Artists and miniatures

Hi! Today we want to tell you in detail about the process of painting miniatures. We can consider this post for those who have only recently discovered the fascinating world of painting miniatures or even just looking at it from afar, wondering if it’s worth it. Also here we will say a few words about the artists who paint our miniatures, take photos or videos of them and post them on their social networks and blogs. These people are not our employees, but they do a lot to make sure that as many people as possible get to know our characters. For which we are, of course, immensely grateful to them.
Let’s start with a trivial but necessary statement: miniatures are the most important component of Signum. Their quality, level of development, detail and originality determines how much the players will be interested in these or those characters, how exciting the game will be and how well the figures will look on the shelf. That’s why we try to pay maximum attention to the creation of miniatures.
An ideal miniature should look good both unpainted and painted. Therefore, a lot also depends on how well the miniature is painted. What can be difficult, take a brush and paint! – Perhaps, will say someone who has never done it. In response to this, a person who at least once tried to paint a figure will laugh out loud, and a specialist in painting miniatures will give a lecture for several hours. But we will do neither of these things, and just briefly describe the nuances of the process.
When an artist gets a new unpainted figure in their hands, he or she, first of all, looks at their set of brushes – whether there are all the necessary ones. After all, for painting small and large parts need separate brushes, a separate – for the stand, and you also need to take into account what types of paints are planned to work with. There is no single universal list of brushes that will be suitable for any miniature, often the method of trial and error works.
Not a bad “beginner artist kit” is 6 different brushes:
- 2 round natural brushes, 2 sizes;
- 2 round synthetic brushes, 2 sizes;
- a brush for drybrushing*;
- a flat brush for the stand and large parts.
*Drybrushing – method of coloring where the paint is hardly diluted with water and is applied in rough strokes.
It is logical to assume that the next step of coloring after choosing brushes is selecting paints. But no. First you choose an undercoat or primer, that is, a monochrome composition, which is used to cover the figure. It can be black or white. With black it will be easier to paint shadows and apply dark paints, with light will look better transparent and bright colors, so choose under the style of the figure. Often this composition comes in the form of an aerosol. And then the colors are chosen. Each artist in this regard has their own preferences, secrets and little tricks.
By the way, if you do not want to bother with the choice of colors, there are special paint sets for miniatures.
And so, brushes, primer and paints are selected and lying on the table. Can we paint yet? Still no, the miniature has to be assembled first. For this purpose you need not only glue, but also special cutters, file, special putty for joints of parts.
When the figure is assembled and, so to speak, finalized with a file, you can paint. However, first you need to degrease the miniature to make the primer lay down better. Naturally, for painting you need a good light, and if you want you can take a magnifying glass. Painting is carried out in several steps, so that the layers of paint have time to dry and do not mix with each other. The process itself can take several days, especially if we are talking about complex figures with many details.
And now we want to introduce those who have been doing all of the above for more than one year. These are artists from different countries who have made figure coloring their main hobby and have achieved amazing success in it.
wermilionardo – Evgeny Kudryavtsev
A man whose work is proudly displayed in our office. Evgeny is an artist from Ukraine who paints miniatures for us on order and does it damn well. His work stands out with bright colors and bold experiments with the combination of shades.
Our collaboration with Jimmy started with painting figures, and now he’s not just painting Signum characters, but also showing the result to his considerable community. Their trademark style is the use of bright colors, broad strokes, and in some places a deliberate roughness of work.
Jimmy also runs our TikTok, answers questions on social networks and communicates with other Influencers, hosts streamings on Twitch and Kick dedicated to painting our figures. You could say he’s practically our overseas employee, and it all started with one small unpainted figure.
Family couple from Serbia, whose works are distinguished by smooth gradients, interesting experiments with color and stunning details.
An artist who paints not just miniatures, but entire dioramas. Among his works are not only small figures, but also entire houses and even castles.
Italian artist with a small but actively growing community. In her social networks she publishes not only the results of painting, but also details what paints and colors were used for the figure, so the blog will be very useful for beginners.
Canadian artist who works with characters from fantasy and fairy tales. The painted figures are both cute and slightly creepy at the same time.
This artist really loves Signum and has colored, for example, Nephilims. You can write about his work for a long time, but it’s better to see it once.
If you’ve always wondered what real plastic armies look like, then you should check out the profile of this artist from the United Kingdom. He doesn’t stop at one character, but paints dozens of them. However, the detail and elaboration do not suffer from this.
An artist from the USA, who started with drawing characters for D&D, and now she is painting miniatures from different settings.
Mike’s work shows the hand of a professional. The coloring is laconic, but effective. No unnecessary experiments and excessive brightness, just very well painted miniatures.
This artist generously shares tips on painting miniatures with beginners on his blogs. He’s also just a really cool coloring artist.
These are just a fraction of the artists who make the world of Signum more colorful and bright. There are actually many more, and their number is constantly growing. You can see more works of all these artists in the gallery that has recently appeared on our website. As time goes on, the number of works will increase.