'Some cute animals'

More from Steven:

'Sarah recently bought me four animal miniatures from We Print Miniatures. They were a random gift because she liked them and wanted to see me paint them. Here they are! I made good use of my recently created wet palette and some of the paints I recently bought at Salute. The non-metallic metal paint sets from ScaleColour work well. They also have lots of applications outside doing NMM.' 

 

Figure 1 Cyber-cat. His fur colour and pattern are as close to those of my own Henry's as I could manage.

Figure 2 The backpack and bionic arm were painted using the NMM sets from Salute - copper and steel, respectively.

Figure 3 Meerkat Ranger. I think the desert/dry savannah base worked okay. It not easy to see in a photo but there is a subtle range of browns, sands and oranges mixed in.

Figure 4 Using the wet palette helped a lot with the wet blending on the cloak. Hopefully, the colour transitions are nice and smooth.

Figure 5 Chameleon wizard. I think the jungle base took longer than painting the miniature itself. With so much going on, it was very difficult to get the camera to focus properly.

Figure 6 The ferns and the straight leaves both came from a pack of laser-cut plants by War World Scenics. I also used some of their dock leaves on the Cyber-cat's base.

Figure 7 This is my personal favourite. Took ages to paint because of the NMM and trying to get the crab shell looking just right. As a marine biologist, I should point out it is based on the edible crab, Cancer pagurus (of Cromer crab fame). Hopefully the NMM bronze cannon worked. I used a turquoise wash in the recesses to represent the patina and give an old, worn look.

After finishing the above, I have been practising with the airbrush. I have so far tried painting a couple of figures from the Garrison Admins range. I wanted to see what I could do using an airbrush exclusively. A ‘normal’ brush hasn’t touched either of them at all. I’m sure I could make them better with a bit of normal painting, but I’m keeping these early attempts as a time capsule to see how I progress. My level of control over the airbrush is much better than it was when I started the hunchback.

 

Figure 8 Hunchback. A rare miniature which has increasingly grown on me after I finished. The airbrushing lends an odd sort of 'smoky' effect to him. (VIC19 Igor, hunchbacked lab assistant/AD206 Hunchback)

Figure 9 No idea what this is. A cross between a goblin and the Michelin Man? Anyway, it was interesting trying out the green and blue mottled effect. (AD239 Egyptian Mummy Toot-And-Khamin)