Well, with quarantine still ongoing right now, and a lack of anything better to do with my time, I've decided to finally start working on painting my MoM collection. Of the three games I own with minis, MoM is the one I've owned the longest (since way back during 1st edition) but also the only one I've yet to paint anything for. Mostly because up til now I was mostly relying on Sorastro's painting guides for Imperial Assault and Journeys in Middle Earth. But I've gotten enough practice with miniature painting now that I'm confident enough to be able to tackle my MoM minis without outside help.

I'm going to (mostly) start off with the investigators, because I want to be able to use them for my other Arkham games in addition to MoM. The LCG especially, so I'll probably focus on the investigators that have been released in both games at first. And maybe a handful of other favorites here and there, like Lily Chen or Monterey Jack.

To start off, I decided to paint Dexter Drake first. He's a favorite of several people I play Arkham games with, and with him being released for the LCG next month (thus making him playable in every single Arkham game now) he seemed like a natural first choice.

Two things that are the bane of my existence: Painting capes, and painting characters that are holding weapons/items in both hands. Both make for lots of annoying, hard to reach areas. Thankfully Dexter's cane wasn't too bad compared to some of the gun wielding characters from Imperial Assault, but I'm still annoyed that nothing I did was able to make his cane stay straight.

Next up is gonna be my personal favorite from the LCG: Ursula Downs.

Paints Used

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh + Kobold Skin
Shade: Flesh Wash
Highlights: Base Tone -> Kobold Skin -> Corpse Pale

For the eyes, I always paint them before the skin using Brainmatter Beige (Vallejo's Ivory is another good option) followed by a touch of black or dark grey, then touch up the surrounding area with the skin tone.

Hat/Hair/Pants/Shoes/Jacket/Outer Cape
Base Tone: German Grey (V)
Shade: Dark Tone
Highlights: Base Tone -> Dungeon Grey

For the shoes, I applied a second coat of shade to darken them further, and applied the highlights very selectively to give a slightly shiny look. In retrospect, I should've just darkened the German Grey with a bit of black for the shoes.

Gloves/Tie/Shirt/Inner Cape
Base Tone: Spaceship Exterior
Shade: Dark Tone + Lahmian Medium (C)
Highlights: Spaceship Exterior -> Matt White

Cane/Buttons/Hat Rim
Base Tone: Matt Black
Shade: Dark Tone

Scarf
Base: Toxic Boils
Shade: Dark Tone + Purple Tone + Lahmian Medium (C)
Highlights: Toxic Boils + Matt White

Metal Portion of Cane
Base: Shining Silver + Matt Black
Shade: Dark Tone
Highlights: Shining Silver

All paints used are from Army Painter unless otherwise indicated. (V) for Vallejo, (C) for Citadel.

Maybe he's in the middle of a performance and his writhing cane is a "magical" illusion?

Beautiful work!

It's a snake, clearly. Trying to pull a fast one on Yig no doubt.

Now for one that went much more smoothly. One of my personal favorite investigators, Ursula Downs. Despite having more varying areas of color than Dexter Drake (and inevitably having to do a lot more touch ups over time) I found her to be a lot easier to paint. The hardest part was probably settling on what colors I wanted. I set out everything I wanted the night before but wound up changing my mind on several of them throughout the painting process (especially for her pants).

I haven't decided for sure who I'm gonna paint next. I'm tentatively thinking of doing Mandy and Jim, because they're the investigators me and a friend are going to be using for our Dreamlands side of the Dream-Eaters campaign. Ashcan Pete will probably be one I do soon, because he's my older brother's favorite. And probably Trish as well, because of her upcoming appearance in Innsmouth, and she's who I plan to use for my first run of that.

Just for reference, in case anyone in is interested, I'll try and list the colors I used. I mostly use Army Painter because I got a real good deal on their complete lineup about a year ago when I first started painting IA minis, but I've gradually incorporated some Valejo and Citadel paints over time. The Valejo paints are definitely my favorite of the three and I'll probably replace most of my Army Painter colors with Valejo equivalents wherever possible whenever they run out. I find the Citadel paints to be overpriced and less convenient to use.

Anyway.

Hair
Base: Flat Brown (V) + Clear Orange (V) (Roughly 3:1)
Highlights: Fur Brown + Clear Orange (V) (3:1, with gradually higher quantities of Orange. I swapped to Fur Brown to lighten the highlight without going too Orange)
Shade: Strong Tone (I thinned it rather heavily with Lahmian Medium and applied this after the highlights)

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh (I added a very small amount of Flat Red (V) for the lips)
Shade: Flesh Wash
Highlights: Tanned Flesh -> Kobold Skin

Shirt
Base: Griffon Blue + Wolf Grey (4:1)
Shade: Blue Tone + Dark Tone (2:1)
Highlights: Griffon Blue -> Wolf Grey -> Fog Grey

Collars/Cuffs
Base: Matt White + Spaceship Exterior
Shade: Dark Tone (Heavily thinned)
Highlights: Reapplied base tone

Pants
Base: Refractive Green (V) + Combat Fatigues
Shade: Military Shade
Highlights: Reapplied base tone (I ended up happy with the darkening effect of the shade and only touched up a few spots)

Belt/Gloves/Boots/Hair Tie
Base: Flat Brown (V) + Matt Black
Shade: Strong Tone + Dark Tone
Highlights: Reapplied base tone with slightly more brown. I mostly did this just for the boots

Machete/Belt Buckle
Base: Shining Silver + German Grey (V) (4:1)
Shade: Dark Tone
Highlights: Base Tone -> Shining Silver -> Shining Silver + Matt White

Machete Handle
Base: Flat Brown (V) + Matt White
Shade: Strong Tone + Dark Tone
Highlights: Reapplied base tone

Top Buckles
Base: Greedy Gold + Flat Brown (V) (3:1)

Awesome job! I really appreciate you including your paint specs... I've been dreaming of painting my MoM minis (and others) for a long time now, but as I'm not particularly dexterous or have any experience with painting, I find the process very daunting.

