Throm The Barbarian

We should be clear that Throm is clearly distinct from Crom, Thrud and Conan. Another cracking sculpt from Diehard Miniatures (https://diehardminiatures.com/product/throm-the-barbarian/).

This is actually the same palette as the recent Eru-Kin I painted up, but obviously different mixes and main colours. Magenta and purple are at the base of the skin, but there's a ton more ochre in the mix.

 

The blade's my favourite element of this. I'm usually a klutz when painting handsculpted blades and suffer greatly from the lack of precision lines you see in plastic kits, so tried very hard to make this one better. I took inspiration from this piece (Ta. Effort gone into the sword as I saw this one (https://www.instagram.com/p/DM8Zk0pOHpe/?igsh=MW05Y3BwbzdlNGo4dg==) from the excellent Robert Karlsson, but his is on a 75mm model and mine ... is not. I liked the subtle change in his colours with one side evidently brighter, and the lower half taking environment light beautifully.

It's not a big sculpt. I took an in-progress shot for a friend with my thumb as a comparison. My hands are not large, albeit wrinklier than I remember them from days gone by. 

This also encouraged me  to push up the basing. I've had success recently in making more interesting scenes and wanted to expand further, and the Micro Art scenic bases are great for this, so spooky lighting on the rocks or crystals was helpful to add colour to the underside of the barbarian and sword.

Escher's Day Off

I'm quite an unimaginative fellow by default. If you give me a model called orc, I'll paint him green. If you give me a Ultramarine then I'll paint him blue. The path to how I should paint it is given to me by the name or the range. This fun one from Asa Sculpts (https://www.etsy.com/shop/theoddwillowsculpts?dd_referrer=) doesn't have a name, other than sci-fi girl, and it's not part of a range, it's just a great sculpt and I was a bit stuck what to do to make it interesting.

I discovered it when I came across this version by Hugo Gómez Briones (https://www.instagram.com/p/DPwSKFviMVp/?img_index=1) and picked it up from Asa at SMC in 2025. It's not a large model, smaller than I thought it would be. It's quite intimidating to think of something novel when you're looking at work like this!

After mulling it for a couple of months, I painted it to match my Escher Necromunda gang, as a moment of levity in the grimdark of the hiveworld. I've aimed for trying to paint hair as a volume instead of strands, which is one of my frequent errors, and wanted a bright jacket that felt futuristic so hopefully this pearlescent neon-esque(ish?) attempt feels believable. With that said, many mistakes were made, but that's not the point of this one. It's a lovely sculpt and I wanted to try things.

I'm still using the same paints on the palette as the last few projects. The main paints are Quinacridone Magenta, Dioxazine Purple, Phthalocyanine Green and Yellow Oxide from the Mindwork Games heavy body range, then my old friends Greenish White and Ice Yellow.

Demonic Familiar: Hoodie

 This beautiful(?) model from Heresy felt like the answer to either "what's the antithesis to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" or "if Skaven were people, what would they look like".

You can grab yours here (https://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=103_95&products_id=48) and there's other familiars in this range too, which gives me ideas for future projects.

Lighting effects isn't an area I spend enough time on. This model started from a purple base and initially I wanted a single lightsource from the orb itself, but decided that didn't make sense with the shape of the object and the surface holes. As a result, there's a bright, warm front light and a cold bright rear light from the opposite angle. I feel the robes finished closer to a warm blue in shadow, but are (pardon my pun) overshadowed by the two light sources. 

From the storytelling perspective, I felt he was either retreating from the warm light into the cool comforts of a welcoming cave, or he'd been sent to retrieve the object for his master and was returning with his bounty. 

This was good fun. I should note I spent almost no time on the base itself, because that wasn't the purpose of this exercise - it's simply there as another surface to add light to. But you're smart, and already worked that out.

Eru-Kin Elite in Guardian Power Armour

It's quick and fun for the Nerdlings March mini of the month challenge over on Bluesky, using a few colours for other projects I'm painting. It's not polished or perfect, but was enjoyable to do something outside my usual comfort zone. Sometimes not overthinking is the way to achieve a fun result, then move on to the next project.

