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Fire serpent made from only glue and inspiration? Check

Zombie spore octopus? Check (Seriously- this thing is supposed to look creepy-crawlie wretched icky- well done!)

Myconids ready to boogie down? Check

An excellent round up Syro!

Thanks so much Meer

Lovely homemade sculpting mate! I think the octopus looks great with some paint and assorted sea clutter.

Those myconids look very promising too - some nice textures going on there!

 Syro_ wrote:
Thanks so much Ezki They're not too hard to sculpt if you do want to give it a go. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down. I guess it also depends on how many you want. The Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures of the Myconids are really nice in my opinion and with your painting skills they would look amazing. If you need more than two sprouts, two adults, and and sovereign, then you might want to go the sculpting route for varity.

Those are the exact models I've been eyeing!
But I agree, that there is not much variety if I want a few of them.

Haha, the "anime girl monster" is definitely one of the weirdest minis you have sculpted like you said, but it looks really awesome!

@Tzurk: Thanks Tzurk Hopefully Iwill get painting soon.

@Ezki: Either way, I'm looking forward if you do one or the other. And thanks about the anime girl

Outstanding work with the glue gun. Amazing. Great work all round sir.

Thanks so much Cam

No real hobby updates, real life has been keeping me too tired and busy. But, something that might be of interest is a question my nephew asked me. "Which miniatures, that you didn't make, do you think you painted the best?". I told him I would have to check my collection at home and get back to him. I considered this question to mean I shouldn't have altered or sculpted on top of the miniature either. I came to the realization that it feels like I barely paint any minis that I haven't made myself in someway. It kind of makes me wonder why I keep buying miniatures

I decided on seven minis as what I am most proud of: The 3 Reaper zombie wolves I painted in 2022, the Reaper Overgourd that I painted in 2021, and the three leaders for my Dark Angels 40k army from around 2017.





If you're curious:
I've painted 101 miniatures so far this year, and 16 of them haven't been made or altered by me.
Last year I painted 207 miniatures, and 41 weren't made or altered by me.
In 2021 I painted 181 miniatures, and 19 weren't made or altered by me.

That's an impressive body count mate! Well done.

I love that pumpkin beholder! Haven't seen him before. The contrast between living and rotten pumpkins is great, as are the fleshy blue bits.

And is that a home made dread in the back of the DA group shot?

Get some!

Thanks tzurk
I'm glad you like the contrast between the living and rotten pumpkins, I was trying for that. The pumpkin beholder is a Reaper miniature that I got in Reaper Bones V Kickstarter.

And good eye seeing the homemade dread, I have made a few and also modify all my my helbrutes. I don't have any actual dreads.

I made all of the paint in this picture, and five of them within the last few days. The spore servant (mushroom zombie) is painted only using homemade paint.

Oh Iove the pumpkin beholder king!

As usual, brilliant work. Pumpkins and all.

Hang on, when you say made paint yourself, what are we talking about? Just white base that you have dyed? Or from scratch made the pai t?

Hang on, when you say made paint yourself, what are we talking about? Just white base that you have dyed? Or from scratch made the pai t?

was confused when reading it too... I think this needs to be explained... I am interested to say the least!!

Sorry, I should have explained more clearly and I probably made it sound more impressive than it actually is. I just add or mix artist inks to acrylic matte medium in dropper bottles to make the miniature paints. (Sometimes thinner and flow improver too)

still interesting enough... the question here is tho... how cost and effort effective is such an endeavor?

For effort, it's actually pretty easy once you have all the materials. For cost, it's probably easier and not much more expensive to buy actual miniature paints which will likely work better too. But when learning about doing it, it seemed too fun to try. I was already moving all my GW paints out of pots and into dropper bottles at the time.

It's about $10 for the mixing balls
$15 for dropper bottles
$20+ for matte medium
$40 minimum for the ink
That's all that's needed
But
$13 for flow aid
$13 for thinner

So $85-$100+ US dollars. So about 79-93 Euros if the prices are the same. That's for about 16 bottles of 15ml paint before the $20 of matte medium runs out, but the rest of the materials are for 50 bottles of paint.

