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Mini-Me
(Part Three)
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My
baptism by fire into the hobby of miniatures painting
By
Brian Mitchell
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Miniatures
103: On Your Own
Instructor
JD Wiker offers tips for your own painting
adventures!
Now
you’re ready to finish up your barbarian miniature.
Stage Five:
Begin with painting
coats of black on various small items: the belt, a leather strap
across the barbarian’s thigh, the chains across both thighs,
and the barbarian’s necklace. Smaller items like these tend
to get lost against other colors unless you call attention to them
by "outlining" them in black first.
While that is
drying, mix black paint with a little metallic paint, the overall
result being a dark iron color. Paint the head of the barbarian’s
axe this color rather than the pure "silver" of the metallic
paint -- you can mix metallic colors with nonmetallics this way
to get interesting effects.
Go back and
drybrush a little bit of unmixed silver over the chains on the barbarian’s
legs. Paint the medallions on his necklace solid silver. Again,
leave the black outline to help draw attention to these items. Painting
the edge of the axe blade with unmixed silver simulates that the
barbarian had recently sharpened his axe, exposing the brighter
metal.
Next, paint
the base solid black. Once it is dry, drybrush the flagstones in
various shades of gray. You can mix gray with brown, or blue, or
red, for various effects. If you’re really ambitious, you can
paint individual stones in different colors and shades.
The next step
is to paint the leather strap on the barbarian’s leg and the
one holding his axe together. Because the color beneath the axe-strap
was mostly black anyway, you don’t have to outline that area;
just paint the strap brown (or red-brown, if you like).
Finish up this
stage by painting black the ten plates running down the center of
the barbarian’s armor. Again, this is just "outlining."
If you’re really ambitious, paint the little metal studs black
as well, in preparation to paint each of them to look like part
of studded leather.
But wait! We
haven’t painted the barbarian’s hair! Mix a very light
gray, and paint the barbarian’s hair, beard, moustache, and
eyebrows. As it dries, drybrush white over it. (Notice that hair
is particularly easy to drybrush.) Remember, when you want to highlight
white, you must start with something darker, then lighten
it to white. Obviously, you can’t lighten pure white, any more
than you can darken pure black.
Stage Six:
MORE
(This
article ran a little long so we decided to create a recap page where
you could view and print all of JD's tips.)
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 I
was worried as I walked to my last miniatures painting class. Given the
mixed results of my previous efforts, I felt a bit nervous about the subject
for the day’s lesson: fine detail. As I’ve said before, I’ve
never considered myself much of an artist, and it seemed to me that painting
eyebrows and rivets would be more than I could handle. I envisioned more
spilled paint, more stray streaks of color, and more splotchy paintwork.
I was pessimistic, to say the least.
Nonetheless, I took
my seat and set to work. Surprisingly, my hand was steadier than I’d
expected. A thin chain, a medallion on a necklace, a bloodstain on a bandage:
All were relatively simple to color and shade with a fine brush. A coat
of color was followed by a quick drybrushing to lend texture.
 My
barbarian’s
battle-axe was next on the list. We started on the face, and as I mixed
the fleshtone, another victory! The color I mixed this time was much more
realistic than my previous effort, so I quickly painted over the limbs
I had done in our first class, then colored the face. Now my barbarian
was starting to shape up.
 Unfortunately,
I had spent so much time redoing the limbs that I had to hurry to paint
the hair. I quickly mixed some white and red, slapped it on, and…discovered
that I now had a pink-haired barbarian. Not what I was going for, but
it’ll do till I can repaint it.
 Sadly,
class time ended, and my barbarian now sits on my desk, scowling at me
for not painting his beard and eyebrows. I’ll have to give them some
color when I paint his hair. The base is still unpainted as well, but
that’s a fairly simple matter. Some gray paint, with some black ink
in the racks, and I’ll be set.
 As
class was winding down, instructor JD pointed out that in three hours,
we had taken a plain metal miniature and given it a fairly thorough painting.
That means that I could paint a figure in the course of an afternoon or
an evening, and not have to worry about being hunched over a pile of pewter
for days at a time. I find that reassuring, since it’s hard for me
to find time to all the things I have to do in a day -- let alone some
of the things I’d like to do.
 All
in all, I’m glad I took the class. I exercised a part of my brain
I don’t often use, and I got a nifty-looking miniature to boot. Sure
it’s no prizewinner, but then I doubt many people paint an award-wining
figure on their first try. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be standing
in front of a classroom, saying, "Before we begin, I’d like
to show you the first miniature I painted. Notice the pink hair…"
(click
on the images to get a close-up view of the action)
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