I painted the three Castle Ravenloft board game Skeletons with slightly different colors (mostly on the shields and swords, but the bones have different levels of tints on them as well) so that people could say things like “I want to aim at the one with the blue shield!”.

The general approach for bones is to do shades of gray/white first, then tint them with a bright yellow wash, followed by a transparent dark brown (burnt umber) wash.  Variations in lightness and color can be made by the lightness/darkness of the base coats, and amount of washes you use.

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Sometimes you need to paint fire. The color light that fire throws out depends upon it’s temperature, generally ranging from white to red (we will ignore blue flames for the purposes of painting miniatures).  Here are a few items I’ve painted with Flame effects.

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This is the final results of painting this “giant snake” miniature from  Etsy seller Wondrousminiatures.  The model was printed on a 3D (Resin) printer, which gives a much higher level of detail than I can achieve on my FDM printer. Compare this snake model to the one I printed on my FDM printer previously. It’s about half the size (1/4 of the volume) with better detail.

Follow along for the steps I used when painting this snake. Continue reading →

I got these raven sitting on skull minifigs from the Wildspire Miniatures Animals of Sol’an set, but singles are also included in the Hero’s and Animals set.

Here are the steps I took to paint the skull.

1. Prime black. I’m using Rust-Oleum 249846 2X Ultra Cover, but really, any flat black primer that sticks to plastic should work fine. Continue reading →

I demonstrate how to paint four different color schemes for a crocodile or alligator mini-figure. I use a cream colored base coat on all 4 necks, a gray base-coat on the back of two figures, a dark green base-coat on the back of the other two figures. Then I drybrush one of each with either a black or a muted yellow for highlights. I also demonstrate red, black, and yellow eyes, and the mouth/teeth details, plus gluing flocking to the base.

The figures were printed from a free model on Thingiverse by Mr. Stirling:
Swamp Alligator: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4165302

Items you may want to follow along (Amazon Affiliate Links):

• MonoPrice Mini Delta 3D printer
• Acrylic paint set
• Flocking Kit
• Sharpie 37161PP Permanent Markers, Ultra Fine Point

I liked this dead tree model (Thingiverse # 4105303 ) so well that I printed two more and painted them different ways. It prints well even on my inexpensive FDM printer, and the layer lines add detail to the tree.

For my first attempt, I stuck with the “dead tree” motif from the model, using a black primer and gray for the base color.
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I printed this model from Thingiverse # 4839997 (scaled down) on my Monoprice Mini Delta 3D printer.   It took a lot of time to remove all the support material due to the small scale (and I broke the head off in the process). Continue reading →

This is the gargoyle miniature from the Castle Ravenloft board game, painted. It took me three tries to get an effect I was fully happy with, mostly because I tried to use a gray primer instead of a black primer. (More on that later on….) Continue reading →