The info you shared is extremely helpful. Who knows, I may eventually get the nerve (and the cash) to try my hand at painting some day.

You should check out some of Sorastro's painting tutorials on YouTube then, most of them are geared toward beginners. The very first Journeys in Middle Earth video in particular covers a lot of the basic stuff someone who's just starting out might not know.

I would definitely recommend against doing what I did and buying some massive paint collection. A good set of about 15 or so colors (plus a full set of washes and maybe some medium) is more than sufficient when starting out. You'd be amazing the variety of color you can achieve just by mixing basic tones. Having a large paint collection to pick tones from can be easier sometimes, but it's also way more expensive. And you sometimes wind up wasting more time trying to pick out the perfect tone from a massive collection, when you could more easily just mix the appropriate tone.

Up next is Mandy Thompson. And oh boy, this one was much less fun to work on.

I think that just in general, yellow is a terrible color to work with. It's always so finicky. Red is pretty bad as well, especially in this case where I needed to mix it with a little brown for the right tone. Brown tends to overpower red pretty quickly and I ended up wasting a fair bit of paint trying to get the right shade of red for the hair and shoes.

On top of that, this mini is just kind of terrible. On mine in particular, her body is leaning back significantly and it looks really bad. Nothing I could do would fix that so I eventually gave up and just decided to finish her. Also of the minis from the 1st edition of MoM, Mandy still manages to stand out as one of the worse ones. The features (especially in the face, and Mandy's glasses amplified this problem) on the old minis are super cramped and often inconsistent. Her shoes are really clunky and have almost no detail to them. They look really bad.

Despite that, I'm really happy with how the coat turned out. Painting the yellow was a pain in the *** and I was expecting to hate how it turned out, but the shade really brought out the details very nicely. I ended up doing very little highlighting on the coat because of how nicely the shade worked. The skirt, on the other hand, was the total opposite experience. The base coat went on very smoothly and the shade went pretty well too. But I really messed up my highlights at first. I wound up getting really angry and applying a second layer of heavily thinned shade after I was done highlighting, hoping it would pull the layers of highlight together more smoothly. And it... kind of did? I'm not thrilled with it, but it looks decent enough from gameplay distance.

Hair
Base: Flat Red (V) + Flat Brown (V) (I used a very tiny amount of the brown; maybe experiment with a different color to get the tone you want, but this is what I used)
Shade: Red Tone + Strong Tone (2:1)

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh + Kobold Skin (1:2)
Shade: Flesh Wash
Highlights: Kobold Skin -> Corpse Pale

Glasses/Flashlight/Skirt/Buttons

Base: German Grey (V)

Shade: Dark Tone

Highlights: German Grey (V) -> Dungeon Grey

Coat/Light

Base: Yellow Ochre (V) (Desert Yellow would've also worked)

Shade: Light Tone

Highlights: Yellow Ochre (V) -> Buff (V) (For the light, I used Lemon Yellow (V))

Shoes

Base: Flat Red (V) + Flat Brown (V) (I used slightly more brown than with the hair)

Shade: Red Tone + Strong Tone (1:1)

I forgot to highlight the shoes, whoops. They would've looked terrible either way, probably better not to draw attention to them.

Necklace/Bracelet

Base: Spaceship Exterior + Matt White

I found these too tiny to bother shading/highlighting.

Gun

I dry brushed this with Shining Silver (before painting the skin), followed by a coat of Citadel's Black Templar contrast paint.

Alternatively, you could mix a silver with a darker color, followed by a black shade and then gradual highlights. Or paint in black first followed by the silver dry brush. Contrast paints are very expensive and the only reason I have this particular color is because it was left over from when I painted my IA Stormtroopers.

Basically there's lots of ways to paint metallic areas using some combination of black, silver, and dark shades. If you plan on dry brushing at any point in the painting process, try to do it before painting the surrounding areas.

If I ever forget any areas in these paint lists, feel free to point them out to me. I try to keep a written log of what paints I plan on using so that I can more easily replicate tones for future minis, so even if I forget to list something, I probably still have it written down somewhere.

Next up, Jim Culver!

This one wasn't nearly as bad to work on as Mandy. Honestly the hardest part was settling on what colors to mix to get his suit the right color. Overall I'm pretty happy with how that turned out. The mixture I ended up with also wound up being rather thin, which meant I had to apply it in multiple layers to look halfway decent. But it was still thin enough that even if I got relatively even coverage, the zenithal highlights still showed through. Which made it really easy to touch up the final areas of highlight.

