Paint This Dude #1

A disclaimer: I have actually painted three metal miniatures before this with no real reading into what to do. I just had some metal miniatures and, after living with some family in a cramped house, I had a whole extra room of space to paint in so I bought some cheap acrylics and a brush set from a fabric store and went to town. However, I decided I wanted to paint up my Castle Ravenloft miniatures and so I wanted to practice a bit, as I mentioned in the last post. So, this is the first miniature I painted after I read a bunch of different "How to Paint Plastic Miniatures" articles, primarily this one. Since this is the first time I've done a post like this, I'm going to do a step-by-step commentary on what I'm doing and some thoughts.

"I will shoot a dragon IN THE FACE!"

This is the Mage Knight figure, a Khamsin Freelance. Most of the Mage Knight figures, especially the ones from the first run, are pretty easy to pry off their bases. I think I poked this guy's foot once with an exacto blade and then just pulled a little. Then, I used some elmer's glue to attach him to a Pepsi cap. Oh, but the most important thing that I learned that I never considered was to wash the miniatures before you start painting them! This guy has been sitting on shelves or in boxes since 2002 and gathering dust and grime. He's been handled by me or a few other people and some of those people may have had dirty or sticky hands. So, I washed him real quick with dish soap and warm water and the difference is immediately noticeable. You can pick out details a lot better because there's not all kinds of dust and what not all over him.

Life is cold and gray.

Snow camo.

The next step was to mix up a little Gesso to help the paint stick and get a solid undercoat. I misread something and gave this guy a whole coat of white after the Gesso and , worse, I didn't do a solid, even base. That kind of bit me in the butt later on. If I had just left it at the Gesso, I think the figure would have come out better.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

"Take a picture, buddy! Oh, yeah."

So, in the first picture especially, you can see how that white undercoat makes it really obvious if I missed any spots. Well, the best thing to do would be to paint everything right and make sure no white is showing. That is not what I did. I just pressed on because I figured with the next step, it would get covered up. Spoiler: it did not.

Swarthy, that's what he is.

The shading is so good it looks like I took a bad picture...

Now we are at a point where I did some washing, which is taking a dark color, diluting it with water and then painting over so that the thinner paint flows into the cracks and crevices, creating a really cool shaded effect. However, I did a few bad things. Number one, I only used a black wash all over everything instead of different washes for the different areas. That was because I didn't think I was doing the washes right and then I did this thing I tend to do a lot in life and figured I read something wrong but then instead of going back and rereading what I thought I misread, I made up some new facts and went off that. So, it was black wash all over the place. Then, I mixed blue with black to try to make a wash and it was too thick so his shirt got a whole new color on it. Then I tried to do some drybrushing, a technique to highlight some of the raised portions of the model. Unfortunately, I got a little crazy so his black gloves with silvery studs became silver gloves.

Also, in the prep stage, I should have clipped or sanded the mold lines on this figure. It's really obvious in the last picture there, the little fin rising out of his head is a left over from when he was cast. Finally, later on, Wiz Kids produced better and better models as they kept expanding the Mage Knight line but then they threw Mage Knight fans an odd curveball by making Mage Knight 2.0. I thought the gameplay was interesting and they added a lot of new ideas and tricks but that seemed to be the problem. Mage Knight was cool because it was so simple to learn and play...anyway, I digress. The point is, in the molds for Mage Knight 2.0, there was an updated Khamsin guy that looked more like a samurai with a pistol and less like a bad juggernaut cosplayer.

"I'm feelin' shiny."

There he is. That's my first painted figure. I should have bought some dull coat clear spraypaint to cover him but because I do most of my painting in a room in our apartment, I thought I could just use the stuff they use for clear-coating puzzles, Mod Pudge. However, it does make the figures really shiny and kind of rubbery looking. I like the feel of them, though, they kind of remind me of those little MUSCLE guys or the ninjas me and my brother used to get from vending machines. The base is something else I did with a metal washer and some dry cat litter that I painted brown. Also, the mushy stuff is poster tack, which turned out to be a bad idea because it stays all gooey and gross. I thought maybe when I painted it, it would hold it's shape or something but that didn't really work out. As of this writing, I've painted several more figures and  so this guy has some brothers. The bases I did for them were painted brown and drybrushed green and there's no poster tack on them so they look better. Later on, I'll post some more stuff of what I've done since this mess.