Experience doesn't just improve quality.

Following on from the prepping of Castellan Crowe and Kaldor Draigo figures on Friday, I pressed ahead on Saturday with getting them undercoated, base coated and moved on to getting the main colours done.

I undercoated them black and then sprayed on a base of vajello gunmetal blue. This is a really dark but very rich blue colour and I thought it would lend a different feel to these models.


I then pressed on with my trusty airbrush, putting on a layer of boltgun metal, then some chainmail paying attention to my lightsource. Then a quick wash with asuremen blue and a careful wash of devlan mud into the recesses. Then a directional highlight of mithril before I started to get the other colours on. I also went round some of the detail quite aggressively with asurmen blue, painting on more shadow where I felt there should be.

I beavered away on saturday getting the basics done and then had a productive four hours working on both at paint club on Sunday. By Sunday evening, this was where I'd got to.

There is still a fair bit left to do and getting the swords right will take a while but overall they've come along very quickly. I thought the white on Crowe would take me ages but Wayne had a couple of off-whites from the Reaper Master series range that made it easy to bring the white together. The rest was all common sense, brown then gold, red then green wash then more red etc etc. All pretty instinctive by this stage.

Which is the point of this post really. Improving at painting miniatures isn't just about obtaining more pleasing results, you'll also find you turn out decent figures faster than you used to. Partly because your actual fine motor technique has improved but also partly because you don't need to think about which colours to use in combination with which. It all just flows naturally, which is fun.