Almost Done with the First Mini of 2026

Rolling for This Week’s Monster

Before getting into painting our boy, I’m stealing another idea from Trent at Miscast. Every week this year I want to paint a monster out of the Dolmenwood monster book. I’ll probably have to 3D print most of them, so I’m doing it now so when I finish him, he’ll be ready to go.

I got these really cool, really strange dice for Christmas from my mom. She said, “I know you like that kind of thing.” They’re actually very high quality resin with little dragons in them—not just one kind, there’s a different dragon on every face. And the glitter material inside moves!

This is something I never would have bought for myself, but it’s really cool to see and play with. Rolled a 23, which gives us a Brele—a short hornle. Instead of having to build something, I just remembered there’s a short horn brele in the official kit. Boom, that’s the next one up for this weekend.

Making Custom Washes

For some actual painting, we’re going to make our own wash. All-time favorite paint: Brownish Decay, plus Cultist Cloak. I’m going to wing this—I haven’t tested it, so you’re watching it live.

This is for our silver. We’re starting on the foot because if it’s too terrible, we’ll be able to work it off. We want to make sure it doesn’t pull up. Just being a little careful because I don’t want a ton on the green.

For the gold, we’re doing purple and red. I wash gold with a purplish red color because it really makes it look rich—I don’t know how else to describe it. We want it to pull in these little holes, but not pool on the surface.

The Wash Technique

You can see the effect—it’s going into the cracks and stuff, but this part right here is still pretty bright. The other side is shiny all the way through, but this side has more of that contrast in it.

The way you avoid coffee stains is you go slow. I say I go slow as I’m slapping this paint around, but I’m going back to that initial deposit of paint and that’s what I’m using to wash the rest of the model. Always wash the nuts!

Fixing My Mistakes

Oh god, you see all that? That’s exactly what I said not to do. The wash went crazy on the legs—I was nowhere near as careful as I thought. We got a lot of water coffee staining on the legs. That’s okay, we’ll figure it out.

The second wash attempt is definitely more what we’re looking for. What happened was I put too much paint when I washed it the first time and it just ran down. We’ll fix that when we highlight—it’s not a huge problem.

Edge Highlighting the Gold

For edge highlights, I’m getting paint on the brush, then when I drag it down my thumb, it puts paint on the side of the brush. That’s what makes it so I can just come right here—I’m using the side of the brush for those edge highlights.

This really adds so much to it. Just want to hit this corner where all the light comes in, then down that hard edge right there by the crack. The top of that edge, same thing.

The Green Touch-Up Challenge

Here’s that crazy idea. We’ve got our three colors from the airbrush workup. I’m just going to paint over this whole side section with the midtone and make it look like we wanted that transition to be there.

It doesn’t look as good as our airbrush transition, but we’re just making it look intentional. I’m starting from the highest point and just pulling it down into the shadows. If you look at it super closely, it’s pretty janky. But if you don’t look too close, it looks like an intentional transition and blend.

Edge Highlighting the Green

I’m using off-white—a warm toned white. The reason we’re using this is because our speed paints are so transparent that we can’t really use them to highlight. They’re too liquidy to get the kind of result we want.

This white keeps our warm tone but also highlights up. If we used brilliant white or straight white, that coldness would make it look a little weird because this model is pretty warm.

I’m coming in using the belly of the brush, the middle of it. The first couple of passes, you don’t even really see the edge highlight. Just take your time. See really—as we get into that transition, having that hard line is what makes it look like “wow, that’s a nice paint job.”

The Biggest Lesson

The paint will dry on this brush because there’s such little paint on it. Make sure you’re paying attention that you don’t have too much. If you have too much, you’ll get a fat edge highlight and nobody likes that—like I just did right there. Just use your finger to wipe it off. It’s all good.

Final Thoughts

I think we’re done! We got to do the eyes and the base and the sword, but I don’t know what I’m doing with the sword yet. Very happy with how he turned out, except for that damn water stain from the wash.

There’s a lot I’m actually pretty critical of, but I want to go into this year focused on getting models finished and not letting perfect be the enemy of good. That’s a perfectly fine and acceptable tabletop model—actually probably painted to a pretty high standard.

To close it out, I’m sitting here at tabletop level and damn that model looks good. Everything I’m hyper critical of for myself just doesn’t matter because from the tabletop it looks amazing.

Don’t be too harsh a judge on yourself. It looks great. Don’t overthink it. Don’t let it stop you from painting—that’s really what I’ve learned.

Day 112. Catch you tomorrow!