Lessons

Project Fimir is now well under way.

I bought a batch of Vallejo paints last Friday, so now I have most of the gear I need. I did forget to buy a bone-color, so the skeletons will have to wait, because there’s no way in hell I’m relying on my questionable paint-mixing abilities for a base color that’s going to cover most of the model.

To mix things up a bit, I decided to paint the skin of each Fimir differently. According to the WFRP (1^st edition) rulebook, fimir vary in color from buff to a light olive, so I’m going to paint them in varying shades of light brown with a dash of green.

My five test subjects, before highlights.

In the end, I’ve been concentrating on a single one of them, because I just couldn’t resist the urge to get something finished quickly. This has led me to (re)discover a lot of things about painting:

1. Painting a single miniature is really ineffective, compared to painting a batch. You waste a lot of time (waiting for something to dry before you can continue) and paint (when you put a bit too much on the palette and have nowhere else to use it).

2. The Fimir models are surprisingly difficult to paint well. They are basically 80% skin, so if you aren’t extremely good at layering and very patient, you will have a hard time. I’m neither.

3. I really need a palette with indentations. Right now I’m using a flat one, but this leads to the paint spreading out and drying too quickly. The Citadel paints are the worst offenders, whereas the Vallejo keep much better.

4. Speaking of Vallejo, I’m very impressed. Good coverage, doesn’t dry out too quickly and are very easy to mix due to the “eye dropper” pots. Only problem as far as I can see is that it’s difficult to dispense less than “a drop”, which is sometimes still too much.

5. I’m not a fast painter. The single fimir that I managed to finish over the weekend took me about four hours, all told. This used to be a bit of a problem when I was trying to finish an army, but it shouldn’t be an issue now that I don’t have any sort of deadline. It still bugs me a bit though.

In the end, I’m quite satisfied with my first 28mm model in more than a decade. It’s certainly not winning me the Golden Demon competition, but it’s not nearly as bad as I’d feared either.

Ready to menace some adventurers. I may do something with the base at some point, but for now, plain grey will do. 

A look at the back of the model. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that I did a very poor job of prepping the mini, as I overlooked the casting lines between the shoulder blades. Same goes for the rest of the fimir.

Croaker