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Hello Dakka-whatevers!

I have recently acquired a box filled with happy Mantic undeads. I plan to use them as D&D minis and, more importantly, as painting practise victims.
I have already decided on a colour scheme for at least two of them, and nearly finished painting them. The tricky part however, will be the freehand I plan on doing on their shields.

I plan to paint this:


Onto these:



I might leave out the text and just put the lion since I don't have a lot of space, but I would prefer to keep it. I also plan on painting him in 3 or 4 shades of brown/yellow because it just looks cool that way.
Now I don't have a lot of experience with painting -have only been into the hobby for about a year- so this is a very scary process for me. I do know how to draw because I have been doing that ever since I can remember, so I plan to get a feel for the lion by drawing it onto paper a few times before attempting to paint it onto the models.

The reason I created this little blog is to share this process with you people, but also to get some support and/or advice. I really am terrified of messing it up and ruining the models... This is quite a good paint job for my standards!

Anyway, I hope to have some updates soon. I will attempt to draw the lion on paper sometime tonight.


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Okay I got my pencil out and started some rough sketches of the lion, just to get an idea of what I will be doing.
First I did a big version of the lion with a lot of detail so I could remember which way everything goes.


Next I scaled that down a bit, trying to keep everything in the right place.


And scaled it down some more, sharpened my pencil and tried to keep as much detail as possible.


Here they are all together.


And finally the smallest one next to the model it will be painted on, to see if I got it small enough yet.


As you can see I will have to get it a bit smaller still, but at least I now know the general shape I will be painting. I will practise these shapes a bit more before I actually start ruining my models.

Good luck with this looking forward to seeing how it turns out IRL.

Thanks, me too.

Nice to see someone's freehand technique in such detail! Will be watching this one - good luck with it

Those are very nicely painted. Good luck on the freehand. You look to be a pretty good artist so I have high hopes you'll pull this off well.

'En ze zullen hem niet temmen! De fiere Vlaamse leeuw! Zolang de leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft!'

dat ziet er al heel mooi uit! hou de Nederlandse eer hoog!

anyway, back to english, looks really good. keep up the good work!

I agree, quite nice NMM!

Intresting, Ill be keeping an eye on this in regard to my own project... if its worth stealing Good luck !

Thanks everyone! I will attempt to paint the general shape in the first colour tomorrow, hopefully it will all go well.

As promised today I started on actually painting the lion onto their shields.
I plan to layer it up in a few different colours and I just finished applying the first one with an Iyanden Darksun foundation.

On this one I even managed to leave enough space for a but of text.


Sadly this one won't have the text but I like the general shape better than the other one.


This is only a rough shape and I will refine it with the next colours.

Looking good! Keep it coming!

That lion surely looks Finland's Lion... : D just noticed.

For a undead I think those colours are bit too bright.. Otherwise you've done great job!

And here they are with another colour added, a mix of Iyanden Darksun and Vomit Brown.






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Remos wrote:That lion surely looks Finland's Lion... : D just noticed.

For a undead I think those colours are bit too bright.. Otherwise you've done great job!

I think half of Europe shares the same lion, I keep finding it back everywhere!
And I like bright colours.

Thanks for compliments everyone. <3


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Third colour is added, a mix of vomit brown and bestial brown.



This one worked out better than the other one.


And finally I added just a bit of extra detail using only bestial brown

I managed to save this guy´s face


And am very happy with this one


And here is a picture of one I painted a few days ago, before I practised drawing the lion. It really shows that the extra time put into the practising was worth it.


Well that was it, I learned a lot from this and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

Good to see the progress. Looking good. How many were you planning to do?

Just the two atm, they were a bit of a practise project. I might assemble a few more and try painting something different on their shields. It's so much fun to do.

Fun blog! Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us, and happy gaming with them! They look great

I am glad you enjoyed it, and thanks!

Remember to keep the paint thinned down enough. Loads of thin layers. The more thin layers you lay, the longer it takes; but the better and smoother the result.

Yeah, I am still having trouble getting my paints the right consistency. It always ends up too thin. :(