The crafting posts have slowed to a trickle lately for a number of reasons: madness at work, prepping for the holidays, colder weather making glue and paint in the garage slow to dry… and just that fact that I have something like five projects going simultaneously and getting in each other’s way. Sooner or later a bunch of them will get done within a few days of one another and I’ll scramble to post updates on them before moving on to the next project.

Campaign posts have slowed too, because the D&D campaign is just going through published adventures without much significant modification (for the moment) and the MP campaign is waiting for me to figure out what I want to spring on the players next.

What I have finished recently, though, is a trio of troll minis which I’m rather proud of (as long as I don’t look at them too closely). Born to Game nearby had a mini painting event recently where a bunch of folks of various skill levels showed up to swap tips and just in general chat while painting; I brought Bert, Tom, and Bill along to get started on.

This was my first time trying to layer paints to achieve shading and depth (rather than just resorting to a wash or slopping on some contrast paint). Applying a lighter shade of the base color to the raised areas worked well to simulate lighting effects on the folds and wrinkles in clothing. I applied a similar treatment to the trolls’ muscles by highlighting them with a lighter green than the base code, but I suppose the difference in shades wasn’t pronounced enough because where the effect can be seen at all on the final product, it’s very subtle. Which is probably not a bad thing.

Add in some dry-brushing and a number of different colored washes applied to different parts of the figures, and the results came out pretty nicely as far as I’m concerned:

Bases are wooden discs topped with soil-and-grout mixture, some American Scenics static grass, and some leaves I picked up from Shadow’s Edge Miniatures a while back when I ordered some grass and flower tufts from them. Poor Tom was a little front-heavy, what with that big log he’s carrying while leaning forward in a position that can’t possibly be good for his back, so I super-glued a rock behind him to add weight for stability.

The skin still looks a little shiny in places in spite of a coat of sprayed-on matte varnish; I’m considering applying a little of the brush-on variety to further mute the glossiness, but other than that I’ve declared these done.