The main paints are Quinacridone Magenta, Dioxazine Purple, Phthalocyanine Green and Yellow Oxide from the Mindwork Games heavy body range, then my old friends Greenish White and Ice Yellow. The oranges are just mixed from the reds and yellows here. The blues are from the green and purple.

I won't keep it on this base, as I'll add the model to another scene and likely make a few adjustments to the paint, but it'll suffice for the moment. On we go!

Ravaella Lightfoot, Grisban The Thirsty, Ulma Grimstone & Logan Lashley

Not a catchy post title, but an accurate one. Our gaming group plays Descent: Journeys in the Dark every few weeks, and as we start into the second half of the campaign I thought it was time our noble heroes were painted. Considering we started playing this 14 years ago, it's overdue ...

Skipping over my decade of procrastination, from top left to bottom right: Ravaella Lightfoot, Grisban The Thirsty, Ulma Grimstone & Logan Lashley.

These are small models, so here's my faithful penny for size comparison again. That's approximately 20mm high ... or something like one and a half croutons for my American friends who will use any unit of measurement other than metric for simple activities.

As the sculpts are old and not great, it helps to ensure the deepest recesses are a consistent colour across the model and act as the darkest colour on the model, so I took the unusual approach after priming white of applying a heavy wash of colour. Notionally it's a match to the primary colour of the character's stats sheet, with a change to brown for Grisban rather than red. More importantly, it hides my painting crimes, because these are quick paintjobs.

The paints used on this? Many. Too many. Usually I'd try and provide a step by step, but really it was a bit more chaotic than that on this project. I don't think the photos below cover all the paints used! The leather straps on Logan's chest were a mix of African Shadow, Ochre, White and Sunny Skintone for example.

• Faces received the most time, with Sunny Skintone at the base of everything, using Dark Vermillion for shading and eye recesses. Definitely the best part of the sculpts, apart from Ravaella whose face isn't a great sculpt.
• Boots and shoes were mostly ignored as low interest items, so received only a cursory paint to highlight metal toecaps. Legs were the same, and just painted to match the main colour of the model.
• Metals. My old friend Dark Sea Blue is at it again, but I opted for an Ice Yellow rather than Greenish White I've used on other projects, which adds a nice green touch to the highlights.

Onto the tabletop with them!

Sigvald the Terrible

Brilliant little Chaos Dwarf from Diehard (https://diehardminiatures.com/product/sigvald-the-terrible-fantasy-chaos-dwarf/) and a joy to paint from start to finish. I wanted him to feel proud, but a touch dishevelled, dragging himself through a forest and getting dirty, but doing his best to keep his beautiful axe in good condition. 

• Axe. The star of the show for me, and I'm ridiculously pleased with it. Armour Brown basecoat then a lot of highlighting up with a combination of Ochre and Ice Yellow. In a couple of places there's a bit of the Vermillion Red from the cloak added to the Ochre to give a gentle orange reflection from the cloak, and provide visual interest.
• Horns. Leather Brown with some Deck Tan added for edge highlights. Very simple. Not much to say here other than I don't enjoy painting horns.
• Metallics. Dark Sea Blue highlighted with Greenish White. Yes, I quite like this colour on projects this year! Darkest areas have some of the Vermillion Red or Black added just to add variety of colour.
• Cloak. Vermillion Red and exaggerated shadow with the Dark Sea Blue, and some Sunny Skin Tone mixed in for the edges. There's a lot of Wyldwood brown dabbed on for mud, then nearer the bottom I've stippled some Leather Brown to read as dried mud.

This is a WIP shot of the axe blade but I'm so pleased with it that I wanted to show it off with a little more magnification. Thanks for indulging me. Iit also shows off the gloves a little better where the range of colours is more evident.

It's bigger than the old Warhammer model that clearly inspired the sculpt, Khazek Doomlord, and that's quite helpful because all the features get that little bit more space to paint detail. So the gloves can have edges to sell the NMM effect, and the revised axe blade was a great improvement.