The only other issue of note was trying to find three different shades of brown that looked halfway decent, between his suit, skin, and hat. Brown is such a finicky color to work with (much like yellow, but it's much harder to avoid having to work with brown in these cases). Still, it worked out in the end.

Suit/Pants
Base: Oak Brown (AP) + Wasteland Soil (AP) (+ just a tiny hint of black to dark and de-saturate the tone)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP) + Purple Tone (AP) (3:1)
Highlights: Base Tone -> Increasing quantities of Oak Brown + Wasteland Soil, negating the darkening effect of the black

Tie
Base: Dragon Red (AP)
Highlights: Dragon Red (AP) -> Pure Red (AP) -> Mars Red (AP)

Shirt
Base: Spaceship Exterior (AP) + Matt White (AP)
Shade: Some heavily thinned Dark Tone, mostly along the collar to add some depth

Trumpet
Base: Greedy Gold (AP) + Flat Brown (V) (4:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Greedy Gold (AP)

Skin
Base: Flat Brown (V) + Flat Blue (V) (4:1)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP) + Strong Tone (AP) (2:1)
Highlights: Base Tone -> Gradually working in some Monster Brown (AP) (Working in a darker flesh tone like Tanned Flesh would probably also work)

Hat/Suit Buttons
Base: Oak Brown (AP) + Matt Black (AP) (2:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Oak Brown (AP) -> Monster Brown (AP)

Shoes/Hair/Hat Rim
Base: Matt Black (AP) + German Grey (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: German Grey (V) -> Dungeon Grey (AP)

Five down, 35 more to go! ... At least for the investigators, anyway. Pretty sure there's about 85 monster figures.

I kind of went into this one expecting it to be easier than it actually was. And... to be fair, it wasn't all that bad. Though I've started to get easily annoyed with certain shades of brown that never seem to apply evenly. Which is what most of Silas was, aside from the skin and hair. And then I accidentally used too much water to thin the skin tone at first, so I had to put more effort into getting that consistency right again and apply multiple coats without trying to waste too much paint.

Ah well. I at least had a fair amount of fun working on the highlighting for this one. I'd also originally planned on painting on the tattoo and chest hair, but... after the hour or so I spent just on the skin highlights, I was hesitant to try and freehand those on. I didn't want to waste all that hard work if I made a mistake.

I also decided to highlight the hair before applying a shade and I think it worked out nicely. The problem with highlighting hair is that it's so easy to accidentally paint the darker recesses with your highlight tones. But if you just highlight everything first, the shade will darken the recesses for you and still leave the highlights intact if you did them brightly enough.

Hair/Eyepatch
Base: German Grey (V)
Highlights: German Grey (V) -> Dungeon Grey (AP)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh (AP) (+a very small amount of Flat Brown (V). I wanted a fairly darkened tan look for the deepest areas of shade.)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Tanned Flesh (AP) -> Flat Flesh (V) -> Kobold Skin (AP)

Pants
Base: Refractive Green (V) + Flat Brown (V) + Black (V) (3:2:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Base Tone, gradually adding a roughly equal mix of Refractive Green and Flat Brown to negate the Black

Sash
Base: Fur Brown (AP) + Clear Orange (V) (2:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)

Spear
Base: Oak Brown (AP) + Matt Black (AP) (4:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Base Tone

Ropes
Base: Buff (V) + Black (V) (4:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Buff (V)

Spearhead
Base: Silver (V) + Black (V) (4:1)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Base Tone -> Silver (V)

A bit later than usual, as I've been a bit preoccupied with other projects the last week or so. Xenoblade Chronicles came out, and I've been working on a set of custom AHLCG investigators with a friend pretty heavily this past week. But I finally got around to painting Father Mateo this weekend.

By far the easiest of the ones that I've done this far. No tricky areas to reach, very limited color palette with no unusual colors, and an overall decently made mini. I tried to do something a little bit different, since he was mostly just one color, by doing the highlighting before applying any kind of shade (which I did very thinly, just to emphasize some of the shadowed areas). Not much else to say here really, just a very straightforward figure to paint.

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh (AP) + Kobold Skin (AP) (1:2)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Kobold Skin -> Corpse Pale (AP)

Cross
Base: Bronze (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Base Tone

Collar
Base: Matt White (AP)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)

Robes
Base: German Grey (V)
Highlights: German Grey (V) -> Dungeon Grey (AP)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP) (Heavily thinned, or only applied in shadowed areas)

Sash
Base: German Grey (V) + Matt Black (AP)
Highlights: German Grey (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)

Surprise, I decided to do Joe Diamond. I was originally going to do Jenny next (which would have wrapped up the investigator group me and a friend have planned for our eventual Return to Dunwich run), but me and my brother decided to play Path to Carcosa using Mateo and Joe, so I decided it was better to get him out of the way next. As a side note, I should point out that I've been gradually shifting more toward using Vallejo paints, and it's because I recently got some decent deals on some Vallejo paint sets from Amazon. And I've found that they tend to apply more smoothly and don't need as many coats for a good finish.

Overall Joe Diamond has one of the nicer looking minis out of the 1st Edition investigators. There aren't as many messy looking details and he's got a nice, evocative pose. And for once, painting a cape/trenchcoat wasn't an effort in frustration because of the way it sticks out in the back. Painting the eyes on these older minis still sucks though, because there's much less room to work with.