Pretty neat, Syro! Do you blend (or intend to blend) some of your own colors or just with the unadulterated inks?

excellent list!

and i have yet another question
I recently bought a pouring medium in a sale... is it in any way comparable to any matte medium that you used or like the stuff army painter and the likes sell? I am by far a chemist... so the whole endeavor is kind of intriguing for a mere painter like me... making stuff yourself is probably very satisfying , I mean the filled dropper bottles look alone quite aesthetic already!!!

@Meer_Cat: Thanks Meer I only have the primary colors, white, black, and browns in inks. So the purple, orange, and green paints were secondary colors mixed from the red, yellow, and blue. Those three needed a 5:1 ratio because of the different strengths of the pigments. I also made a not very impressive ketchup color when trying to mix my own fake blood paint (red and brown). I haven't done any mixing more impressive than those very basic ones, but I plan to experiment more.

@Viktor von Domm: Thanks Vik Unfortunatly, I'm no chemist either, and have never heard of pouring medium. My guess is that pouring medium is more like a thinner than matte medium. You could probably make thick acrylic paints from tubes more like miniature paints from bottles? But like I said, this is just a guess.

Hello Syro! Long time no comment - sorry about that Love the pumokin beholder, and I salute your painted model levels too.

Can totally relate to real life equalling no hobby, but it's alwayys enjoyable getting even a smidgeon in

Hey Ragsta, great to see you again. It has been a while, but no need to apologize. Real life will do that to you. And thanks.

With the school year coming close to the end, for the second to last history class I set up the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill for my students who were interested in playing. This is a small battle from the American War for Independence. We are using casts of my sculpted 15mm soldiers, and using the war game rules "Live Free or Die". I think my students were really enjoying it, even though we kept getting interrupted by the weird schedule that day. We got through about half the game.

Happy Memorial Day to my fellow Americans. This weekend I cast, touched up, and painted 22 more American War for Independence soldiers. These additions to the army should let me play two more scenarios: The Battle of Princeton and The Battle of Camden.

We got through the rest of the Battle for Hobkirk's Hill on Monday. It looked like it would be a British victory, and I even announced them as the winners until a player pointed out a single base of militia still contesting the objective that would have given the British a minor victory, so instead it was American victory.


I also started playing the Battle of Camden, another larger battle in the southern theater. The Americans set up a massive amount of troops right in front of where the British deploy. There are very heavy casualties early on compared to last game. After a successful British bayonet charge, the Americans immediately caused the entire British regiment that had charged to flee the table. The next two turns the British have been pushing the Americans back with cascading low morale.


I have been missing Warhammer 40k lately. I made eight new ork shoota boyz to match two I already had to look like a coherent unit of 10. I like how they turned out.

I painted up 10 more shoota boyz over the last two days. These have been built, unprimed, and unpainted since near the very beginning of when I started 40k.

Excellent stuff, looks like your hobby club is going great guns

Thanks Graven
I'm happy with how much the group is enjoying this historic wargame. I'm also happy that this particular battle I'm actually playing, the last three I spent the whole time helping the players with rules. This battle is nearing an end, We are about to start turn 8 of 10. The British have managed to push the Americans back across the board, inflicting more casualties than they took, but I don't think there is enough time for the British to achieve either victory objective before time runs out. The biggest upset was last turn when the American cavalry completely destroyed the superior British cavalry which had been dominating.

I have finished painting eight more orks to complete color schemes for squads of ten. These eight bring my total of painted ork boyz (basic infantry) and nobz (sergeants) to 138.

Whoa, you're really cranking out the Boyz! I do love me some Space Orks.

Thanks Josh
I'm basically out of unpainted ork boyz now (7 left, but I want to make the other three that would go with them first). I had planned to move onto ork stormboyz, burna boyz, and tank bustas, next. Instead, I have gotten distracted by the hype of the Warhammer 40k 10th edition starter box, Leviathan. I'm curious to try out 10th edition, and the starter box seems like a good way to do that. But, I don't like most of the minis that come in the box, and don't really want to spend the $250 +shipping either.

So I have come up with the crazy idea to try to recreate the contents of the Leviathan box using my molds and sculpting to make an old style space marines and tyranids Leviathan starter set. I'm starting with the space marines first


Of the marines, I'm focusing on the 4 character-like models to be completed first. The now faceless terminators in the bottom right of the picture will be the librarian and captain, both in terminator armor.

Oh gawd... you must love moldcleaning...