A Mentor in a Friend

One of my paintings from 2014

While I am a self-taught artist and have had moderate success in earning out of my hobby/addiction, painting miniatures was completely new to me. The skills were transferable to a degree but there was a learning curve. Painting something 3D is very different to painting a 2D picture. 

My dear friend Ben, a passionate miniature painter, taught me everything he knew and even lent me the DVDs that he had used to skill up over the years.

Now, in life I have not received this kind of passing down of knowledge often. People tend to be guarded or keep their skills close to their chest.  Much to my frustration when I had questions early on in the hobby, no one would give me straight answers.  I didn't know that I had to wash some plastics and resins or how to properly maintain tiny brushes.  Ben gave me all the knowledge I needed and taught me all the basics and beyond.

In April 2016 I started this journey in order to improve and through this knowledge I have ended up getting some commission work and it has made my tabletop experiences look a lot better.

The painting DVDs Ben lent me were the Dark Sword painting series.  I would highly recommend them to any novice or seasoned painter wanting to up their skill set.

After watching the first DVD I attempted to put my skills into practice and painted a Reaper Bones series miniature. My DnD character was a goliath rogue, so I wanted to make her look good for the session.  I used a 2p coin for the base and mixed my colours to create highlights.

With a hint of Blood for the Blood God texture paint I was thrilled with how she came out.  After this I embarked on painting my Zombicide base set, which took a few months to finish.

Since then I haven't looked back and have painted well over four hundred miniatures in under a year, mainly sticking to fantasy or 40k miniatures but I have branched out a little bit since.

In regards to Ben and his mentoring.  I am thankful to have such a generous and enthusiastic teacher to start me off in the hobby.  If it wasn't for him my transfer into miniature painting would have taken a lot longer.