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Cutting Wheel A rotary tool bit that is useful for cutting through materials. Beware the heat generated by the friction and always wear eye and hand protection. When the wheel breaks it shatters and can travel into places you’d rather not have it go.

Cutter / Gouger A rotary tool bit that is useful for removing masses of material. It is easy to remove too much material with this. On minis I’ve found this bit to be useful for gouging out concave areas; the mouth of a beer mug is one good example.

Cutter / Gouger, small A rotary tool bit that is useful for removing masses of material. On minis I’ve found this bit to be useful for gouging out grout areas on custom made paving stone bases, and etching designs. It does take care since it’s a tiny bit on a high-speed rotary tool.

	File, Flat and Square A tool that is useful for smoothing out large flat areas with vigorous motions. I say that since I would not recommend as much effort going into the use of
the rat-tail file. The rat-tail has a reasonably sharp point that I’ve seen many hobbyists impale their passive hand with.

File, Round A round file useful for boring out the inside of curved areas. Care should be taken to avoid cramming the tool through an opening. The end is tapered, so
you should try to allow space to freely move the file.

	File, Round and Flat curved / angledI use these for place on a miniature that are difficult to file with a straight file. Usually the bent tool can reach the surface, where a straight
file is blocked by part of the mini. In general, this also means that you won’t be able to do large motions; usually smaller or circular motions.

Polishing Pin and Collete A rotary tool bit that is useful for removing mold lines or smoothing out mold-shift. Shift is where the plane of the two halves of the mold are not in line. This creates a crease on the surface of the mini. Mold-shift is not a mold line as it looks like a miniature that has been cut in half and then glued back together poorly. Mold-lines are extra material past dimensions of the original mini.

Sanding Band and Mandrel A rotary tool bit that is useful for smooth the surface or quickly filing down a portion of the miniature. Beware the heat generated by the friction and always wear eye and hand protection.

I’m about to teach a class at ReaperCON this weekend, so I’m going over common tools that I use. I’ve got more tools, but these are the ones I find myself using most often. The images are to scale within this article. The lower hash marks are inches, the upper hash marks are centimeters.

Cutting Wheel A rotary tool bit that is useful for cutting through materials. Beware the heat generated by the friction and always wear eye and hand protection. When the wheel breaks it shatters and can travel into places you’d rather not have it go.

Cutter / Gouger A rotary tool bit that is useful for removing masses of material. It is easy to remove too much material with this. On minis I’ve found this bit to be useful for gouging out concave areas; the mouth of a beer mug is one good example.

Cutter / Gouger, small A rotary tool bit that is useful for removing masses of material. On minis I’ve found this bit to be useful for gouging out grout areas on custom made paving stone bases, and etching designs. It does take care since it’s a tiny bit on a high-speed rotary tool.

	File, Flat and Square A tool that is useful for smoothing out large flat areas with vigorous motions. I say that since I would not recommend as much effort going into the use of
the rat-tail file. The rat-tail has a reasonably sharp point that I’ve seen many hobbyists impale their passive hand with.

File, Round A round file useful for boring out the inside of curved areas. Care should be taken to avoid cramming the tool through an opening. The end is tapered, so
you should try to allow space to freely move the file.

Squeeze TweezersI use these for retrieving small pieces from unlikely landing places. They are also useful for holding pieces firmly and gently for gluing and test-fits.

Wire Brush A rotary tool bit that is useful for polishing and removing leftover edges from hand filing. For example, If you spend a reasonable amount of time filing a sword edge, there will be a sharp and loose edge that will detract from the miniature once primed or painted. It is usually difficult to see, but easy to feel by running your finger along a filed edge. Use the wire brush to remove this excess material.

Something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t want to drop serious cash on, was under-shelf lighting. It just seemed excessive to spend $50.00 to $100.00 per 12″ to 18″ of space. Add to that my preference for the ability to adjust the direction of the lighting and it didn’t seem like I’d be able to achieve the desired results with an economic solution. All of that changed when I found the pictured lamp for $5.00 at home depot.

At first I had hoped to figure out a way to move the clamp along the underside of the shelf that’s over the workbench. After some trial and error, I decided that the clamp was too weak and it would end up degrading the overall appearance of the workbench. Appearance… workbench? Yes. The workbench has to perform double duty and it needs to be configured so that it’s easy to maintain AND can be cleaned up to a clean professional workspace. My solution was to remove the clamp and original plug. Drill holes in the shelfs valance/over-hang and mount the gooseneck directly from the shelf. The result is that I’ve cleared space on the desk AND have adjustable lighting available for the workspace. The total cost was about $27.12 for a very well lit 24″ area. If I don’t need as much light I can get the cost down to about half that.

Below is a picture of one of the two that I’ve got mounted already. Once all of the current ones I’ve purchase are mounted, I will install wire channels to conceal the lamp cords.

Reaper was gracious enough to fly Jeremie Bonamant Teboul into town this weekend; The powers that be brought many of the local Reaper freelance painter’s in for the visit. It was really neat getting a chance to talk to him about the hobby and get a glimpse at his approach. He’s quite modest, so I’m going to avoid too much rabid fan-boy talk in this post.

