A parcel arrived today with a couple of minis- one of which was this Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User. She turned out to be the mid level of one of the three stage figures ral partha put out for dnd gamers. Sculpted by Tom Meier, it features his trademark 'too fine to paint' details. Bloody impressive is our Tom's steady hand, as he proves here by sculpting a raised pentagram on her belt buckle using nothing but green stuff and inhuman patience.
Occasionally I get a mini that just needs a bit of sprucing up rather than stripping. This one was neatly undercoated and base colored, but the pevious owner seemed to have stopped mid way (perhaps the low level version of her died and he no longer needed the mid level!) and heck, such a nice shade of pink too.
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| Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User. Sculptor: Tom Meier. |
Whilst my wife was enjoying a double bill of 'my big fat gypsy wedding', I decided to see if I could knock out a figure on the same day it arrived. I took some photos along the way.
First I needed to address the flash. Almost all minis from the 80's have the remains of flash under their paint jobs. Kids where not clued up on cleaning this off I guess... or too lazy. This one was reasonably well cleaned on the outside, but a chased off some flash under her arm and had to re shape her wand arm, which was poorly cast and had a thick nub of metal on it.
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| As she arrived, mounted on a 30mm x 2mm MDF base by 'Warbases' |
Next I re-established the base colors, painting over the scuffs and bringing her to an even, matt finish. If your trying to get good at mini painting, the first thing you should try and do is just base coat neatly and evenly. It takes a bit of discipline, and it is not how your shown how to do it in white dwarf or painting guides these days, which focus on completely finishing a section before moving on to the other- but I suspect this is mainly due to making it easy to illustrate, rather than being the best method to actually paint. John Blanche (who?) mentioned this in a Blanchitsu a while back... he still gets all his base colors down first before shading.
By the way, I firmly believe you should paint your gaming miniatures with their base colors before playing with them. Undercoated or raw minis are dreadful to play. By at least getting all the colors in, your minis look good at a distance- at which, lets face it, most games are played. Once colored in, your good to game.
My current base painting technique involves the brilliant, BRILLIANT Liquitex Burnt Umber- which provides deep rich soil colors when applied in varying thicknesses.
So I kept the shading and detailing very simple, as I wanted her finished in one sitting. I used slightly thinned black ink to edge all her details- flow aid helps here. I also used a few glazes, which as you probably know, I thin with matte medium and flow aid. Here I used an old bottle of Titilating pink from the monster Citadel Boxed set.
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| Varnished and ready for Skulldred. "A wizards staff has a knob on the end" |
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| A rear view. |
