Adventures in Myopialand

Pictured here is a mini of a Tiefling Monk wearing a Hakama and sleeveless Gi top. His colour scheme is very familiar if you've come near an X-Men comic within the last couple of decades or watched any of the Marvel movies in the last handful of years. Yes, folks, this is my Nightcrawler build D&D character.

The name he's using currently is Kochis Shaydden, but I won't get you into his lengthy, complicated, and angst-ridden backstory. No. This is about the physical object pictured here, and my misadventures in getting him to look this good.

First up, thanks goes to MeMum for the regular annual birthday gift of fifty Aussie Dollaridoos to "spend irresponsibly". Which I promptly did by ordering this magnificent guy to be printed and shipped by Heroforge. If you're the kind of person who can spend days in a character creator, do not google them. You will lose the rest of your life down that rabbit-hole. Trust me.

Once printed, I had to learn how to paint him. Since I am the most cautious of nerds, I did a lot of research and watching How-To's on Youtube, and finally purchased a bunch of paints and some Warhammer kit dudes for practice. Details are in my Patreon for a mere $1 a month or more.

I quickly discovered that the beginner brush was no good for fine detail (dur) but excellent for covering large areas in small amounts of time. Not fantastic for fiddly detail.

Seriously, folks. If you're going to paint your D&D minis, go to the nearest Overflow and hunt the craft nerd section for Mont Marté miniature painting brushes. You get enough change from $10 to buy yourself a frozen coke after your wise purchase. Those things are the shit. The bee's knees. The cat's PJ's. The absolute pearl in the oyster.

All the other techniques like drybrushing, overwashing and so forth can be found in video tutorials. What I want to talk about is a technique I call 'dotpainting'.

Your best friends in dotpainting are a VERY fine-tipped brush, rock-steady hands, and the kind of eyesight that's one good sneeze away from "legally blind". As you might expect, I do all my dotpainting in the early morning before I've even looked at my coffee cup.

It also helps if any small demanding animals are fed before you instigate . this intricate process.

Step 1: Moisten your brush tip. I like to swish it through the washwater, then wipe it mostly dry on a paper towel.

Step 2: Shake your paint pot. Always shake your paint pot before opening.

Step 3: With the utmost care, get the smallest possible amount of paint on your brush.

Step 4: With just as much care and rock-steady hands, using all the focal range of a bat, just ease the tiniest possible dot of paint onto the target area of your mini.

Step5: (optional) Manipulate said dot to cover a very tiny area.

Cursing happens if your fingers slip, you cough, sneeze, or some otherwise beloved pet decides that you need some ungentle loving while you're trying to concentrate on making as little mess as possible. Fortunately, there is such a thing as dotpainting touch-ups.

Dotpainting can also use the shape of the brush itself to get into nooks and crannies, but it still requires extreme myopia and the steadiness of a surgeon.

I have found dotpainting to be very useful on those finicky little details you want to get just right. Of course, little of this actually matters when minis like this are essentially markers so the DM and other players can figure out who's where and doing what during a complicated fight. Only other players, true nerds all, recognise that a whole bunch of effort went into your particular marker.

Of course, my guy up there isn't finished yet. I still have to touch up any errata I've made... with more dotpainting... and then get some washes to bring out the details of the mini... and maybe some very careful drybrushing to make it all pop.

Only once I am done will I consider what colour I want his base to be.

Then I'll have to apply some kind of varnish so he stays that way.

I give it maybe three months before I think about painting another mini. Like, yes, it'd frustrating and yes, it takes oodles of time, and yes it's very intricate...

...but I think I'm starting to like it.