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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Tags: miniature painting, Navia Dratp

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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Tags: miniature painting, Navia Dratp

Several years ago, I had a roommate that painted gaming miniatures. He had a pretty sizable collection, mostly Games Workshop (the makers of Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and other popular skirmish-gaming titles) and Legend of the Five Rings (a game set in feudal Japan).

He was pretty good at it – his miniatures looked really nice and had a great fine level of detail. He wasn’t as good as the people that do this professionally, but he was better than average. I had asked him to show me how to paint, and he showed me some basics — basecoats, washes, drybrushing, point-detailing, etc.

Recently, I’ve had the itch to start painting again, and I was fortunate enough to have a friend loan me some paints. I acquired a great deal on a large lot of Navia Dratp materials, which seemed like a good place to start. Navia Dratp (pronounced “Nah-vee-ah Drop”) is a game loosely derived from Shogi also sometimes known as Japanese Chess. The game is played on a 7×7 board, has figurines that have different movement patterns, and the ability to “promote” miniatures. It’s pretty neat, and lots of fun if you’re into strategy / tactical board games like Chess. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: miniature painting, Navia Dratp