I wanted to share my “sketchpad” miniature for the time he was here. The figure is Rhymaiss from the Kraken Artefactory range. Jeremie co-owns Kraken with two other folks.

The point of the exercises that we went through were to get practical experience with what Jeremie was sharing. Odds are that I will not finish this figure as I want to preserve it for future reference. If you have not ever done this, I highly recommend it. Keeping physical reminders of past successes and failures is very effective memory tip/tool.

What I think I learned about how he is currently doing things:
His approach to color, to light placement, to composition (neat ideas about the harmony between a base and figure), re-learned the wet palette, to brush-strokes plus paint consistency and finally a bit about his approach to photography. His photography is very harmonized with his painting style.

Below is the picture of how far I got with several hours of painting on Rhymaiss. The final note is that I tried to use the photography technique that he described as well… When I write up my photography tips, I’ll be sure to include this approach since it is very complimentary to the painting techniques he taught.

During my routine hunt for site referrers I found something else. Another miniature fan that had chosen the name “tinywars” for his gaming wiki. While we aren’t affiliated, it’s always nice to give folks props for their great work. He’s got some nice 10/12mm WWII stuff on his page(s). check it out: tinywars at pbwiki.com

I’ve had alot of issues getting back to the workbench and one of them was my ability to stay seated for a reasonable amount of time. I figured out that my painting time had decreased due to my chairs and workbench heights not quite being aligned. I also find that no matter what the chair, if I sit too long it messes with my leg circulation. I did a little research and decided I’d try a kneeling chair. The one I ordered arrived in the mail today & I’m giving it a whirl. So far, it seems to encourage better posture and the height adjustment is helpful. The instructions could have done with a few more words (there weren’t any), but it wasn’t that hard to put together.

I purchased this figure with a few others of his ilk in a Pinnacle Entertainment miniature pack: DL-1504 Walkin’ Dead. I think it was somewhere in the 90’s. Reaper Miniature’s RotD (Reich of the Dead) development AND the Halloween season has got me thinking about all things creepy crawly and gruesome… so the timing is perfect. He took a few hours, divided up into lots of tiny bits…

I’ve taken the plunge and changed the site’s interface. I’ve also removed the “beta” forum. The goal is to spend less time fiddling with the site-mechanics and more posting new content. wish me luck!

While not a showcase paint job, it’s good enough for RPG’ing… now, the story of how this one came about:

Somewhere in the early 90’s I ran a 3rd edition AD&D game with a great group of people that I had met during college. One of the folks (Mike) ran a character named Brelvin. I didn’t need much of an excuse to paint figures up & Mike picked a figure out of my vast collection (30 or 40 figures) of Ral-Partha, Grenadier, and Citadel figures. At that time, the paint job was the best I had ever done. To make a long story short, the pack came with two figures: A Male Halfling Fighter/Thief and a Female Halfling Fighter/Thief. I lost the male, but not the female & searched high & low for a used pack, or loose mini.

I finally found the male figure, but minus a few parts. A fellow painter who shall remain nameless negotiated the purchase from a friend of hers (Thank you A!!!). Oddly enough, I also received an original unopened blister of the figures for my ‘07 birthday! As a result, instead of converting the figure back to it’s original design, I used it to practice a few things.

First, I created a scale sword out of wire to confirm that I could have a scale sized weapon that was not weaker than a pewter/lead sword. The hilt and pommel were sculpted with greenstuff. Second I used a buckler from a Foundry miniatures Gladiator “Horde” pack. Once attached to the figure I used greenstuff to sculpt a strap for it. Finally, it’s a standard cork & texture topping on a 20mm x 20mm base.

Who will find this article useful?

Anyone who wants to be able to use thin paint built up in progressive layers to achieve a smooth clean finish using acryllic hobby paints. This technique is an advanced technique that is the foundation for creating show-quality paint jobs.

Note that I said The foundation.

This technique, combined with an awareness of “light-sourcing” is what is used by many contemporary miniature painters to accomplish smooth, realistically painted miniatures. Ever heard of NMM (Non-Metallic Metal)? Thinned paint is necessary to achieve good results with NMM. (more…)

My latest assignment from Reaper is the Master’s Series Urban Legend Cowgirl. I’m including a WIP picture of one of her eyes. It’s a technique that I’ve been playing with & I feel it’s almost time to do a tutorial about it. It’s got similarities to the technique that I’ve seen used by the great miniature painters that do regular work for Reaper, but it’s slightly different.

The basic technique is to flood the eye socket with a base skin-tone, paint the whites, paint a large iris using a color slightly lighter than the color you’d like the eyes to be. Next, dot the pupil using black (it’s ok if it’s larger than it would be on an actual person). Then, use white to dot an even smaller highlight or two.

To me it’s pretty realistic looking AND it adds depth to the expression on the face. I’ll do a step by step tutorial once I’ve got this assignment done.