Normally, I take pictures of the minis when I finish them, and sometimes I show them to my family, but one of the things I did while working on painting minis was this set of pictures. This is the first mini I did after finishing the ones for our campaigns, and I wanted to take pictures at each stage to show why it's important to do all the steps. You can do a base color only, but adding each step gives it a lot more depth, and I wanted to show my friends and family the process I use from a naked mini to fully painted.
This one is simple, here I have the supplies that I use to paint. A mug of clean water to clean brushes, a paint pallet, two paintbrushes - one fine and one thin and flat, a paper towel for to help clean off the brushes and to do the drybrushing, something to hold the mini on so it's easier to manipulate (the black thing), and of course the mini itself. I did not include the paints I used in this image.
Here is the front of the naked mini. As you can see, the details aren't that easy to make out and it's just sort of boring. Some of the minis I have are white like this, and that's because these figures are older. If you go pick up mini figures like this now, they will most likely be gray.
Here is the back of the naked mini figure. Again, the details are hard to make out and sort of blend in with the rest of the mini. Even when I pick up these minis and look at them like this, I don't always catch all of the details until I start to paint them and pick out colors to go on them. When I pick up a mini to paint, sometimes I have an idea in mind of what I want to do, and others I have no clue what I'm doing when I start and just go with what works. It depends on the day.
This is the front side of the mini figure with the base coat on it. I know a lot of people who paint minis will do each color all the way from start to finish before moving on to the next color, but I find I miss things way. I didn't do it here, and this is the last time I didn't do it, but this is also the step that I do facial features. It's easier to clean up at this stage and not mess up the effort that you put into layering it.
And here's the backside of the base coat. You can see the details better now and the mini is a lot more interesting with the colors on it. It still isn't quite as dynamic, and the details don't stand out as much, but it looks a lot better than it did when it was just plain white. The blue thing underneath that I use to stick the mini and hold it in place is just poster tack. I have a pack of it that I use to switch it out when it's lost its stickiness.
The next step that I do is a wash over the whole mini figure. A wash, for those who don't know, is when you mix a darker paint with water so its extremely thin and settles nicely in the crevices. You can see how it settled here and adds more depth to the figure, especially on the front where there are more details.
And here, we have the back of the mini with the wash. It settles nicely into the cracks and makes them stand out. Not everyone follows this method. The other way to do is the layering method where you paint the darkest color on bottom and slowly layer the paint to give the depth of color. I don't have the time or experience to do this yet, so I stick with the wash and drybrush method.
And this is the end product. I didn't take a photo of the drybrush because it isn't the easiest to see the difference. For the drybrush section, you take the base color on your paintbrush again and wipe most of the paint off on the paper towel, so that you can get a minor amount on top of the mini. The wash tends to make the mini look a lot darker than it was before, so if you drybrush over it again, making certain you don't have too much paint on the brush so it doesn't cover the wash you put on, it brings back the color that was darkened.
The last step is to put the highlights on, which you use the drybrush method to do. You can see it on this mini because I accidentally made the highlight in the hair too bright. I wasn't quite happy with how it came out, but it still looks pretty good. If you compare the final result to the bare mini, you can really see the difference with the details. You couldn't tell that the shoulder piece on the right shoulder was actually a lion or a wolf depending on what you want to make it before, as well as a lot of other small things. Adding the color and even more, adding the wash, really brought that out.
I have started adding more layering into the highlight phase where I just barely lighten the color and do a few more layers of the highlight to make it look better. This is on more recent minis though and not on this one specifically.
But here is the finished product. I hope you like how she came out as well as getting to see the process of how I get to the finished product, and while she won't be used in the YouTube channel right now, I hope you still take the chance to check it out and see the rest of the mini figures in action
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