I can’t explain it but I do really love painting minis in the fantasy genre. I don’t necessarily read tons of fantasy books but if you give me a high quality sculpt of an elf or dwarf, I’ll probably enjoy painting it more often than not. Today’s post is unusual because I have two things to show off which represent my painting at the highest level and I think it is appropriate that it is in the fantasy genre since I enjoy it so much.
If you’ve been following this site for a while, you’ve seen this guy as a WIP a couple of times. Theoden started off as a potential entry into the Golden Demon which was going to be held at Adepticon here in Chicago but unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan. Adepticon was cancelled due to coronavirus and this mini didn’t come together the way that I wanted to. I do think this mini opened up a door in my mind to new painting techniques which I’ll explain a bit more later on. I had Theoden around 80% done and really only had his sword to paint and I just could not pull off the kind of fancy painting on his sword that I hoped to achieve. I tried 3-4 times until I got frustrated and set Theoden aside. This was before Adepticon was cancelled and in a way, it was a bit of relief to find out that Golden Demon wasn’t happening as I don’t feel like I missed something by not entering this mini in the competition.
Several months later, I wanted to knock something off my hobby table that was unfinished because I was in-between projects and I had a lot of clutter there as I talked about last post. I picked up Theoden and painted his sword in a less fancy but solid enough scheme and it felt really good to finally get him done. It was like a burden was lifted off my shoulders and a goal was finally met even if I couldn’t quite see it through. I might have made his base look a bit fancier by buying some flock perfectly suited to Rohan but I couldn’t justify spending money on a large amount of flock that I’d likely never use again. I am really proud of the face and his shield. The mini may be small but it is packed with details and requires a steady hand to paint successfully. It is hard to pick a mini and say it is the best thing I’ve ever painted but even with the sword not being my absolute best work, I think Theoden is certainly up there.
But… I might be working on something even better than Theoden. I’m really pushing my skills and trying to get better at Non-Metallic Metal painting on this Scibor dwarf. I’m sharing a sneak peak as his shield and axe still need to be painted. He is not on his final base yet either which should be impressive when done. I have a bit of a history with Scibor dwarves but I’ll save that for the next post I have where I show the finished mini. I’ve been working a couple weeks on him now and I’m really enjoying the fact that I can focus on this guy but not feel any pressure to get painting or terrain done for gaming. Its not that I can’t work more on that, its just that I have the time and desire to slow down and paint this guy to the best of my abilities so I’m going to do that. I hope this teaser gets you excited to see more and I look forward to showing off more progress. I don’t want to jinx it but I think you can see why I think I might be outdoing Theoden (and maybe even Codsworth too for that matter) with this one 
