Brush Beast 2021

Well ... I did it ... 

Participating in an online major painting competition as a relative novice painter was a bit scary, but also really inspiring!

I chose the largest single miniature that I had in my collection without it needing to be in the large creature/monster category. Thinking that the larger surfaces on the mini would make painting out of my comfort zone easier. In short: it didn't .... but more on that later.

With my mini chosen I set three goals for myself:

- Use as much new or seldom used painting techniques as possible and no drybrushing

- Use at least one new painting product

- Keep it fun and enjoy the process 

Now that I've submitted my entry I can proudly state that I achieved all three goals!

The mini I chose to paint is a resin printed Nurgle daemon. Quite a large miniature that has a lot of big skin surfaces.

After giving the model a zenithal prime (1st new thing I did with this mini) I started the skin with a pink flesh tone. This I layered up to almost a purple colour trying to get this dark purple in all the shadow places of the model.

Next I started glazing (2nd new thing) various shades of green and brown over the skin. Always making sure I kept the lighter tones on the raised parts of the mini. Losing count after 20 or so coats of glazing these various colours I finally had a skin I quite liked.

Then I painted all the bones, teeth and other spikey things in layers going from a beige to an almost pure white.

The eyes I tried to go from dark red on the outer edges to bright yellow in the middle with a little wet blending along the way (3rd new thing). Finally dotting the eyes with a pure black line/dot.

The base I did in the same way as the bone bits: starting with dark grey and working to a light grey towards the edges in three layers. 

The deepest cracks in the stone I filled up with cheap pouring resin (new product thing) that I mixed with a little green paint. Then adding some highlights with a lighter shade of green.

This is when I started to notice that with the drying of all the glazes I placed a good amount of the darker purply shadows in wrong places .... trying to fix them by painting over with different greens and browns I thinned down only made the skin look blotchy. 

Even worse was me running out of purple paint while trying to add more correct shadows! 

In the end I opted for several washes with oil paint to restore the skin and hide the more obvious nasty patches on the skin.

After wiping most of the oil washes away I started to highlight the raised bits of the skin with the same colours I used before and wet blending them on the model to try and avoid getting another blotchy look.

All in all I spent upwards of 25 hours on this single miniature and found it a very fun and educational way of painting that I will be trying again in the future! Hoping that I f*ck it up somewhat less and maybe even get some better results.

Now it's time to sit back and drool over all the other entries in this awesome online event! Check it out on FB if you got a little curious ;-)