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Miniature Painting: The Process

Sep 1

Posted by Aaron in Art | No Comments

I’ve finished, sealant and all, 5 miniatures from my Navia Dratp collection so far, and I’ve got it down to enough of a science that I thought I’d write a little bit about what goes on throughout the process.

This is by no means a tutorial, as I don’t think I am quite skilled enough to lecture instructively on the process yet – I am still very much in the trial-and-error stage, with a series of fortunate successes in my wake. I will discuss some of my thinking about what I do and why, but it is not to be meant as a prescription for best practice.

This post is more of an exploration; painting miniatures has become almost meditative for me, and I have a very deliberate routine I execute each time. Read the rest of this entry »

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Miniature Painting: Hamulus Garuda

Aug 31

Posted by Aaron in Art | No Comments

Hamulus Garuda, the anthropomorphized pteranadonesque character, was a very rewarding painting experience.

There’s something about a bright color being first applied to a miniature that seems to make it start to come alive almost immediately. The shade of orange, which I happened to have pre-mixed, made for an easy base coat, along with his body armor (had to darken my pre-mixed blue for that). Even with just those basic colors applied, it already seemed like it was practically going to break out of its plastic enclosure, fire off its grappling hook, and steal away into some secluded spot.

I am particularly proud of how well the eyes and teeth, as well as the head-markings, came out. I wish I could say it was all skill, but quite honestly, it was just luck — the bristles on my fine brush just happened to be forked in a way that made the eye look as though it had a pupil, and the teeth were painted on by a brush that was dried enough to be somewhat frayed; the coat went on in random linear splotches that happened to resemble his teeth.

Once I had the base skin coat established, I mixed up some more and less saturated versions for the neck, head, torso and winglets — after that application the mini looked even more alive.

The grappling hook turned out similarly successful – I happened to have a few pre-mixed colors that matched the diagram almost perfectly; there was a small amount of free-painting (painting outside the lines) on the texture on the stock of the gun, but it was a decent re-creation.

For his toenails, I dry-brushed some highlights onto it to give the feeling of wear on the ridges — similar artistic license was taken with the ridges of the body armor.

More photos after the jump.

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Miniature Painting: Kapinahs

Aug 25

Posted by Aaron in Art | No Comments

I mentioned that this one was in progress in the previous post, along with a “before photo.”

After several hours across a couple days, I have the finished product – behold, Kapinahs!

One big difference between this miniature and Kanimiso (the previous one) is that for this one, I was able to use some figure flat spray primer on it first, which made the initial coats go on a lot easier.

There was some moderate paint-mixing, particularly to get the right color hues on the wings and cowl, as well as the scale-tone on the beak, hands, and feet. The scale-tone was especially annoying — I had a hard time finding the right mix of tones to get that warm yellow.

The initial base coat was a little scary, because with the basic dark blue on the wings, brown on the torso, and red / yellow on the head and limbs, it looked very…childish. Once I got a nice dark wash and highlights on the wings, and some detail brushing on the jewelry / ornaments, it started to really liven up.

The finishing touches were painting the eyes (I have a single-hair brush for just that purpose), painting some highlight strokes on the cowl, and some contrasting bits around some dark accents (the wrist bands and body armor, mostly).

I tried to stick with the card photo as closely as possible – mostly for authenticity (and to ease gameplay, since the cards are used to identify the different minis on the board), but also because I’m still getting acquainted with the color palette of this game.

I actually have two more miniatures finished, so those will be posted at some point within the next week.

Gallery of close-up detail photos after the jump.

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Nickel & Dimed (part 2 of 2) [Book Reviews]

Aug 25

Posted by Aaron in Book Reviews, Featured | 3 Comments

This is a continuation of my book review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel & Dimed. Part 1 posted yesterday.

Housing costs post the greatest obstacle for low-wage workers. Why does our society seem to resist rectifying this situation? Do you believe that there are realistic solutions to the lack of affordable housing?

In Nickel & Dimed, Ehrenreich’s first job (near Key West, Florida) as a food server does not pay enough for her to even get a modest apartment. She eventually upgrades to a better paying food service job, and is able to rent a half-size trailer so narrow you can touch both walls while standing in the middle, but only after having a $600 deposit. Most of the people she worked with, living paycheck to paycheck in a hotel room somewhere, do not have even that much starting capital, even though it would ultimately be cheaper in the long run for them to live in an apartment or trailer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Nickel & Dimed (part 1 of 2) [Book Review]

Aug 24

Posted by Aaron in Book Reviews, Featured | 2 Comments

Homelessness is the state of not possessing the right to use a single place for shelter persistently.

Joblessness is the state of not possessing the privilege to be paid for work persistently.

Homelessness and joblessness are both very prominent problems here in America, and have been for quite some time. However, they are not always causally linked, nor does remedying one necessarily remedy the other.

In the book Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the state of America’s lower-class (the various poverty strata) that struggle to live even modestly while working one or more jobs.  At the time this book was written (1998-2000), America’s job market was booming; in fact, that time period was at the tail end of a decline in unemployment that led to the lowest unemployment rates we’ve seen in the past 20 years. [As a side note, unemployment has been steadily eking upwards since World War II ended, along a boom-bust pattern]

It seems completely counter-intuitive: we are told time and time again this Protestant mantra that hard work is the path to prosperity; that the poverty-stricken and homeless are the way they are because of sloth or carelessness and bad choices; that having a job will logically lead to having a home and ultimately a life.

But the reality is far less simplistic.

Ehrenreich’s approach to research, calling on her background in the natural sciences, is to, as she says, sit at the bench and do the work. This particular approach has been tried by others, such as Morgan Spurlock on his show 30 Days, and while I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely accurate, it definitely provides more insight than simply crunching numbers. She confesses, in the beginning, that while she will work hard and fully intends to make her research as realistic as possible by abandoning the opportunities and resources granted to her by her privileged social stratum, she will not do so to the point that it threatens her health or safety. Personally, I felt this was a reasonable compromise.

Throughout the course of the book she works under a pseudonym as a food server in Florida, in a nursing home and as a cleaning maid in Maine, and in retail at Wal-Mart in Minnesota. She works roughly a month in each job before leaving; although I can never tell if her job-changes are arbitrary based on time or because she just can’t take the work anymore.

Her writing style is very candid, informal, and I would even venture to say that she certainly doesn’t pull her punches, referring to one of her bosses as a “pimp” at one point. She does anonymize the people in the book, to protect their identities, however.

I felt this book was worth reading: it’s relatively short (~230 pages) but provides some terrific insight which is backed by textual research (“Real Research™”). Despite the book being 10 years, things haven’t changed all that much, which is quite unfortunate.

More in-depth discussion after the jump. (Due to this particular review being so massive, I’ve broken it up into two parts, with part 2 posting tomorrow)

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