Road to Golden Demon - Episode 1
So am I actually going to try spend 100+ hours painting a toy?
Our sources say, Yes.
So, like many people in the hobby childhood Shame/Sam marvelled at the incredible Golden Demon painting in 90’s/00’s White Dwarf and I dreamed of one day taking a punt.
White Dwarf 193: Drink it in! Mana from Grognard Heaven.
Since picking up a brush again I have noticed various areas of improvement and points where my techniques have stalled. Various excellent people have given me lots of pointers during this journey: Ari, Darren, Jamie, Paulo, Ross, Rich and Mark (@AbellardLlindsay, @bearded_painting, @a.man.painting.miniatures, @wavesofstatic, @minirelapse, @mygeekyhobby – if you want to go and find their work, which you should because it is varying flavours of great).
In my various discussions - the message that leaning into parts of the hobby that you find challenging is a great way to mess up, improve and build confidence. Jamie (@a.man.painting.miniatures) had originally encouraged me with a post to really focus on painting faces and details as this was something that (like everyone) I found challenging.
Faces: From the top left of one of the first minis I painted back in 2020 down to the bottom right with more recent efforts from 2022/2023. You can tell where I am trying to show off because eye lashes make an appearance.
I found that by starting with the face, a section that I used to avoid, unsurprisingly I have gained confidence and brush skills over the course of two years.
With this in mind I decided that the following areas as ones to double down and focus on:
Building – I tend to rush this and always leave gaps/mould lines
Layering/ Glazing – as much as I love texture and grit, being able to paint smooth beautiful layers is a skill I should probably improve
Skin tones – I love painting faces now, so should probably extend this to the entire body
Freehand – because showing off
NMM – also because showing off
But between some discussions with both Darren (@bearded_painting) and Jamie a few things became crushingly apparent:
I needed an actual plan of what to build, paint, idea of how it connects to the GW IP
I needed to find 100+ hours to paint whatever I chose
Work out what I wanted to get out of it/why I was doing it
Well, I think I had an idea of point 3. Improve generally, try not to embarrass myself with a crap mini maybe get the chance to chat/neg Darren Latham or Mike McVey. But what to do about points 1 and 2…
So I wrote out a bunch of different idea (Goblins, Dwarfs, Necromunda tableau etci) but ultimately came back to my first love:
Chaos.
Fluffy, colourful and ultimately bonkers. I have been quietly painting up another 500-ish points to use with OPR and thought maybe this would be a good start.
With the release of the Curseling, there was a fresh new plastic sculpt, that I hadn’t seen done with some corresponding images from the concept artists to draw inspo from.
Image shamelessly borrowed from Games Workshop Ltd. Elves looking elfish and chaos looking like the mushroom induced fever dream we all know and LOVE.
So got myself a couple of copies and promptly realised that I both a) needed to practice all the elements I outlined about and b) this mofo has some fairly obvious joins that would need some elegant and subtle green stuff work to fix.
So I promptly put him/they/it back in the box and picked up some other models.
Conclusion
So I talked myself into to trying a paint a toy really good. I worked out roughly why I wanted to, what I wanted to improve and which mini I would paint.
Tune in next time to see how I dragged my layering game up a bit and tarted up my WarCry lads at the same time.
