Alex Paints Things Ch. 1 Pt. 1
The Wonderful Word of Painting: An Introduction
I’m not someone that has ever committed much time to the visual arts. It’s not something I showed any real talent in. My handwriting is often compared to a doctor’s. What I have always had though is an appreciation of people’s work. Any hobby or profession where people pour themselves in to it intrigues me a lot. I haven’t had something like that for myself in a hot minute but in the last year I got in to Dungeons and Dragons and my desire to bring my character to life became that outlet. I wanted a record of my efforts as I go through and I figured Tumblr would be as good a place as any to have it. Feel free to add constructive criticism or other comments as I meander my way through painting.
To start, my first foray in to painting included the use of the Arteza acrylic paint set of 24 colours. I could get it next day on Amazon and that’s about as far as my logic went. I had a set of old brushes I got from a friend as well. Before I started my first guy, I realized I had no metallic paint and I wanted some insight on painting. To take out both these birds with one stone, I dropped by the Games Workshop store nearby and picked up pots Citadel’s leadbelcher and retributor armour. On top of that, I picked up agrax earthshade as I was told it would add a certain grime to my character that I figured fit very well. I am playing a half-orc barbarian, Bogram Grolligal, in a 5E campaign who has a proclivity for getting right in to the fight. My vision for this character has pale skin, a lack of armour, and a big weapon. The handsome devil on the left is the first print of him pre-painting.
Bogram here was created using Neat Filament teal PLA by way of a Creality Ender-3 printer.
Now I’m not a clever guy sometimes and the idea of recording this didn’t really hit me until I was done. Here are the results of my first efforts.
The cutie on the left with the green goblin coloured thighs was guy number one. During that first engagement I learned that when you have to mix paints to get a colour you want it’s damn near impossible to recreate it. This problem is made worse when you totally forget to paint a section of skin after you moved on to something else and all the original skin tone is a dried mess on your palette. Lesson learned (sort of, made the same mistake on another mini later on). Not that photos show this well but I attempted giving Bogram v1 some red eyes but I just skipped that for the time being on Bogram v2 until I felt like I could do better at it.
I spent most my time on both of these trying to mix the super rich colours I had in to the shades I wanted. I figured a gritty in-you-face combatant would have more muted tones to them, something I think I did a better job of on the second guy. Speaking of which, sanding down the imperfect 3D prints of this model was a real to-do and I think I did a much better job on v2. Those details coupled with a little more care in to the application of the blood stains made me a lot happier with v2. This is good because my dumb ass dusted v1 when I thought acetone was safe for stripping the paint off of him.
We live and we learn. On to the next ones.
I would like to thank my friends Nick for printing these fine lads out for me (even if I murdered one) and @kasiawo for giving me guidance on the nuances of paint and the mixing thereof.