Skin
Base: Tanned Flesh (AP) + Kobold Skin (AP)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Kobold Skin

Shirt
Base: Off-White (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Off-White (V) -> White (V)

Coat/Vest/Tie/Shoes/Belt/Hat/Hair
Base: Black Grey (V) + Black (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Black Grey (V) -> Neutral Grey (V)
Note : So that they would stand out against the surrounding areas of similar color, I left the hair and darker part of the hat unhighlighted.

Pants
Base: German Camo Black Brown (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP) + Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: German Camo Black Brown (V) -> German Camo Medium Brown (V)

Guns/Belt Buckle
Base: Gunmetal Grey (V)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP) [For the guns, I used Citadel's Black Templar contrast paint, to get a much darker metallic shade]

Looking great!

Been a while since I painted anything, I've gotten distracted by numerous things the last couple weeks. Xenoblade DE, an unrelated new board game, an underwhelming birthday, etc. And while I might finish another mini or two in the next week or so, my pace will probably still down again from here, with the LotR:JiME expansion coming out next week. I'll likely try to paint all of those before coming back to MoM, since it's easier for my to manage my schedule if I clear that out of the way first. That way I can still 100% caught up on that game and not have to worry about leaving myself with a massive backlog like I have with MoM and IA.

But anyway! I decided to take a break from investigators to paint one of the monsters. And I wanted to get weird with these guys. Because what fun is a Lovecraftian horror if it just looks like a regular monster? Eldritch monstrosities are supposed to be difficult to describe and jarring to look at. So since the minis are pretty vividly defined, I had to do something to make them stand out, so why not give them really unusual color schemes?

For the Dark Young, I wanted the main body to look a little more natural. Since it's vaguely tree-like, I decided for a greenish brown, and then gradually becoming purple as the tentacles grew out. I was actually really happy with the color produced by mixing the greenish-brown with the purple. It wound up looking like an almost orange-ish brown, so there's a lot going on here visually. And then I decided for yellow on the spots on the tentacles, for further contrast. Overall I'm really happy with the end result.

For this one though, I basically forced myself to try out wet blending again. And I'm... still very bad at it. Definitely something I'm going to try to avoid doing whenever possible. But for heavily textured figures like this one, doing a standard base coat and then highlighting would be way too tedious and difficult. And dry brushing wouldn't work either, because of how many different color schemes are going on here. Anyway, here's the colors used list:

Tentacles
4 Tones used for base coat, wet blended together. Darker tones were used at the base of each tentacle, and gradually lighter tones used along the length of each tentacle.
Tone 1: Royal Purple (V)
Tone 2: Purple (V)
Tone 3: Blue Violet (V)
Tone 4: Blue Violet (V) + White (V)

Body
2 Tones used. One for the main body and upturned parts of the legs, the second for the shaded areas of the legs and parts of the main body where the legs connected.
Body tone was also wet blended into the first Tentacle tone for a smooth transition.
Lighter Tone: Green Brown (V)
Darker Tone: Russian Uniform WWII (V)

Lips
Green Brown (V) + a small amount of Black.

"Scales"
These were the textured blemishes on the main body, and on the underside of the main body.
Leather Brown (V)

Hoofs
Black Grey (V)

Mouth/Tongue
Old Rose (V) + a small amount of Black.

Teeth
Dark Sand (V)

After all the base coats were applied, I used the following shade mixtures:
Tentacles: Purple Tone (AP) + Strong Tone (AP) [2:1]
Mouth: Red Tone (AP) + Purple Tone (AP) [1:1]
Everything Else: Strong Tone + Military Shade [1:1]

"Eyes"
These were the blemishes on the tentacles. I waited til after applying the shades to paint these.
I started with a base coat of pure White (V), followed by a coat of Flat Yellow (V). Then highlighted with Lemon Yellow (V) on the most upturned "eyes".

I also applied the following selective highlights:
Teeth: Dark Sand (V) -> Pale Sand (V)
Tongue: I added a bit of Salmon Rose (V) to the base color.
"Scales": Leather Brown (V) -> Flat Earth (V)
Hoofs: Black Grey (V) -> Basalt Grey (V)

After the highlights were done, and I sprayed the Matt varnish, I applied some thinned Gloss Varnish (AP) to the mouth and tongue. Optionally, I also used some Glistening Blood (AP) on the teeth and tongue of one of the mouths.

Mandy Thompson is my favorite one! I love the jacket.

1 hour ago, tyberius said:

Mandy Thompson is my favorite one! I love the jacket.

For as difficult as she was to work on (and for as bad as some of the details on her mini are, especially the shoes and the face), I'm actually pretty happy with how that one turned out. Way more so than I initially expected going in. But that's just the curse of the 1st Edition investigators. None of their minis are very good.

And speaking of 1st Edition investigators...

Talk about a mixed bag of a mini. In terms of the 1st Edition minis, Jenny is one of the "better" ones, although that's a pretty low bar to be honest. She's got an engaging pose and some nice details on her dress to help her stand out. But oh boy. That face. Those feet. They're so bad. While I like the look of her pose, her dress especially, it did make painting the underside of it very... awkward. Several hard to reach areas, for one thing. And also, her body is actually very well defined under there, almost all the way up to her waist. I had to paint some blue between her legs just to keep her from looking indecent.

