Time flies when you're having fun is the saying - I'm surprised that it's been a year since I last opened a Wizkids pre-primed blister pack to paint. Last Wizkids mini was the raging troll from January 2024 when I had the Vallejo Xpress paints vs Testors Dullcote massacre.
So this is, with the exception of the base and the flame, 100% an airbrush painted miniature. With the work I've been doing on the Hexton Hills hex tokens, I'm getting more comfortable using the airbrush in smaller and smaller spaces. I was airbrushing a dragon turtle (coming soon) and using Red Terracotta when I had some extra paint in the pot - so it appears that's my current method to the madness lately - I'm airbrush one model, have extra paint left over, and then find a second or even a third model to airbrush, lol. I think that airbrushing is so much fun and fast - spraying paint is contagious and once I get going with a color I don't want to stop.
I figured the Red Terracotta was the perfect base color for these barbed devils. The packaging has a computer based paint image and uses a bone color as highlights for the chest, stomach, and tail. I did similar getting out the Bonewhite and spraying a highlight all over the model. I didn't exactly like how that turned out so I hit the Bonewhite with Bloody Red everywhere except the chest and stomach. A light spray of the Bloody Red on top of the Bonewhite gave this great highlight. Then I sprayed a splash of Hot Orange on the head.
Another simple technique which I had heard about but never done was masking an area with blue-tac. The flame in one of the hands is a clear piece - I had an idea of using the Xpress color on that but first I wanted to make sure that I didn't get any spray on it. Others said blue-tac was good for that (and I have a bunch of blue-tac as the models are tac'd onto a wooden spindle for painting) - I grabbed a bit of blue-tac - smooshed it flat and then surrounded the clear flame. It worked very well - when finished the blue-tac peeled off and I could use the clump of blue-tac to dab into stuck bits to get them off the clear plastic.
The clear plastic was painted with Xpress colors and I used the inverse layering technique - Xpress colors have to be layered light to dark instead of dark to light. First using Imperial Yellow over the entire flame. Then, Martian Orange from the top to about 2/3rds of the way down. Finally, Plasma Red from the top to about 1/3rd of the way down.
Standard basing on an inverted Reaper base and called it done. Overall a very quick and great way to get a set of miniatures ready for the table. One more point about fun... I noted a year ago how much more fun it was using the drybrush technique using the super soft drybrush brushes from Golden Maple 6 piece drybrush set when I painted the Ar-Grush using their brushes for the first time - I was reminded tonight when drybrushing the base how easy that was versus using the old hard bristled drybrushes. Between the airbrush and the soft drybrushes, getting miniatures off the "to-do" shelf onto the "done" shelf is easy and fun.
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