright red that seemed a little roughed up. I got to practice being precise, shading and highlighting. I was interesting, but difficult, to manually place the highlight on the pads. I think thats something I want to improve on. It takes some skill to get it right.

Since I was already working on red I wanted to also focus on her skirt. It was kind of difficult to reach and to get the right highlight colour. I think I kind of accidentally managed to get it right. I’ll take it.

I had added some medals to get armor which until this point I had completely forgotten about. So I thought I would try that next. I didn’t have a parchment colour so I mixed one using some brown and white. I then added a little nuln oil to give it a wash and add some shadows.

So at this point she was looking pretty good. I added a little bit of a black wash to the deep recessed areas such as in her neck, shoulders, sides and feet. Just to give it a little more depth. Oh, and I also gave her brown hair.

But she is still far from finished. I was dreading doing the eyes completely, they’re so tiny, even smaller than the brush pretty much. I looked up some videos as how to do them and tried my best. I will be honest though, it does feel like you’re just loading up the brush with paint and then stabbing the mini in the eye hoping for the best. I think I did okay, good enough. I also cleaned up the basing a bit, coloured it gray, have it a black wash and then a bright highlight to make it look like rubble.

So now come the last few things. I bought a bright silver paint so I dry brushed the gun with it to make it pop. It was just a dark gray before and just didn’t look great. Not bad, but…. boring I guess.  Anyways, I think it looks much better with the silver. I also added some bright/white silver to the gold I used on the armor and dry brushed it in the highlights to make it pop a little more.

The ‘jetpack’ thing on her pack I made look brassy at the centre and dark steel on the outer parts. I used some nuln oil on the brass to create shadows. And I used the bright silver on the dark steel to create highlights. The last thing to do was to add the black border around the base to tidy it up and I also have her a light spray with varnish to complete it.

So there she is, finished and all. You can hardly see the turquoise, but you can in certain lights. I really like the way it turned out and am hooked. I certainly could not have done it without the help of my friend Eric, he’s been awesome. Things to practice in future are not being so heavy handed with the paint, watering it down more and figuring out how to place highlights manually.

Thats all for now
– Nelly