Anyway, this may be the last one for a little while. I've got a couple other things I wanna work on in the next week or so (I got my hands on the A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game last weekend), and Shadowed Paths comes out next week (assuming I actually get my copy on time). But I may paint a couple investigators here and there to break up the monotony. Especially if I know I'll be doing an upcoming AHLCG campaign in the near future and there are specific investigators I want painted ahead of time.

Guns
Base Coat: Shining Silver (AP)
Shade: Black Templar (Citadel)

Hair
Base Coat: Flat Brown (V) + a hint of Flat Red (V)
Highlights: Added a bit of Flat Earth (V) and some additional Flat Red (V) to the base coat.

Skin
As always, I painted the eyes before the rest of the skin, starting with White (V) (but any White or Off-White is fine) and then Black (V) for the pupils. Then painted the skin around them.
Base Coat: Flat Flesh (V) + a hint of Flat Red (V) and Flat Brown (V).
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Base Coat, with gradually more White (V) added in.
For the lips, I added in some additional Flat Red about midway through the highlighting process.

Dress/Shoes/Gloves/Hat
Base Coat: Electric Blue (AP) + Ice Storm (AP)
Shade: Blue Tone
Highlights: Base Coat -> Gradually more Ice Storm (AP) -> Eventually mixing in some Gorgon Hide (AP)

Hat Rim
Base Coat: Electric Blue (AP) + a hint of Black (V)
Shade: Blue Tone

Thanks again for sharing your process!

I look forward to seeing your upcoming paint jobs, whether for Journeys in Middle-Earth or A Song of Ice and Fire.

Finally, another MoM mini! I've been a little busy with painting minis from other games, and just generally being lazy. (I also may have gotten distracted replaying Bloodborne for the 50th time.) But until I get to work on those JiME minis in the near-ish future, I'll probably move back to my MoM stuff for a while, primarily focusing on investigators still.

So yeah, another 1st Edition mini, and it still shows. I'll be glad to finally be done with all of those eventually, because a lot of them are really bad. Ashcan Pete isn't especially terrible, though he does have a pretty bizarre expression going on here. I'll be doing Sister Mary next, but from there I don't have any immediate plans. I'll probably do Trish and Wendy in the near future though, since they're two of my favorites. But barring certain exceptions, I've definitely been favoring investigators currently present in the LCG, which is the AH game I play most frequently.

Skin
As always, I painted the eyes before the rest of the skin, starting with White (V) (but any White or Off-White is fine) and then Black (V) for the pupils. Then painted the skin around them.
Base: Medium Fleshtone (V)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Flat Flesh (V) -> Basic Skin Tone (V)

Hat/Shirt
I painted the rim around the hat in Black (V).
Base: Hull Red (V)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Cavalry Red (V)

Pants
Base: Grey Blue (V) + Pale Blue (V)
Shade: Blue Tone (AP) (I thinned this quite heavily, because Army Painter's blue tone is very strong otherwise, and I wanted the jeans to look very faded)
Highlights: Pale Blue (V)

Guitar
Base: Dark Sand (V)
It's not worth shading the guitar because it's such a flat surface with no real detail. I also painted the hole in the middle in Black (V).
Highlights: Pale Sand (V)

Hair/Long part of the guitar/Duke's Nose
I don't actually know what that part of the guitar is called--.
Base: German Camo Black Brown (V)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: German Camo Medium Brown.

Sleeping Bag
Base: US Field Drab (V)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Tan Earth (V)

Belt/Shoes/Bag Strap
Base: Burnt Umber (V)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
I only realized after the fact that I neglected to highlight the shoes. (I'd intended to leave the strap and belt alone) I would've used Mahogany Brown (V) though.

Belt Buckle
Base: Bronze (V)

Duke
Base: I loose wet blended Desert Yellow (V) for the darker areas and Tan Yellow (V) for the lighter areas.
Shade: Strong Tone (AP). I applied this unthinned, and then a second time, slightly more selectively.
I wanted to start with a lighter base tone, and then darken it down with a shade so that the furry texture would show through. Unfortunately I still think it's a bit too light. But by the time I applied the shade, I was afraid of just painting back over it again, since I figured more layers of paint would start to obscure the texture of the fur. Ah well. If I could redo it, I'd use a more brownish tone from the start.

Duke's Bandana
Base: Flat Red (V)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP). It's so small that I didn't feel like bothering with Red Tone on this one. Besides, it kind of adds to the dirty look anyway.
Highlights: Scarlet (V)

Miscellaneous Details
So I kind of... forgot to pick out colors for the cigarette and Duke's mouth. And I didn't feel like pulling out more colors, so I improvised with what I already had out.
For the cigarette, I used Off-White (V). For the end, I used a mixture of Black (V) and Flat Red (V), which wound up giving me a nice brownish, burnt looking tone.
For Duke's mouth, I just painted it with Flat Red, and then painted the teeth in Off-White. I painted the Strong Tone wash over the mouth as well, which thankfully darkened down the red nicely enough.

On 7/5/2020 at 4:39 AM, TwiceBorn said:

Thanks again for sharing your process!

I look forward to seeing your upcoming paint jobs, whether for Journeys in Middle-Earth or A Song of Ice and Fire.

