Monday Miniatures: Ghost King
![77161_w_1[1]](https://caffeineforge.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/77161_w_11.jpg)
Six, count them – six ghostly kings in all their horrific glory are up this week, and not one of our painters took the same approach as another.
No new projects caught my eye this week.
I feel like this is the best paint job I’ve done in months, but don’t really like how the pictures turned out. In person it isn’t nearly so green, and the aqua/green/light blue blends together in a satisfactorily ectoplasmic way. Likewise, the rust looks better in person, but all in all, I had a lot of fun painting this week’s mini.
Magnus’s color scheme is simple, but effective. Great job with the blending man; getting much smoother.
Jessi went with a much brighter motif. I think that with a little more blending the firey sword would be a great contrast with the funerary garb.
Tallghost lends his mini a touch of class that no one else does, giving his dead king the funerary finery he deserves. I’m surprised more people didn’t go in this direction.
Arjen’s paint job does a great job with the weathering, and leaves me thinking ring wraith. That sword especially is outstanding.
Jo uses a purple color scheme which inevitably brings Skeletor to mind for me, but the comparison is a favorable one. Good highlighting, though I think a better lighting set up would have showed it off more.
Update:
Dirk mixes the two themes we’ve seen above into a cohesive look of decayed finery. I love the cloak personally; the uneven wear is very realistic.
Brian’s mini does an especially good job at the tarnished effects on the blade and upper torso.
The Gleeful Grognard once again does some amazing wet blending. Look at that sword!
Break for Thanksgiving
Arius the first week of December.
TBD – Thank you to those who have made suggestions – to those who haven’t keep them coming.
TBD
Break for Christmas
Caffeineforge 
Bummer I didn’t get mine in early enough. These are great (as usual), but my favorite has to be Tallghost’s color scheme.
I’ll be posting three late submissions when I get home.
Awesome, thanks!
The stand out for me this week is Arjen’s sword! Look’s great!
David’s cloak is by far the nicest of the bunch and the blending while not perfectly smooth, doesn’t have to be and uses all the right colours. I feel my red cloak had too much smooth blending and I regretted it…
Argen’s sword is my absolute favourite and what I will be ending up with on my miniature when I am done.
Dirk went for tarnished bronze like me but has a bit more of a striking appearance. and I love the dirtied cloak.
Brian’s plate armour is similar in scheme to what I had originally planned. I think it would have looked best with a dirtied white cloak and robes though.
Also, holy cow I have been away for two weeks and there are THIS many submissions 😀
Brilliant.
Lots of great submissions this week, with a lot of variety! I had a hard time figuring out if he was wearing gauntlets or not, but decided to paint it as though he were.
Grognard, did you reposition the head on your figure? The pose looks a little different from the rest…
Yayyyyy someone noticed 😀
yeah I wanted a more lifeless look and thought that a hanging head as if it were a useless or unimportant appendage would best fit the bill.
Ah, I thought it was meant as more of a “baleful glare” as the Ghost King was floating over his foes. 😉
That sword blending was more difficult than I thought it would be. I ended up giving up and submitting. Lol. Gotta grind up my blending skill.
Great job on the OSL, Arjen!
I suggest learning glazing for smooth transitions (also called juicing for some) MUCH easier than wet blending.or two brush blending.
The basic concept is you use a darker colour with some of the base added in and diluted to a fairly transparent consistency. place your brush on a decently asorbant paper towel and get a decent amount of the moisture out.
When you paint onto the miniature you should be leaving a damp but not wet trail that disappears after a 5-10 seconds DO NOT make multiple stroles or you will shift the tiny amounts of pigment.
Even if it doesn’t look like much is happening you will get really nice results after a number of passes and your colour will build up.
The great thing is that it is super easy to fix mistakes and the control you have over the transition is fantastic.
I’ll have to try that out! I’ve never done that. I think my exact problem was too much paint. And then I can’t leave it alone, and I use more. And then I lose my transition. 😦
When you learn it, it is really easy… A little time consuming but easy.
you will mess up as you learn and too much moisture on the brush will be a huge issue at first but it is really versatile.
I have only just started learning how to paint past the basics this year with bones myself so I am happy to share.
Two brush blending is good, but you need to have a fairly humid climate for it to work well. If you look back at my high wizard that was all done with two brush blending, it is super fast but not quite as smooth.
Multiple thin coats are better, especially for yellows and reds (which are typically thinner pigments that don’t cover as well). I find the initial basecoat needs to be a little thicker on Bones (sans primer), but subsequent coats can be thinned as normal.
I’m still working on blending, and just picked up some new Army Painter inks which should help with blending. I know glazes are great for fixing abrupt color transitions.
I used Grognard’s background (see a month ago under the Nienna figures) for my photo and I think it looks great! Also, thank you all for opening my eyes that I needed a better light set rather than a new camera.
I also changed the figure, thought it was leaning back too much, so I cut open the mini at the underside and slipped some greenstuff under his heels.
My next bit of advice is to get some matte sealant… It makes a huge difference to the look of your miniatures, protects the paint job and makes photos look better.
I have some suggestions for future minis! (I’m not sure if y’all have done these already or not..)
77147: Mummy Lich
77141: Oswald the Overladen
77039: Janan, Female Dragon Slayer
77132: Barnabus Frost, Pirate Captain
Just some ideas!
@Jessi All have been done except the pirate captain.
ah, well. 🙂 Late to the party.
To chime in on future projects, I wouldn’t mind seeing some modern folks. Like any of the Zombie hunters set, maybe Berkeley in particular.