Mini No 3

This mini is Khalib Runelord Apprentice (Reaper 60098). I chose it because me and my husbands one year anniversary was coming up and I wanted to paint him a mini for his Vampire – The Dark Ages game. This one was terrifying because I had thus far only ever painted Space Marines, which are relatively easy since they wear structured armor and dont have faces.

So since I had never painted a mini like this before I thought the best thing would be to base coat and add blocks of colour all over. I assumed that this would give me a vague idea of how the colours would look once the mini is done. Again, I have noooooo idea what I am doing here.

 

Woah, that loooooks sooo bad. Some of the colours I have a really bad, especially the three browns that I have from vallejo and that green! Yikes. But hey, it gives me an idea of how it will look. Things can only get better right? Time to add shading to the cloak.I used nuln oil to do a black was and then used a lighter blue for the highlights. I still don’t think I managed to quite get the placement of the highlight right. But its not too bad at all.

 

 

Silly me I had totally forgotten that gold doesn’t really go all that well over colours. But I really wanted gold trim on the cloak and in the details. So on I went after all that adding a white base to everywhere that I wanted to add gold. I dont have a picture of this, but I did go over the white with yellow to make the colour pop a bit more. I know I went way outside of the lines, but I kinda thought that it might be easier to clean up later on.

Lots of things happened in this next picture and looks like I did not get any in between shots. I finished the staff colour and tidied up the gold as much as I could. I also cleaned up the book and finished the detail on his necklace and things hanging from his garment. On his robes I did an all over delicate black wash to give it more depth. I did a sepia wash on the staff and book. I also added a skin tone which I also sepia washed and dry brushed with an even lighter skin colour to highlight. This was the first time I started to have faith that this mini wasn’t going to be the worst. However, I haven’t even gotten to the eyes yet.

I added some sand as a basing material. Rookie mistake I should have done this before even gluing the mini to the base, but what can you do. I also added a black wash to the hair and a quick dry brush of a lighter brown brought out the highlights.

I washed and highlighted the base and added the black. I also gave the gem a brighter dry brush. Then came the time for eyes. God I hate eyes. I am so bad at them. Seriously, this was the best I managed to get after like 60 tries. I was so close to crying over this it is not even funny. I honestly thought that after 8 hours of painting I would throw the mini out because there was no way I was going to give it to Derek like this.See…. I have this issue with my eyes, when I look at something THAT small, my eyes focus on it and then blurr and then focus and then blurr. Its really frustrating as it will just not stay clear.

So I gave up…. that day… and after talking to a friend she linked me to this article as how to paint eyes on minis. My eyes were much better and the technique seemed to work. The eyes really turned out much better. Woot. I also added some grass to the base.

And here he is finished. I added a gloss varnish to the gem and eyes and a matte varnish all over.