Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work of miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every ethnicity, gender, age and nationality, they have three things in common: they love miniatures, they enjoy a supportive community, and they want to set themselves against the Challenge.
This site features the current year's event along with the archives of past Painting Challenges.
Enjoy your visit and remember to come back soon.
Come, brave adventurer- step into the lair and see if you can find what became of your comrades...
There's a few things going on here: spiders from Reaper Bones, simple cobweb markers from Thingiverse, and the webbed adventurers, pits, and useful clip-together modular rocky wall sections are all from Printable Scenery. The pits are on 100mm bases, the spiders on 25, and the swarms on 30mm. The mat is from Cigar Box.
The spiders and swarms are Contrast Templar Black over white. The walls are grey and white drybrushing over black. I really should have gone for the monochrome Chamber...
I petition for 8 points for the spiders, 20 points for the scenery, and 20 points for the Hall of Traps.
Skull-o-meter™: 1
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Nicely done Barks - that is creepy as hell. I love the atmospheric 'view through the hole in the wall' shot too! A great collection of mischief
As you may gather from the title of the post, this entry is focused on some religious types. As I pass to the Shrine in the Chambers of Challenge, I went looking for some clerics in my stash. In amongst the minis, I found some Japanese warrior monks and a few other minis and decided to paint them up for my entry.
The central figure is the head priest of the local temple, the figures flanking him are his Sohei acolytes. All of the minis are from Zenit Miniatures' Kensei Range. The robes were painted in GW Contrast paints and the rest of the figures done with regular paints.
And here we have a Ronin figure and a Ninja. As with the monks they are from Zenit. The Ninja was largely painted with GW Black Contrast, with some glossy black for the armour and red for the Oni-mask.
And finally a group shot. I always find Samurai era minis challenging to paint due to the fiddly lace on their armour and these were no exception. That said, I think they do look cool when they are finished.
So, 5x 28mm minis adds 25 points to my score, along with an extra 20 for the Shrine chamber. These fellows should also net me 1 Squirrel for my side duel too.
I do like me some Samurai and have been revisiting Osprey's Ronin rules again of late, so these quite tickle my fancy.
The Ninja with the Oni mask is particularly good, but you nailed it with the Ronin and his patterned robes. Plus nobody ever makes fun of a guy's flower patterned clothes when he carries a razor sharp blade, or two.
Our lonely adventurers continue their adventure into the Golem's haunt. It is not long before they hear the oncoming shuffle of a hoard of none other than zombies!
These classic gents have been in my pile of shame for a couple of years now. They were acquired second hand and in fairly rough shape but their misgivings were a source for inspiration.
I have an idea to paint up a priesty looking character to lead these goons but I'll leave that for another submission.
These are the Gw deadwalker zombies, 28mm in scale.
Points :
19 zombies = 95 points
Challenge bonus of 20
Total: 115
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Yep - thats a whole lot of Zombies! Awlays good to do a second hand rescue too, very satisfying I find.
But personally I'd make them walk the plank - wont have 'em on me ship you know!
These ten figures are the last of my big Covid pile of 3rd Century Romans from A&A Miniatures. To help me deal with depression and heartbreak in 2020 I succumbed to a long-held desire to make a Roman army for the mid-late C3rd. I based most of the figures on multi-bases to get that nice mini diorama feel, and originally planned to base them for Soldiers of Rome, the interesting set of rules from Warwick Kinrade. However, as I went along and Infamy! Infamy! came out, I made a couple of units individually based to use with those rules. Finding I had some figures left over, I based them individually on square bases so that I can extend the frontages of the bases for Soldiers of Rome to make my army easily useable for other games like Impetus as well.
Anyway, they're done! Or at least until I decide I really need some more cavalry, or more units so that I can morph the army into one led by the Tetrarchs at the very beginning of the fourth century...
Here's the army in all its glory. Roma victrix!
Ave Imperator!
What a treat for this to be my primo minioning duty for AHPC XI.
A great conclusion to a super looking army! As part of your Triumph, I award you the golden 5 point Torc of Handpainted Shields and Vexillum. Wear it with pride Dominus!
