Destroyer Minis: don't worry, it's the painter you should worry about, not the minis.

The grown-up type job continues to go well, and I am still enjoying it. The Nom saga continues in much the same way. He perseveres in his quest to plug himself up with lethal things. He always manages to pull through on his own or with some assistance from me.

Last weekend, I went snow shoeing up near Granite Mountain and smote my ruin on the mountainside. Well, maybe not quite. But I certainly overdid it though, and said, "Ow ow ow," a lot over the next couple of days.

I've been painting slowly but steadily on weekends and the occasional weekday evening. I'm throwing my hat into the ring for the Crystal Paintbrush competition.

Here are pictures of the warcaster Kraye, who was painted as a commission piece a while back.

@Arjan, your email address kept giving me an error message, so your question is answered below.

I have gotten quite a few emails about Kraye, so I wanted to share my approach with everyone.

Fur Texture:

The first step in painting horse fur is to paint a foundation without worrying about texture. I basecoat with the midtone color, block in the shadows and then blend them in, and then I layer on the highlights. The blending and layering don't have to be perfect, since they'll have a texture painted on top of them. To paint the texture, I use my tiny detail brush. (Windsor Newton series 7 miniature, size 0, 4 years old) The brush strokes are very short. They start on a layer of color they match (i.e. midtone texture would start on the midtone layer) and then I extend the line into the shadow. The fur look is achieved by painting lots and lots of little lines, starting from darkest to lightest, following the foundation I put down initially.

Gold NMM:

NMM is quite tricky, I don't really follow a strict logic for it - I mess around with it until it looks right. One tip that I have is to make sure that you've got all your highlights in the right places before you start blending and layering. So go ahead and paint areas quickly, sort of sketching with paint. It will look streaky and/or blocky. However, if it looks shiny when you squint, then you're on the right track, and can then smooth the color transitions. This prevents the frustration of having a perfectly blended highlight in the wrong spot.

For gold NMM, I usually have a red color in the darker shades, and I often highlight with a little pale blue mixed in with the lighter yellow. (Though, I have to be careful not to let it look green.) The yellow color isn't straight yellow; I usually use Yellow Ochre, Brown Ochre, or Dark Flesh from the Vallejo Model Color line.

Freehand Patterns:

As with the fur, using a good brush is crucial for freehand.

I always try to figure out the main element of my pattern on paper, and draw it the size that I want to paint it. For Kraye’s freehand, I had to simplify the Cygnar symbol before I could paint it at that size. Once I have the main theme of the pattern, I look for good places to put it. It needs to be in highly visible locations, like smooth portions of armor, or broad expanses of fabric. Regularity of placement is something that can be disregarded at this point. Once there are no longer good places for the pattern to go, I break it into sections and look for places to put those. I.e, “There’s room for the top half of the swan here.” After that, I fill in the empty spaces with dots, swirly bits and curlicues. The extra detail tricks the eyes into thinking that the pattern is more cohesive than it actually is. Plus it’s really fun to paint dots.

To give it more polished look, I usually finish up with a glaze of the midtone over everything, and a glaze of shadow in the darker parts.