A year in miniatures

Round about a year ago, some friends and I began a kind of collective arts and crafts breakdown, as we one by one either bought the shiny new Warhammer 40,000 starter boxes, or dusted off several kilos of tiny plastic rats from the gaming cupboards of deep time. Progress has been unevenly distributed, but it’s a hobby, not a competition. I mean, unless you actually use these tiny figurines as pieces in the literal game they are actually physically designed for. But who does that? Lordy. The very thought.

(I’ve played some Cursed City recently and it’s really fun!)

All of which is to say that in the time I’ve taken to build and paint something like twenty murderous space clowns and a team of twinky reptilian rugby bois, my friends have painted approximately six million models and learned to do things with airbrushes, epoxy putty, and oil paints that look to me like dark naughty sorcery.

No matter. It’s been a learning experience and a mental health crutch while we’ve all been in plague jail on Racist Island.

Right. Look at these fucking lizards:

That’s the two most recent models I’ve painted.

When I zoom in (never do that!) I see all the fuck-ups and fumbles, but from actual gaming distance they don’t look so bad.

Here on the right is the first one I painted almost a year ago 👉

Yeah, I’ll take that progress. The lizard models are doing a fair bit of the work - the Bloodbowl scuplts are crazy detailed. But even my gibbering self-deprecation can’t look between those two and not see an improvement.

I’d probably have come further but I hit a real low patch some time in June and just folded up in a big comfy chair reading queer young adult fiction and cuddling a bottle of Beaujolais rather than doing, making, or learning anything. It wasn’t the best couple of months, but it did wonders for my reading log.

Anyway, there’s some “stuff what I learned” a bit lower down. But to save you scrolling, here’s the rest of the lizards.

Presenting my Lizardmen Bloodbowl team: The Skinky Boots

Lessons learned

There follows a list of things I have learned that are, in hindsight, incredibly bloody obvious. Also a short interlude in which I go peculiar about paintbrushes.

Practice, duh

This is a paragraph because two headings look weird on top of each other if there’s no body text in between. Practice is how we get better at stuff, tough as that is to swallow for my dilettante manbaby sensibilities. Cool. Next.

No, zenithal underpainting actually is magic

In my first what-I-learned post I was pretty equivocal on zenithal priming. Was it really worth the effort? Yes. Quick zenithal spray in black then white, followed by a Nuln Oil wash and a white drybrush on the highlights. Honestly I’d happily play with models at that stage, it really brings out the detail It also helps me think more clearly about what to do with the rest of the model.

If you’re glazing - and I still predominantly am - it’s a time saver too. The definition really shows through the thin layers and you often have less work to do down the line.

You’re allowed nice things

So am I, but you wouldn’t think it to look at my brushes.

I’d spent most of a year aggressively not blaming my tools, and thinking that I didn’t really “deserve” the “fancy brushes”. And also assuming they were Expensive expensive. A Raphael 0 costs a tenner, and while that’s not nothing, if it’s a price point I don’t bat an eyelid at for table wine then maybe, just maybe, I can spend it on something that might make an activity I enjoy both easier and more enjoyable.

Turns out it did, although it was a bit of a journey.

See, I was used to using a brush I had affectionately dubbed Captain Dogshit.

Here is he, a Humbrol No.4, and my erstwhile brush of choice. Why? Because it was the nicest sized brush that came in the cheap-ass pack I bought at the craft store when I was getting started.

But why did I stick with Captain Dogshit, and indeed do so with enough loyalty to give my paintbrush a name - a completely normal thing that completely normal people do? Well, because I just couldn’t get the hang of all the other cheap ones I tried. I bought several packs of a few sizes of brush and they were all just too, uhh, floppy, I guess? No spring back, and indifferent tip retention. For me it was Captain Dogshit or a Citadel medium layer brush, and the good Captain was less than half the price to replace. Which I had to do frequently, because as Sam Vimes will tell you, cheap things are expensive.

Eventually, grownups took pity on me and got me a couple of actual brushes as a birthday gift. Thanks! Initially, this didn’t go the best. Couldn’t get the hang of ‘em, couldn’t retain a point, thought I either had a duff batch or was just plain bad at this. Bought a different brand: same story.

So I asked the grownups again, and it turns out I was indeed just doing it wrong - a couple of small technique things, but mostly just under-loading the brush because I wasn’t used to one that actually held any paint to speak of.

Revelation.

A decent brush or two has given me more control, and they seem to last longer. I’m not saying make it a gear sport, that way lies nonsense. The right tools don’t do the work for you, but the wrong ones can undermine you.

I still don’t have an airbrush. Somehow, madly, it feels like crossing a line.

On the subject of brushes

I’m now mostly using a Raphael 0 because I like the springiness and the fact that it’s quite long but holds a fine tip. People I trust seem to prefer the Winsor & Newton S7 No.1, which I wasn’t so keen on but have in a 0 for fine work.

(Brush sizes are not standardized! Did you know that? You probably did, but I didn’t, and found out the expensive way)

The other regulars in my roster are:

Humbrol No.4
Because I ordered a pack of 3, still have some, and wanted something for metallics.
Citadel Medium Shade
For washes. They do what they say they do, well.
Cheap-ass makeup brushes
For drybrushing.

If I were starting out today I’d probably buy an Army Painter: Most Wanted 3 pack until I found my feet, rather than burn through several Captains Dogshit. Meh. You learn.

You also learn to look after them. A single tub of brush soap will last you until the Wednesday before the heat death of the universe.

Finish one layer

This is super common advice that I didn’t realise the power of until I was struggling with the Saurus Blockers. It’s easier to think about the model, and not to get downhearted, if the doneness is evenly distributed. Get a layer of base colours on everything before moving on to detail-fondle that one bit over there. Make each round feel like a new draft, an iteration.

Honestly, this is just advice I give in my professional life all the time and that I forget the second I close my laptop: agile, iterative delivery is shipping the entire left hand side of the bridge, not the front half.

It’s more satisfying, and you get a clearer idea of whether it actually works.

…but it always looks shit in the middle

I don’t find the watery mid stage of a casserole especially appetising, and I’m not sure why I expect any different of an athletic chameleon in a questionably culturally-sensitive headdress.

Not much more to say there.

‘s gonna look disheartening half way through 🤷‍♂️

You get over it. Or get blocked, step away, read a book, and come back when you can deal with it. If you can deal with it. You don’t even have to come back. You can just put it in a box and do something else. It’s a hobby, not a job.