Well, I haven't started any of the JiME stuff yet. I'm waiting eagerly for Sorastro's Balrog video before I start on those. Although I might do the goblins and orcs, since I don't imagine they'll be too different from the core set ones. But I did paint a handful of minis from ASoIaF over the last month or so, and I finally tried out some basing techniques.

Here's everything I've done for that so far.

On 7/4/2020 at 5:21 PM, Annette Soleil said:

For as difficult as she was to work on (and for as bad as some of the details on her mini are, especially the shoes and the face), I'm actually pretty happy with how that one turned out. Way more so than I initially expected going in. But that's just the curse of the 1st Edition investigators. None of their minis are very good.

And speaking of 1st Edition investigators...

Talk about a mixed bag of a mini. In terms of the 1st Edition minis, Jenny is one of the "better" ones, although that's a pretty low bar to be honest. She's got an engaging pose and some nice details on her dress to help her stand out. But oh boy. That face. Those feet. They're so bad. While I like the look of her pose, her dress especially, it did make painting the underside of it very... awkward. Several hard to reach areas, for one thing. And also, her body is actually very well defined under there, almost all the way up to her waist. I had to paint some blue between her legs just to keep her from looking indecent.

Anyway, this may be the last one for a little while. I've got a couple other things I wanna work on in the next week or so (I got my hands on the A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game last weekend), and Shadowed Paths comes out next week (assuming I actually get my copy on time). But I may paint a couple investigators here and there to break up the monotony. Especially if I know I'll be doing an upcoming AHLCG campaign in the near future and there are specific investigators I want painted ahead of time.

....Yeah, the face. The sculpt looks like BJ Novak from the Office in drag. LOL. [seriously not knocking the paint job. The paint part looks well-done.]

This... did not go quite as planned. So I wanted to try out some OSL with Sister Mary because of the candle, but it's not something I had a whole lot of experience with. In any case, it was going really well at first. I started by just doing the base coats and then highlighting everything without using a wash on anything but the skin and hair. And I went really bright with the highlights on the areas that would theoretically receive the most light from the candle. And it was going really well! I managed to get a lot of good contrast between the brightest and darkest areas, especially for the clothing.

... And then I decided to glaze on some of the Fluorescent Orange to simulate the light from the candle and everything went to ****. It doesn't look terrible from this angle, and the light on the clothing actually doesn't look god awful. But it really messed up the skin. It started pooling in really weird ways and there wasn't much I could do to fix it without basically starting over. The face used to look a lot worse originally, but I tried to reapply some of the highlight tone mixed with the orange to get a more even look. While it was certainly an improvement, it still doesn't look perfect. In retrospect I would've just done the highlights the same way and foregone the orange glaze. It would've looked much better.

Also I forgot to paint her eyebrows. Oops. I'll have to go back and do that next time I'm using the right color for something else.

It also doesn't help that the eyes on her mini are just... really really bad. Like they looked puffy and swollen before being painted. Now it looks more like her brow is jutting forwardly awkwardly. Just a really badly sculpted face in general. No amount of paint could've really fixed that completely.

Wendy Adams is gonna be next. Likely followed by Trish Scarborough, who I plan to use in my Innsmouth Conspiracy campaign in October. After that... honestly I'll probably try and wrap up the 1st Edition investigators, just to get the bad minis out of the way. And from there continue working on the minis of investigators available in the LCG as well.

Hair
Base: Yellow Ochre (VMC)
Highlights: Sand Yellow (VMC) -> Light Yellow (VMC)
Shade: Light Tone (AP)

Skin
Base: Sunny Skin Tone (VMC)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Basic Skin Tone (VMC) -> Light Flesh (VMC) (I mixed in some Vermillion (VMC) for the lips)

Clothing
Base: Flat Brown (VMC)
Highlights: Mahogany Brown (VMC) -> Light Brown (VMC)

Inner Clothing / Candle
Base: Off-White (VMC)
Highlights: White (VMC)

Shoes
Base: German Grey (VMC)
Highlights: Neutral Grey (VMC)

Candle Tray
Base: Natural Steel (VMC)
Highlights: Silver (VMC)

Match
Base: Light Brown (VMC)

Necklace
Base: Old Gold (VMC)

Gem
Base: Light Green

Candle Flame
Base: White (VMC)
Highlights: Orange Fluorescent (VMC) -> Yellow Fluorescent (VMC)

44 minutes ago, Annette Soleil said:

Also I forgot to paint her eyebrows. Oops. I'll have to go back and do that next time I'm using the right color for something else

If you leave the eyebrows off, it will just look like she doesn't practise candle safety.

It should probably come as no surprise that Wendy is one of my favorite investigators across the various Arkham games. I'm pretty sure I've used her at least once in every game except Elder Signs (which I don't own all the expansions for, and which I also don't play too often), and always enjoy playing as her. So it's kind of about time I actually got around to painting her. I'll be honest, I kind of used Sister Mary as my unfortunate guinea pig and she suffered for it. Because I wanted to try out the OSL on her first before jumping into painting Wendy. So, here we are.

Instead of trying to glaze on the orange like I did with Sister Mary (which failed miserably), I instead just pushed the highlights on the left side of her face and her arm. (Well, right arm and right side of the face from her perspective) So you can clearly tell even from this angle that the left side is much brighter in comparison. I think it turned out rather nicely, but I'm sure a better painter than me could've done a better job. Ah well.