Peter
and I are running very close, but I am sure Miles, Noel, and Jasper will be on
the board soon. It is all about points with the number of Hulls being listed
for interest and as a tiebreaker should one be needed. If any
one wants to join us please let me know.
Every dungeon needs brave souls to use their brains and brawn to defeat evil and solve mysteries. My band are no different
Who else would you want to solve the mystery than Scooby Doo and the Gang. Their special skills are traps, running away and eating huge meals, whilst pretending not to be massively stoned. These will compliment last years Banana Splits entry. Next year I suspect it will be Noggin the Nog (not a euphemism)
So they will teleport to the Armoury as I have no egg based figures
Scores = 5x5 + 20 = 45pts
And that is the end of the current spurt (6 posts in 1 day is enough I think)
We'll have no spurting in here, #13!
Nice painting on the original Scooby gang. I remember painting the post-apocalypse versions of these a few years ago for someone.
I've never painted grey scale, although MartinN's Vietnamese are still engrained on my brain as the best painting I've ever seen. So to say I was intimidated is an understatement. I was tempted to paint a figure normally and photgraph it in black and white.
So I dug around the spares box and found a US Paratrooper (Artizan I think but another lucky bag find). He seemed appropriate as he would have planned to fight at night. The white base puts him at Bastogne
I'm really pleased how this came out. I basically painted it black and then added lighter shades of grey, mainly dry brushed
May do more of these, but not Landsknechts
Scores 5+20 = 25
Penultimate for today, #13? You mean there's another after this? *sob*
You're right - it is an Artizan figure. Nicely done on the greyscale, and another 25 points for you.
In this morning's post was a second post from Black Hat, actually they sent me 2 versions of each figures. Golems are not really my thing but this figure leapt off the screen
This is a library golem designed and animated to prove the pen is mightier than the sword. It s a nice figure and I've never seen one like it
I was going to paint it with the covers of some of my favourite books but I couldn't even do the writing on them
I can think of no possible use for it, but it does need a librarian
After hurtling through the Hall of Traps our intrepid band of adventurers kick down the door to find the Pit and the Pendulum and a poor damsel in distress
Normally women in this position are worried abou there virtue. Here I suspect she is more worried out her kidneys.
The female victim is from Pulp Miniatures and is supposed to be strapped to a circular saw but I can't find the saw. The zombie I've no clue about but i suspect that came in a Northstar Lucky bag, I miss Northstar Lucky Bags - started many a collection with a random figure from them.
Scores on the Doors
10 +20 = 30
Weren't two visits enough for you? Back for a third #13?
Nicely composed entry Martin. I'll give you a couple of extra points for the diorama basing.
I've been waiting for the postman to deliver some figures so I could start the Chambers of Challenge bit and a couple arrived today
This guy in a straight jacket is from Black Hat miniatures and is quick a nice figure, although I would have liked his face to be a little more deranged, like he had an itchy bum, he looks too peaceful
Don't like how the floor has come out on the photo, not good a painting floors.
So I've started my adventure and will have a mad spurt now as I have painted several chambers while waiting for this figure to arrive
Scores on the doors 5+20 = 25
Back so soon, #13?
I guess a straightjacket is a trap of a kind. OK, 25 points for this figure.
A man can only paint so much brown before he needs to reset his retina. I do have another project to pass away the evenings. I have a load of 10mm 16th Century Italian wars figures. Yip I'm painting 10mm Landsknechts. It the honourable way to concede the race to the top in January. I impulse bought 1000 figures on ebay but they were all infantry so I got a load of cavalry and artillery for Christmas
I've started with Landsknecht aquebusiers (clue in the title). The title came from Dennis on the chat, although the Duchy of Benetton would be a nice imagiNation
So I have painted 48 of the little buggers. They are in bases of 4 and as I'm planning to use Kings of war rules 2 of these will make a troop. It means that a horde sized pike block can be a square. There are many pike blocks to follow. I have a neat idea for battles. Set the terrain, decide the defenders and attackers and then get the opposing generals to bit for the various mercanary units before the battle starts.
They were fun to paint, get a primary colour and paint random parts of each figure, then get a new colour and get back to the start. The hard part is getting the back to match the front, but who really cares with 10mm Landsknechts.
