miniatures |
December 26, 2019

Welcome, all to my (generally on time, Christmas scheduling is rough!) series “Mini Monday” where we go through and do a deep dive into the latest Miniature I have assembled and painted. I would still consider my skills as an amateur. I hope to learn as I go and be able to teach some of you something new too! In this article, expect to see the process to go from unpainted (and in pieces) to a completely painted mini complete with color palette and brushes used to get the job done.

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What Went Wrong

So I am still an amateur at painting these minis, and there are so many great ones you can find online from so many great mini artists. So being an amateur was working against me. I also had some reference images that I wanted to use, but halfway through it, I couldn’t find them again. I was rushing this mini for my own personal deadlines, which means I could have had better clean lines, and Lastly, I had not really understood the mini details until I was near the end of the paint job.

What Went Right

Putting this guy together was a lot of fun, and the glue I used worked great, unlike some historical experiences I have had with some other glue products I have tried. There were some great breakthroughs in improving my painting techniques. I was able to construct a scene stage so that I can focus on showing the mini’s I paint from now on and even create a scene to post.

Enter the Minotaur

When I pulled this guy out of the box, I was surprised at first at how many smaller pieces needed to be glued on. It actually helped in painting the harder to reach places that usually requires a steady hand to prevent painting a leg or armor piece you didn’t mean to.

I was also looking for a high ranking demon for my Homebrew Dungeons & Dragons Campaign “Time of Darkness” that I am running. I will share more info on the campaign in a future post.

Be Prepared

I had ordered a few other minis that I knew were coming in pieces, so I decided to purchase a new glue that was explicitly meant for gluing plastics together. I also personally didn’t want to bother with another super glue mess.

I also got out my paints and looked up a few references on Pinterest and picked out my colors. A quick tip would be to make sure you bookmark or save the pin that you are using for reference. It will save you time when you need to look for it later. (Also, the iPad app doesn’t stay on the page if the screen times out, so if you are using an iPad, think about enabling the always-on setting.

You will need your glue, paints, an Xacto knife, brushes, paper towels (or napkins etc for your brushes) and a little bit of brush cleaner (i just use water).

Here is what I have

Feel free to limit your palette, but I just like having a selection to choose from and narrow down my shades

 

Understanding Your Mini

As you can see, that is a lot of pieces. It was a fun exercise trying to determine how this guy fits together.

It is an excellent idea to go through and look at the detail items and figure out how you want to approach them.

Think about what shades really give a contrast. I wanted to go with the idea of blue shading for the Minotaur instead of a brown tone. He already had leather straps and other brown-based shades that I wanted those to really stand out.

Clean Up

If you are new to painting minis, then you may not be aware of some clean up that is generally needed to do on some minis. You do not have to do this, it is more of a neat appearance thing.

Using the Xacto Knife, look at each piece for a seam where the printing of the mini has an edge that doesn’t look like it should belong. It is just additional plastic material that was needed to properly print the Miniature.

All you need to do is nicely cut off the seams so that it looks clean and highlights the Miniature details. If you do not clean up these lines, then when you are painting the details, the seam can show up more prominently.

Prime It (If Required)

Not all Miniatures require priming, in fact, most of the ones that I have purchased do not require it.

But if you have them printed or purchased from certain brands, they are not primed. You can tell they are primed because the packaging usually does a good job saying “Primed and ready to be painted” on the box.

In our case, the Minotaur had no such labeling, and I assumed it was not primed. So I went ahead and primed it with a Grey Primer. Also, feel free to use a different primer shade if it was already pre-primed. Perhaps you wanted a darker black prime, or you had it shipped in a dark purple color, and you want it with a lighter tone, then prime with a light gray.

I prefer to prime with gray tones as it lets the details really shine through when you are starting to paint the Miniature. There is no right or wrong with this, though, so do what you want and enjoy the experience.

Base Coat

Probably one of the most fun or hopefully, the least stressful part of painting a mini, is the base coat. The goal for me, anyway, is to set up the contrasts between pieces. Skin tone, items armor. I am not concerned with the details of belt buckles, pendants, eyes, or anything that requires a lot of focus.

Now you can either keep going after the base coat is on and start on the detail work, or put it together and do the detail work after.

Put it together and wait…

I went ahead and put it together after doing my base coating. There were some hard to reach places that next time I would strategically do the detail work there first.

The glue I used worked pretty quickly, but it was still a game of patience because it sticks fast but takes 2 hours to properly set. I had to do this in stages and wanted the arms other floating things to be done after the core of the model was constructed. So after a total of 4 hours, I got my model back out from my drying rack and prepared for the next step.

Detail, Detail, Detail (and repeat…)

I find this stage of the process one of the most relaxing parts. I genuinely recommend having some zen music in the background. My current favorite is the “Zelda and Chill” playlist on Spotify.

Using reference and your own imagination to add as much detail as you want. There is no wrong answer to this. It is your Miniature, make it however you like. If you mess up on something, just go back over it with the color you were intending.

Continue until you are happy with the results or just want to call it done. Remember to enjoy what you are doing. This is meant to be a fun and relaxing hobby that lets you be creative.

Paint Palette

  • Grey Primer (D&D)
  • Abyssal Black (D&D)
  • Frost Blue (D&D)
  • Deep Blue (D&D)
  • Owlbear Brown (D&D)
  • Skeleton Bone (D&D)
  • Mithral Silver (D&D)
  • Purple Worm (D&D)
  • Dwarven Bronze (D&D)
  • Dragonfire Red (D&D)
  • Kraken Blue (D&D)
  • Leather Brown (Army Paints)
  • Shining Silver (Army Paints)

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