The nice thing about having two of those is that I can try two different painting techniques and compare.

The one on the left was dry brushed, while the one the right was painted. When I was dry brushing the first one I thought it was very tedious, so I went on to painting the second one, hoping it would be easier. It turned out that it was even worse. This first basecoat was pretty boring to do.

In my current game, my players woke up an ancient Bat Demon during one of their exploration. I didn't anticipated that, so didn't had the right mini for it. I painted that shortly after the session, being the closest thing to a Bat Demon I could find.

In retrospect I'm happy with the fire effect. It's not fantastic, but it works. As for the rest of the colors, I think there is not enough contrast here. I should have put a lighter wash on the flesh of the wings, and/or used a more golden metal for the armor parts.

Repainted a toy canon.

I don't have pictures from the initial toy, but I did that repaint to test out my metallic paints. I also added some Typhus Corrosion on the nose, but I think I should have added even more for such a large cannon.

I had this mini on my table for a long time. The sculpt of it makes it hard to paint. You cannot attach it to a base or you won't be able to access the underneath, so you have to manipulate it while painting, and wait for the paint/washes to dry on one side before doing the other side.

Here you can see the top part drying after a red wash.

An Otyugh from Wrath of Ashardalon. Great mini to have when your players start exploring some sewers. The ability of the Otyugh to telepathically communicate could lead to some great RP.

As for the mini itself, I like how it turned out. Being a sewer creature, I could be sloppy in my paint job. Very rough drybrush of red and brown, picking up the teeth and details with a bone color, and using a very bright color for the tongue. This is a trick I learned after having painted too many boring miniatures: pick a very bright color for one detail, that will attract the eye.

This is a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath from the Mansions of Madness boardgame, but also a very nice miniature full of details to practice.

Here is a picture when it was almost finished. I just had the base to dry brush, but I realized it was missing something. It was too... mundane (as much as an horror from the great beyond could be).

So I repainted the tongue in a bright color to attract gazes.

Those are playmobil rocks textured and painted.

This is the original piece. I sometimes find some in garage sales. I only added a layer of modeling paste on them to give them rock texture. I wait for it to dry (usually overnight) then sand it to make the surface smoother.

Then it's black priming, grey dry brushes everywhere, brown on the bottom, and some green here and there.

I kept the holes open as I plan to repaint the playmobil trees that come with them later.

I find that they make great scatter terrain pieces. The only issue is that some of the small "steps" are too small to properly accomodate a miniature. Only the big one could, but as soon as I'll start adding trees they won't have enough space either.

Anyway, that's one of the cheapest and easiest terrain I did.

With no real plan in mind for how I would use it, I decided to try to repaint a plastic toy to see if I could make it look much better.

I think I forgot to take a picture of the gun before I started... well, too bad. Once again, it was found for 1€ in a second hand shop.

I started with a black primer and a white dry-brush. I did the dry brush to better see the various edges of the weapon, but also hoping it would improve the latter highlights.

Brown dry brush. I did it with a small brush so I would not put too much brown on the metal parts.

Now metal drybrush on the metal parts. I used a similar brush, but a different one. When I drybrush, I usually use several brushes as I can never manage to get rid of all the paint from one color before using another. And if I use water to get rid of it it's even better because then my dry brush is not dry at all and it creates lots of smudges marks everywhere.

I did a second brown drybrush, slightly lighter on the raised areas and the engraved parts.

Then painted the details with some gold on the metal and chestnut on the wood.

I painted two Chtonians from the Mansions of Madness boardgame. I put them on a regular round base so I can use them in other games as well.

I thought they would be pretty straightforward models to paint but it was way less easy that I anticipated. First, the worm body is full of recesses so I had to be careful for the wash to not pool in weird places. Painting the inside of the tentacles also proved harder than anticipated.

I also realize, seeing the pictures, that I really should have removed the mold lines here.

I don't know if you're familiar with this toy. It's a Vulli Tree, and has been pretty popular with kids in France for at least three generations.

I never had one myself, but I recently found two of them in a second hand shop for 2€ each. I bought one for my daughter and took one for me.

Being second hand they were missing some stickers and plastic parts. But by buying two I was able to make an almost-complete one for my daughter and keep the bare one for me.

This is how it looks once opened. As a terrain piece, I didn't want it to open at all. I had in mind an old wise tree like you can see in GoT, so I had a plan to paint it white with autumnal leaved.

I had never done this kind of thing before (painting trees, especially not white-barked and in autumnal leaves so I kinda expected it to not look as great as I envisioned but.. as I always say when DMing: "there's only one way to find out").

First step was opening it and removing all the pieces from the inner mechanism. It would make the whole structure lighter and less noisy.

Here it is, with all the "useless" parts removed.

As you can see, the upper part is pretty empty. My plan was to fix the top part with some glue, but also fill in the gap between the canopy and the first floor with some expansive moss (not sure of the exact term).

I filled the top ridges with glue from my glue gun. Gluing the central square was actually an error, as I would need it to be mobile for the next step.

This is the expansive moss I was talking about.

I put some on the rim of the first floor and then attached the canopy on top. I should have tester the product on some cardboard first because it didn't expand as I expected.