So 48x10mm infantry = 48pts
To follow will be loads of Chamber posts as I've done a level. Either tonight or tomorrow. Depends if I want to wear out the cabin crew
Victim #13? So many today, that I've lost track.
Cracking work on these tiny handgunners and 48 points in the bag.
As well as finding models to paint to complete the tour of the Chambers of Challenge, I am trying to make some progress on a few different projects. One of these projects is completing painting up my collection of old 25mm ancient Assyrians.
These miniatures are well over 30 years old and are by Hinchliffe. They are based on 120mm frontage skirmish unit bases for use with Impetus, Sword & Spear and To The Strongest rules.
Hopefully, there will be a few more old school miniatures for this project later in the challenge.
For points that should be 9 infantry at 5 points each = 45 points.
In my Race to 800 Points duel with ScottM, I am still trailing him by a long way: 326 to 203
Another victim coming back for more!
I've always wanted an Assyrian army, so I was rather shocked at myself when I bought Nubians and Sea Peoples as my first "biblical" era forces.
Lovely work on these old Hinchliffe figures and 45 more points towards your target.
Like seemingly everybody else on the internet, I received a sprue of the new Warlord 15(ish)mm ACW models with my copy of Wargames Illustrated. It's a period I've dabbled in, with a sharp practice force, but never really done much more with. But free stuff is free stuff, and I am starting to move more and more of my plans to smaller scales.
I painted these up as Union troops, simply because everybody else in my group seems to be planning confederates (see Tom Godson's post). They are a relatively quick job, and I've only done 2 stands of them, because, well Squirrel. So here are 40 of the little guys, which should net me another 80 points I believe, and also, a second squirrel point.
And victim #12 walks into my lair!
Nice, neat work on these Dave. Personally, I'd have gone with black or very dark grey for the hats, but the blue looks good.
Today I venture into the chamber of darkness to explore painting in grey scale. However, since this is supposed to be an actual challenge, and since I have already done hordes of zombies in greyscale in past challenges, I thought I should challenge myself in some other way... yeah, I know, I am a glutton for punishment. So, in addition to doing this figure in grey scale, I also did it with oil paints for the first time ever!
I know, I know, oil paints on a 28mm miniature? Madness you say, and you are not far off. To be fair...
Sorry, I couldn't resist... I love Letterkenny :-)
Anyway, to be fair, I have used oil paints in the past but only as super thinned down pin washes for vehicles, so using only oil paints on a figure is now to me (and maybe a new normal? more on that later). So, here is all I used when painting this figure....
I started by priming the figure black then a white zenithal highlight, and then mixed some black and white together to make a mid grey tone and applied it over the whole model.
After that it was simply putting dots of black or white where I wanted shadow or highlight and using a clean brush to blend it with the grey already in place. It was an amazing experience, as it was so much easier to get smooth blends compared to acrylics where you need to wet blend with incredible speed to avoid drying or super thin layers.
While the images are ok, they really don't capture the tones of the model in real life, try as I might I just could not get them to show in images. At first I thought it was due to the white background, but I tried black, blue, and green and they all did the same thing, so I think it's more about my lighting washing it out. Trust that in real life the tones are better than they show, sorry guys.
I even painted the clump of static grass with thinned oil paint as I only had coloured tufts. You can not imagine how hard it is to paint static grass until you try it.... OMG, not my best idea, but at least it turned out ok.
I always take this challenge as an opportunity to try something new each year, either a new era, a new scale, a new painting technique or tool, just something new. After all experimentation leads to learning and growth (even if the experiment fails you learn something, sometimes you even learn more!). This year the plan was a new era (coming soon) and playing with oils, and I have to say that so far, I loved the process of painting with oils so much that I will be trying a few more full colour oil painted figures over the course of the challenge, so watch for more to come.
I am assuming that working with colours is going to complicate the process vastly compared to just black and white, but it's a new chance to learn. Also due to the drying times involved, it is not something I would consider for everything, but for characters or special models or even just for effects, I think I may just have a new tool in the toolbox!
Oh, and this is a 28mm French Great War infantry model, I am sorry I do not remember the company though. It might be a Renegade figure as it is pretty chunky.
Victim #11, I presume!
Grey-scale and oil paints? My word! I must say you've done a great job on this chap. So, 25 points for you.