Hair
Base: Dark Red (VMC)
Highlights: Carmine Red (VMC) -> Dark Vermillion (VMC)
Shade: Red Tone (AP)

Skin
Base: Sunny Skin Tone (VMC)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Basic Skin Tone (VMC) -> Light Flesh (VMC)

Scarf
Base: Dark Prussian Blue (VMC)
Shade: Blue Tone (AP)
Highlights: Prussian Blue (VMC)

Blouse
Base: Violet Red (VMC) + Carmine Red (VMC) (I didn't keep track of the exact ratio, but it was probably something like 3:1)
Shade: Red Tone (AP) + Purple Tone (AP) (2:1)
Highlights: Magenta (VMC) + Dark Vermillion (VMC) (2:1) -> Sunset Red (VMC)

Skirt/Frills/Shoulders/Collar/Candle
Base: Off-White (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP) (Thinned with at least equal quantities of Lahmian Medium (Citadel))
Highlights: White (VMC)
Candle Flame: White (VMC) -> Yellow Fluorescent (VMC) -> Orange Fluorescent (VMC)

Sleeves/Socks
Base: Light Sea Grey (VMC)
Shade: Blue Tone (AP) (Thinned rather heavily)
Highlights: Light Sea Grey (VMC) -> White (VMC)

Shoes/Amulet String
Base: Black Grey (VMC)
Highlights: Neutral Grey (VMC)

Candle Base
Base: Brass (VMC)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Gold (VMC)
NOTE: I did glaze a bit of Orange Fluorescent on the metal areas, since they'd have more natural reflectivity.

Amulet
Base: Rough Iron (AP) + Bronze (VMC) (1:1)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: Gold (VMC)
NOTE: I only highlighted the star in the center of the amulet itself, to make it stand out.

No lie, I think this might be the best mini I've done yet, and I'm glad I pulled it off on one of my all-time favorite investigators. Between the shading on the face and the trench coat, and the fact that I finally feel like I got the lips right on a female mini, I'm really happy with this one. Now just to wait for Innsmouth so I can play her in the LCG in a few months.

Progress has been weird the last week or so because I've been sick. Might've been a mild case of covid, I'm not sure yet. Waiting on my test results. Thankfully whatever it was, while awful, was nothing life threatening. Just had to sit in my room all day drinking a ridiculous amount of water to avoid dehydration. You'd think not being able to go anywhere would allow me to paint more things, but nah. I haven't had the energy for it.

Anyway, going forward, I don't have any immediate plans on who I'll be painting next. A lot of my other favorites (like Patrice and Rex) haven't made their MoM debut yet so I can't do them. Part of me wants to continue focusing on the characters currently released in the LCG as well, and another part wants to finish up the 1E investigators just because their minis are kind of terrible and I want them out of the way. Odds are I'll wrap up the ones that fall under both categories, like Amanda Sharpe, Harvey Walters, and Carolyn Fern. Maybe toss in some random ones here and there, if I end up playing them in a campaign.

Skin
Base: Flat Flesh (VMC)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Basic Skin Tone (VMC) -> Light Flesh (VMC)
Lips: I mixed a bit of Dark Vermillion (VMC) into the Flat Flesh / Basic Skin midtone.

Hair
Base: Dark Sand (VMC) -> Pale Sand (VMC)
Shade: Light Tone (AP)

Undershirt
Base: Off-White (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: White (VMC)

Trench Coat / Pants / Gloves
Base: Black (VMC) + Dark Prussian Blue (VMC) (1:1, maybe slightly more of the blue)
Highlights: Dark Prussian Blue (VMC) -> Prussian Blue (VMC)
NOTE: I tried to always mix the new highlight tones into the original base tone, because the original Black helped desaturate the colors a bit. Also, I used a heavily thinned 2:1 mixture of Dark + Blue Tone for the gloves to help the fingers to stand out a bit more. I also ended up using this on the pants as well, to leave them a bit darker than the coat for contrast.

Shoes / Gun Grip
Base: German Grey (VMC)
Highlights: London Grey (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)

Gun
Base: Gun Metal (AP)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Plate Mail Metal (AP)

Well, I said I was gonna work on some of the 1E investigators, and here we are with Amanda Sharpe as promised. Surprisingly, aside from the really wonky feet (a common trend among the 1E investigators, especially for the women), Amanda's mini is actually halfway decent. Like it still falls short of most of the 2E ones, but it's leagues above the likes of say, Sister Mary or Ashcan Pete. Most notably, she's one of the only 1E investigators without a terribly sculpted face, which is really nice.

Anyway, painting Amanda was pretty straightforward. Just simple base colors, shade, and highlights on all the main areas of color. The only remotely tricky part was the glasses. I just painted everything in the center of the frames in white, with a couple black dots for pupils. It actually made painting the eyes easier, weirdly enough. The harder part was just getting the rims painted without getting black on her face.

