Weekly WIP: Dungeon Saga III

Week three of painting Dungeon Saga. I find myself cruising Kickstarter looking for more projects to back. It’s not necessarily because I need more miniatures. It’s a coping mechanism, I’ve discovered, where shopping is a proxy for painting. Realizing this years ago has saved me a lot of money and kept my “lead pile” from growing unchecked. There’s a trick your mind plays on you when you look at a new game. You imagine yourself painting the miniatures and playing it. That mental jump ignores how long it will take to paint the miniatures in reality, as well as how much less time it will take to paint the miniatures you are currently painting.

Monday: Furniture

Now that the frenzy has cooled I am happy to spend time painting in smaller sessions. Last night I had to work for an hour but still managed to paint the details on the dungeon furniture.

Dungeon Saga Furniture

Thankfully the wood doesn’t look as sickly green as it once did. I’m actually pleased with the shade of brown I achieved. It’s too bad I’ve become lax about recording my colour mixes as I paint. It is a habit I am hoping to renew.

Tuesday: Dungeon Saga Zombie Flashback

That’s right, it’s time for more zombies. Dungeon Saga seems to be all zombies, all the way down, sometimes. Maybe not, but it feels good to paint the last zombies. In fact, all I have left are some skeletal dwarfs and some undead trolls. Zombie, undead trolls. Oh well, once more into the zombie fray, but not for a while.

Dungeon Saga Armoured Zombies

At least I seem to be back on form in regards to painting speed. I started these guys last night with mounting them on a craft stick for painting, priming and then I just went to town while watching Critical Role on Youtube. This is definitely the thing to watch while painting miniatures for a dungeon crawling game. These guys look pretty good if you don’t look at the freehand shields. Please don’t, these are quick paintjobs. I don’t know why I tried to paint an image instead of a graphic design but I will admit that I was getting pretty tired by the time I was painting the shields.

Wednesday: Dungeon Saga Madriga

Dungeon Saga Madriga

After painting all those zombies it ws nice to spend some time with a character model. I just picked colours and went at it, enjoying the process more than I have recently. In some ways I loath the character models as the same effort gets me three painted minions. On the other hand, the actual painting is more enjoyable.

Madriga demonstrates some of the problems I’ve been having with my limited palette. The green of her cloak and paints were not the shade of green I was trying to mix when I started. Instead of tossing what I did mix I used it anyway. In this case I wasn’t trying to match anything. If I was trying to match a specific colour, say on a historical miniature, I would have problems. In time this is something I will get better at.

Green is a colour that gives me the most trouble as it really is not intuitive how it behaves. Sometimes I think I should pick up some more colours and see if that works better for me. Either that or sit down and systematically experiment with mixing colours.

Friday: Dungeon Saga Mage

Dungeon Saga Mage

I haven’t yet memorized the names of the core group of heroes. I expect to know them once I start actually playing the game. This miniature actually took two evening to paint as in both cases I was busy. This miniature really is a departure for me since I’ve resisted the urge to paint every scrap of his outfit in a different colour. Sometimes it’s not as necessary or realistic as people think, yet the urge is there. In this case I’m letting the highlighting and shading create the contrast I want.

When I was picking this colour scheme I drew inspiration from Raistlin Majere, a character from Margeret Weis and Tracey Hick’s Dragonlance books. He is described as having golden skin, white hair and red robes. The pose and style of the clothes don’t match the character but I’ve very happy with the platinum hair.

Saturday:Dungeon Saga furniture

Dungeon Saga Stone Furniture

Here was another fun bit of painting. I applied the base colours with an airbrush and then turned the pressure way down on the regulator to cause the airbrush to spit and spatter to try to give me a stone texture. I’m not sure how much of it survived the washes and drybrushing which followed. If it did it’s a subtle effect.

Sunday:Dungeon Saga Dwarf Skeletons

Dungeon Saga Dwarf Skeletons

As much as I’ve recently been bemoaning the glossiness of Golden High Flow Acrylic paint I do find they make excellent washes with the addition of some matte medium and water. Much like the mage I found painting these miniatures was very relaxing. I think now that I’ve painted nearly all the undead miniatures from Dungeon Saga I can say that the sculpting and casting quality is very high. I would be happy to paint an army of these miniatures.

They did turn out much darker than I intended. When I started painting these miniatures I wanted to paint things brighter than I might normally. A brighter colour scheme works better in miniature than one would think. Unfortunately I’ve naturally moved darker and darker as I tried to show their equipment as old and worn.

I’m not sure if I’ve have everything painted by the end of the next week but I will be pushing. In a perfect world it would be all done by Friday when I have friends coming for boardgames. Once everything is painted I need to make two more passes, one to finish the bases and one to apply a coat of matte varnish. Still, Golden High Flow Acrylics form a strong, tough paint film and I’m far less worried about the paint chipping than I would be otherwise.

So, when you paint do you keep things bright or try to keep them realistic? Let me know in the comments. You can also reach me on Twitter and Google+. Don’t forget to subscribe for more.

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