Now, it didn’t start that way of course!  Since I took pictures along the way, I thought I’d show you the WIP (work in progress).  Please bear with this image heavy post.  I’m not sure why I feel the need to tell you all that though, since most of my posts are… Oh well!

The mini I painted is Reaper’s Large Fire Elemental.  It’s made of a translucent red plastic.  For the lighting effected, I used a cheap halloween LED tea light.

I wanted to take advantage of the transparency and use some light, so I did some fiddling around.  I played around with a Halloween led candle from Target.  I also played around with a few other leds, but I found that the target one was the brightest.  The only problem is that the light doesn’t penetrate the mini fully.  With the non-target led, I placed it at various points behind the mini to see if I could get better spread, but it didn’t look like I could.  I did drill a hole into the mini so that the led would go up a little bit, but I didn’t go so far as to de-solder the led from the board to make it longer.  I might try that with my other fire elemental, but I didn’t do it here.  It did help a little bit, but I would still like to get more light through overall.

The very first thing I did was painted the elemental.  Bones, that’s the plastic the mini is made out of, is super hydrophobic.  I wanted to keep the transparency, so I knew I wanted to do a thin wash of paint.  Normally you would make a wash with water and paint, but the material is hydrophic, remember?  So I made my washes with isopropyl alcohol.  Fire goes from really light in the center to red.  I added the black sooty stuff on the outside to help with the fact that the led didn’t shine through the whole thing.  I used a low ISO photo above to help determine how to paint the mini in accordance with the light spread.

First up: a coat of pure white around the bottom

Next: a coat of sun yellow just above the white

Then: a coat of fire orange above that.  Note that these coats only go up to about half of the figures.  That’s where the light mostly ends.

Next, I dry brushed a bunch of black on.

Then, I dry brushed some crimson red around the bottom.  I didn’t want the bottom to be as dark as the top, though you’ll noticed I changed my mind on that later down the line.  Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the last three stages, but, you can still see how it came out in the next few steps.

Once the mini was painted, it was time to add the LED light.   First, I removed all the casing from the candle.  This left me with the board, the bottom housing, the led, and the battery.

I had already drilled a hole into the fire elemental that went in as far as the led would go.  This is where I could have done a bit more.  I decided I didn’t want to deal with de-soldering and lengthening the led.  This would have allowed me to put it further towards the middle of the mini and potentially have gotten a more even lighting throughout the mini.  I should note that I wanted to keep the board because it flickered and it had an on/off switch.  Sure, I could have done those myself, but it was much easier and cheaper to use the led candle.

Now the electronics and the mini fit together!  But… they need a base.  I placed it all on a 2×3″ base.  Why that size?  Well, it’s what they had at my local shop.  So there you go.  Once I traced out where I wanted the led casing to go, I marked where the switch was.  That was where I drilled a hole.  You need a pen or something to turn it on and off, but at least you can.

Then it was down to decorating the base. I knew that I wanted to hide the electronics.  Also, I wanted a lava effect, so I started by sculpting a crater like thing around the LED strcuture with some milliput.  Milliput is also a very strong adhesive, so this keeps the mini attached as well.  I like to imagine that the fire elemental is emerging out of the crater.

For the raised bits of pumice and other refuse in the lava, I used some cork.  There is a larger piece of cork on each corner and then some crumbled cork that I added around the crater.  All the cork is adhered using zap a gap super glue.  I used the tutorials by Dark Art Studios and Fantasy Games as inspiration and for help in figuring out how to get the look I wanted.

Once the cork was down, I flooded the base with Elmer’s glue.  And waited for it to dry.  And waited.  And then gave up waiting, and hit it with a blow dryer until it was at least dry enough for me to paint on it.  Bonus!  Since the glue wasn’t entirely dry, I ended up smudging it some along the way.  This gave the lava a swirled effect in some places, which was kind of cool.

Then I started layering on the color.  Most of the color is dry brushed or just sort of haphazardly splattered about.

First: a (mostly) solid True White coat.

Dry brushed sun yellow

Dry brushed marigold yellow

Dry brushed lava orange

Dry brushed crimson red

Dry brushed blood red

Added a layer of walnut brown to the top of all the cork (I left a little of the red showing).  I also added a ring of brown just underneath the elemental.

Added a layer of black to the tops of the cork (I left some of the brown showing).  Finally, I decided I wanted to dry brush some more black onto the main figure.  That’s it!

Then it was into the light box for some photos!

It took me evenings, one for the electronics, sculpting, and mini painting, and one for the base construction.  Not including drying time, I think it took me 3-4 hours to complete.  I hope you enjoy it!  I’ll probably apply the same treatment to my other large fire elemental, except try to get better lighting by drilling a deeper hole.  I’ll be sure to post it here if I do!

This week I’m showing you some of the painting work I’m doing.  Right now I’m working on painting up all my Pathfinder goblins from Reaper’s first kickstarter.  If you want to get your own, they are sold in two packs: goblin warriors and goblin pyros.  I also have the goblin warchanter who is sold on her own.In total I have 18.  I decided to paint up one of them first to get the color scheme down and them paint the rest in bulk.  So, here’s the progress I’ve made!  These are in blocks, since it’s just easier to take a picture each time one of the steps is done.  All of the paints are Reaper MSP paints.

