Steve Troughton-SmithInquisitor on the painting desk tonight
Reasonable progress on this guy! Capturing the right facial expression makes or breaks a mini like this
Right now, cloaks are my least favorite thing to paint. Blending is hard
Starting to come together. I’m kinda procrastinating until my new paints get here, but it’s nearly done
My first Inquisitor! Real happy with how closely I could match him to the box art. Still some cleanup to do (he’s not glued to the base yet), but overall great mini
He’s in better shape today for sure. Still gotta figure out those tentacles though
If I’m to make any progress on my backlog at all, I need to work on more than one mini per day 😅 That’s a pretty fking tall order…
Little morning diversion. Saw a great painted commissar online and it spurred me into action
I could paint Imperial Agents all day long. I really enjoy painting up once-off minis
The face was the first part I painted, as a subassembly. It turned out OK but I stressed about it for a long time, and it took many attempts to get it somewhere I liked. Painting faces is hard, man. And it’s still nowhere near as good as those from any decent painter
It’s been a while since I painted anything, and I now have a lifetime’s worth of minis inherited from @pilky, so I figured rebasing some of them would help me ease myself back in. So Thousand Sons it is today!
Pushing my way through the ugly phase on my Cathay test model 🐉
It's been a while, huh. Painting faces is so damn hard, but very rewarding
I think the head maketh the model, in this case, but I still have a lot of highlights to do to bring it all up
A quick composite paintover in Photoshop has me excited to finish this thing 😄 It actually is gonna look ok in the end. I just need to do it for reals
And now for real, the final assembly 🥳 Even better than the Photoshop version
Tonight's rebound project: re-basing and magnetizing a bunch of pilky's dwarfs
It's fun to go back and see the mini painting progress I've made in the past couple years in specific details, like faces. They're one of my favorite things to do now
Continuing with the re-basing project on pilky's dwarfs, and gave the leader a tiny bit of a face/hand touch-up too
Been pretty sick for a week, so recovering by slowly making progress on the first mini of the year
Finally pushed these Star Wars Legion stormtroopers off my painting desk after them being there for the past year. Soft plastics: never again. I'm so glad they've moved to hard plastic minis in later editions. Lesson learned
Have done very little hobby in 2026 so far, so I was compelled to paint up some terrain prints that have been sitting on my shelf for too many years now
Love the little vignettes you can make when you have some terrain pieces
An offhand ChatGPT repaint inspired me to actually go and repaint my goblin tower, which I was pretty unhappy with when I painted it in 2020. It didn't take much to bring it up to a much higher level, though, and now it looks great!
The last photo is what ChatGPT made of it, just for reference. But it convinced me that it wouldn't suck so much if I put just a tiny little bit of effort into it, so I did
Finally making progress on this guy from January again. Nurglings are fun to paint!
1997–2026, a painting journey in pictures. It really goes to show that this stuff is not innate talent, it's a lot of hard work and time spent learning and practicing
This is all the hobby I've done so far in 2026 — not a lot yet, but there's still time to catch up
Next dilemma on my painting desk: me struggling with tentacles. I have painted and re-painted these things a dozen times, and mixed so many paints together in a panic that I have no idea what instructions to leave for next time. But I think I'm getting to something I'm happy with — especially when comparing with an earlier revision (picture 2)
I do love how each little poxwalker has been its own puzzle to solve, since they're all so different. It's been a year since I last posted them, so here's what the rest look like
Printed this beautiful retro @DoctorSpork terrain piece up today and couldn't help myself but paint it. Tested out a wet-brush marbling technique I found on TikTok (never done marble before) and I think it worked out ok! Still have some finishing work to do on it, but I love it already
James Thomson@stroughtonsmith These always look really good, and I’m happy when they cross my timeline!
@jamesthomson you have a whole collection just waiting to be painted!
@stroughtonsmith I do, I just need to spend the 10,000 hours to get as good as you 😅
Timbo@stroughtonsmith
Wow, you’re so talented. What awesome talent💙💙💙💙
Wow, you’re so talented. What awesome talent💙💙💙💙
Doctor Spork@stroughtonsmith I've got a 3rd ed Dark Eldar army languishing away in a box that I need to get built and painted.
Those two look straight out of the codex ❤️
@DoctorSpork they’re one of those armies that you almost never see painted nicely!
I still haven't decided on the scheme for mine. I'm probably going to try and use a makeup sponge to do a lot of work on the armour though. I've seen folks have goo results on regular Eldar.
@DoctorSpork seems thematically appropriate for some elves!
Erik@stroughtonsmith @DoctorSpork ohhh that's some sweet marble
@stroughtonsmith awesome
@stroughtonsmith That is absolutely gorgeous, you have absolutely nailed the colours.
I'm going to have to try that technique sometime.
Matthew Abbott@stroughtonsmith Man I need to figure out how to assemble minis more quickly. And storage while waiting for paint
@matt I wish I could claim 'speed' as a virtue, but this has been sitting on my shelf for nine years… 😅 At least it's painted now
@stroughtonsmith colors are amazing❤️
@stroughtonsmith wow those are awesome beautiful talented man❤️
Dane Deasy@stroughtonsmith those are some creepy little dudes! Love it.
@stroughtonsmith wow they’re so beautiful look at so well done amazing❤️
@stroughtonsmith wow that detail is so awesome so talented man
Michael Lysons@stroughtonsmith That’s an impressive levelling up over time 😀
Ed@stroughtonsmith This kind of feels like a dumb question, but how are you attaching the mini to the wire there? My attempts at using blue tack like that have rarely been enough to support the weight, even with lighter plastic minis. D:
@arcticEdge drill a tiny hole with a pin vice, and use a tiny dot of superglue. When the mini is finished, you snap it off (safely). The other end of the wire is attached to a spare base, and the base is tacked to the painting handle (with a blutac-like putty)
@arcticEdge (you can also clip off spare bits of sprue to use as anchors to attach the wire to)
@stroughtonsmith Hot damn, this is some good tech. Thanks!!!
tylercheung@stroughtonsmith might have a dual use as a christmas ornament but probably less ugly than all the other things on a typical tree