Hello friends! I’ve finished another model – quite the run I’m on at the moment. I have just completed work on this Skaven Deathmaster and it’s a model I’ve been using to force myself to think a little differently about how I paint. As I share these typically “not-awful-but-not-that-good” photos, let me tell you about how I approached this miniature…

The first thing to cover is NMM. Non-Metallic Metals are not something I’ve ever spent too much time worrying about, but it’s on my list to add this technique as a new arrow to my painting quiver. I think I did an ok job on the dagger and throwing weapon, but it was on the smaller areas I think I need to improve. Small spikes and rivets – my work there needs some effort. Oh, and the gold hilt on the rusted sword in the foreground turned out nicely, I thought. Still room to improve though.

I decided to change up the way I paint rust too. I’ve gone for a more limited set of colours, and I’ve applied them using a stippling technique to illustrate the glorious randomness of iron-oxide. I went really controlled with the sword, but for the gate and ring on the wall, I was purposefully a little more sloppy (just to see what happened) and I’m happy with all of it – I look forward to putting that to more work in the future. The cloth on our ratsassin friend here is done using much subtler methods, relying a tad more on natural shadows, and trying to really punch up the highlights and get some high contrast in the right places.

I’m really happy with his tail too – the blending on those subtle pinks came out really nicely, and the red bits of armour came out a treat too. For said armour, I chose to use fewer colours than I usually do for my solid reds, but I used thinner paints and lots of drawing pigment to where I wanted the highlights to pop.

And there you have it really. As well as showing off a miniature I’m proud of, I wanted to write this post to encourage you to try new things in your painting too. I know that I can very easily get stuck in a bit of a rut, and that my enthusiasm for painting suffers a bit as a result, but trying new things is a great way to get your creative juices flowing again. Having a bit of fun, and not really worrying about “failure” (which, btw, isn’t a thing as long as you’re enjoying yourself), is one of the nicest things you can do for yourself in this hobby. I hope you are having fun with your mini painting too.

I’ve got some really fun projects coming up, beyond this stabby skaven fella, and I’m really looking forward to sharing those with you in the future. Onwards!

Another miniature rolls of the Heresy & Heroes production line and this one was a real joy. The Skaven Warlock Bombardier (whose name, for some reason, I can never remember) has to be one of the most joyful miniatures to paint, but also build.

A couple of years ago, I had to build 15 of these guys for a project. And I had no instructions to help me, but because this is all logical (just build biggest piece to smallest piece) and because I couldn’t find a single mould line, it was a treasure to put all of those together. And since then, I always wanted to paint one for myself. So I did.

And again, I’m happy to say that it’s one of the best things I’ve painted. It’s really nice and encouraging to feel like that, and even though my photography continues to let me down a little, I wanted to show it off. You can see the vague shape of it!

There are so many favourite bits. The robes are great, the tail is a lot of fun, the glowing eyes, the lightning… honestly, it’s full of all those fantastic details. And the back pack is almost an entire miniature on its own, full of brilliant details. Fun fact with that piece; I painted all the metals of the backpack in silvers and used contrast paints to turn them into grimy iron, brass and copper.

There’s lots of subtle blends and weathering all over the piece. I’m really happy with the greenish smoke too, which I lifted from the Eavy Metal version and in fact, the official scheme is really spot on for this so it was great reference material.

The rocket’s so much fun, and the little rats are a joy… overall, it’s one hell of a single mini to paint and if you put another down in front of me right now, I’d happily paint it all over again. And, the rate I’m going, it would be another success for my painting. So much positivity around here today!

On to the next project then. Not sure what that is yet, but I look forward to finding out. Until then, I hope your brush points always stay sharp, and your paints ever moist. Onwards!