Hair
Base: Yellow Ochre (VMC)
Highlights: Sand Yellow (VMC)
Shade: Light Tone (AP)

Skin
Base: Flat Flesh (VMC)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Basic Skin Tone (VMC) -> Light Flesh (VMC)

Books
Base: Saddle Brown (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP) (I only used a very small amount of this on the pages and between the spines of the books to pick out the texture)

Shirt / Book Pages
Base: Off-White (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: White (VMC)

Sweater
Base: Black Green (VMC)
Shade: Green Tone (AP) + Dark Tone (AP) (Roughly 2:1)
Highlights: Gunship Green (VMC)

Skirt
Base: Blue (VMC)
Shade: Blue Tone (AP)
Highlights: Dark Blue (VMC) -> Azure (VMC)
Weird, I know. But Dark Blue is somehow lighter than Blue in the VMC line.

Shoes / Glasses
Base: Black Grey (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: Neutral Grey (VMC)

Button on Sweater
Base: Old Gold (VMC)
NOTE: I forgot to paint this til near the end, and just did it over top of the finished sweater.

And here we have Diana and her legion of generic cultists. I could've gone with any number of different colors for the cultists, from black, to brown, to grey, to red, to even purple. There's plenty of artwork in the LCG and across the various other AH games that I could've used for reference. But thing is, I figure Diana was fairly low ranking among the cult legions before she defected, so I thought it would make the most sense to give the generic cultists a similar color scheme to her. So I eventually settled on a mostly brown and red scheme for them, and I think it actually worked out rather nicely. I'll try out something different for the Cult Leaders, as well as the Dark Druids and the Priest of Dagon. Although I haven't settled on what exactly though. I might not do those next, but they'll probably come up somewhat soon. I wanna figure out something for them sooner rather than later.

It's a good thing I'm happy with the color scheme I chose though because oh boy, did I half-*** the crap out of these. For the cultists themselves, all I did was slap on some thin base colors and then applied a wash and called it a day. Because I did do zenithal priming on all of them (for anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's basically a prime all in black, followed by grey from a 45 degree angle, and then finally in white directly from above), the thin base coat allowed some of the priming to show through. So applying the wash and then not bothering with the highlights resulted in a halfway decent looking bunch of cultists with minimal effort. Although some of the faces are a bit wonky, because I tried using slightly different skin tones for each of them, and some of em are a bit messy.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for Diana. Being an actual named investigator and all, I wanted to put a little more effort into her than the others. And while I certainly did, it's not nearly to the extent I would've liked. These guys all ended up sitting on my desk for almost a week before I finished them. And by the time I got to highlighting Diana, I just wanted to be done with them. Oops.

Ah well. I'm gonna do the Balrog from JiME next, so that'll be a bit of a refreshing change of pace. (I wanted to get my hands on Kingdom Death: Monster, but it recently went out of stock before I could get my copy. It'll probably be months before it restocks, ugh.)

Hair (Diana)
Base: Flat Brown (VMC) + Clear Orange (VMC) (Roughly 2:1) -> Light Brown (VMC) + Bright Orange (VMC)
Shade: Mid Brown (AP)

Hair (Cultists)
I used a variety of different colors here from the colors I'd already picked out for Diana, including the same orange-ish brown, to dark grey, to white, to blonde. Any naturally occurring tones are fine here.

Skin (Diana)
Base: Dark Flesh (VMC)
Shade: Flesh Wash (AP)
Highlights: Basic Skin Tone (VMC) -> Light Flesh (VMC) (Plus a bit of Vermillion (VMC) mixed in for the lips)

Skin (Cultists)
Again, I varied the skin tones a bit. Any of the generic skin tone paints will work, followed by a flesh colored wash. I just used the three colors I used for highlighting Diana. Something like Beige Red or Flat Flesh from Vallejo could also work.

Robe (Diana + Cultists)
Base: German Camo Medium Brown (VMC)
Shade: Strong Tone (AP)
Highlights: German Camo Pale Brown (VMC) -> Tan Earth (VMC)

Inner Sleeves / Inner Robe (Diana + Cultists)
Base: Red (VMC)
Shade: Red Tone (AP)
Highlights: Carmine Red (VMC)

Robe Red Outlines (Cultists)
Base: Carmine Red (VMC)
Shade: Red Tone (AP)
NOTE: Because I didn't plan on highlighting the cultists manually, I used a slightly lighter tone for the main part of the robes. But the Carmine Red applies so poorly over the primer that it needs 3-5 coats to look halfway decent. In retrospect, you're better off using the Red on its own, apply the shade, then manually highlight with the Carmine Red. It'll take about the same amount of time, and it'll look much better. Lesson learned.

Inner Robe / Shoes (Diana)
Base: Dark Blue Grey (VMC)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)
Highlights: London Grey (VMC) -> Medium Sea Grey (VMC)

Knife (Diana)
Base: Natural Steel (VMC)
Highlights: Silver (VMC)

Knife Handle (Diana)
Base: Beige (VMC)
Highlights: Pale Sand (VMC)

Candle (Diana)
Ochre Brown (VMC) -> Yellow Ochre (VMC) -> Sand Yellow (VMC)

Candle Flame (Diana)
White (VMC) -> Fluorescent Orange (VMC) -> Fluorescent Yellow (VMC)

Staff (Cultists)
Base: Rough Iron (AP) + Silver (VMC) (2:1)
Shade: Dark Tone (AP)

Gems (Cultists)
Ultramarine (VMC)

Necklace (Cultists)
Greedy Gold (AP)