All the miniatures are bones miniatures, so they start out as a slightly translucent white plastic.  To prep the bones, I boiled them in a pot of water for about 10 min.  This allows the bones to set back to their original shape if they warped and helps to clean off any residues.

Hour 1-2: Painting the first Goblin

The first guy took me about 2 hours to paint up.  I’ll probably add some more details to him later, but it gives me a basic paint scheme to go with.  Here’s how he came out:

Hour 3: Painting the base

The base here is a simple Intense Brown.  I’ll wash it later with a Flesh Wash to make it appear more muddy.

Hour 4: Laying down the Green

First coat is adding the skin.  One of the nice things about bones is that you don’t have to prime them.  Sometimes I put down a grey coat first, but decided not to here.  The green looks really bright, but it will get some darker washes later to tone it down.  The base green is Jade Green.

Hour 5-6: Adding in the cloth

Next I added the cloth color.  Again, the wash later will darken it a bit.  I had to do some touch-ups on the green when I was done with this coat.  Here I used Terrain Khaki to get a bit of a dirtied look to the linens.

Hour 7: Painting the leather bits

Finally, I went through and painted all the leather bits.  I used Lonestar Leather for the paint color here.

That’s where I’m at for now.  I’m looking forward to moving forward.  Right now I’m still adding base colors, but there will be some washes in there later.  I’m not going for as nice a mini as the last one I painted, so I won’t be focusing so much on tiny details.  After all the base coats are down, I’ll wash the whole thing with a dark brown and then begin to highlight with selective color dry brushing.  Finally, there are a few details that I’ll add (eye color, stitches on the leather, and maybe yellow the claws).

First, a bit about Reaper.  Reaper Miniatures is a company that makes plastic, metal, and resin miniature figures.  They are used for all types of gaming (war gaming, strategy gaming, board game replacements, role playing games, etc.), but we use ours primarily for role playing games.  I’ve always wanted to get into miniature painting, but it was too cost prohibitive to get a bunch up front for gaming use.  That changed last year when they kickstarted their bones line.  A bones mini is cheaper than the metal mini (often by 1/3 or more) and is harder to destroy.  With the kickstarter, we got a ton of minis for what ended up being less than $1 a mini, even with getting some of the more expensive ones.  They have announced they they are doing another one, and soon, so if you’re interested keep your eyes peeled!

I enjoyed the community enough that I started an account on their forums.  Though I don’t go there too often, I liked the idea of a mini exchange.  The way it works is that everyone interested sends their information and any preferences on what they want to receive and can or cannot do to an organizer.  For example, if you only want fantasy miniatures and not sci-fi stuff you can say so.  Everyone ends up painting one mini  (or more if they want)  and sends it to the person who’s information they are given.  Sometimes the person you paint for also paints for you, but it’s really more like a big circle of exchange.  My partner wanted a fantasy mini and likes shades of purple, but had no other preferences.  I chose to paint up the female wizard Sharyn sculpted by Julie Guthrie.  Here she is!

I’m mostly happy with the way she came out.  The bird is a second miniature that I added onto the base, since I felt she really needed a companion.  For the woman, I stuck with a purple robe and then decided to go with blue under clothes.  Despite Earl’s pleas for green gems, I kept with the blue.  I am not entirely happy with the wood tones.  I did the two pieces separately, so while I could use a similar color pallet, they weren’t exactly the same.    I’m also not sure how I feel about the really light highlighting on the staff.  I’ve decided that since the staff is essentially dead wood, it’s ok, but I’m still not entirely happy with it.  I’m a little more pleased with the bird’s branch.  Likewise, had I painted them at the same time, I would have probably changed up the colors of her feathers to match those of the birds.  But, I did have a deadline, so it stayed the way it was.  I’m not so happy with the boots either, I think that shading needed to be a bit more subtle.  I’m mostly happy with how the hair turned out, though I do question some of the highlight placements in the front.    The hand is, well, it’s eh.  I just need more practice in understanding how skin highlights really.

While I really like the girl, I have fewer critiques for myself on the bird, even though I spent less time on it.  I’m happy with how the blue/green speckling came through.  I wanted it to be reminiscent of birds with shimmering color-changing feathers.  I also really wanted to have a white breast, and I think I did the transition there well.  The one thing I could have done to help with that a bit is to go over with a dry brush and highlight with some true white and let the leather white act as a deeper shadow.

For the basing, I just painted everything in stone grey and washed it with stone shadow to give it a color base.  Then I covered the whole thing with forest green flocking.  I like how it hid the parts of the boots that I disliked the most. Also, I ended up rubbing off some paint and primer on the base, so instead of having to go through and re-prime and paint the bottom, it nicely hides those errors.  On the last photo you can see a bit of a lip where the mini was glued to the base.  I should have gone back and added a bit of flocking to that as well, but it is what it is.

I’m really happy with this mini in the end.  It was my first try with a wet pallet and my first black lining (you can see that a bit in the face).  I also focused more on using several layers of thinned paint to shadow and highlight instead of relying on washes and dry brushing.  I almost didn’t want to send her out to my trade partner since she’s probably my best mini yet and I spent so much time on her.  But, truth be told, I was inspired to do all that work just so I could send off an awesome mini.  So off she went!  He’s since received her, and the response was one of joy (he said thank you three times!), so that was well worth it.  Thanks for reading!