In my author bio one of the things I list is that I am an old school gamer. Along with being an artist (loose, but relatively true). Those two things actually collide in the crafting and miniature painting realm. Because I’m not busy enough.

In all seriousness, Dungeons and Dragons has been a love of mine for a very long time. I play when I can. I world build, I run games, create adventures and… once upon a time I painted miniatures and built terrain to play on. It’s a fantastic creative outlet and doubles up as something to add to my game sessions. It’s also fantastic practice for other kinds of art. the miniatures have always inspired flights of imagination for me.

I’ve started getting back into this. When I was painting miniatures before it was a deeply solitary thing. I found a few others locally that were painting as well, but we never connected really. I didn’t reach an extreme level with my painting, but some of them were pretty nice. I even started trying to build my own layouts and sculpt some things on my own.

I hope to add these projects to the blog here as part of my art. Plans, progress and all the stuff that I do when I’m not actively working on a writing project. I gave a moment of consideration to making this some kind of video compilation, but I am not a video editor. I am at heart an analog kind of guy. I believe that writing and pictures will do what I want to convey the process of the art I create. So – I’ll share progress here as the work takes shape.

I have a list of projects (shocking, I know) and (even more shocking) I have a plan for a major project. I have a diorama that I want to create as a gift to a dear friend. It’s going to be a massive learning curve for me. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride.

I jumped back into things today. Not some massive art project or novel length writing, just something simple. I had this box laying around from when I got a new set of headphones. I didn’t want to just throw it away. It’s a hard board and has magnets as the closure. It’s quite nice for simple packaging. I decided that I would spray paint over the product information and use this excellent sturdy box as a backdrop for taking individual pictures of my miniatures work. It works ~ that’s what the mud men are standing on / in. Easy peasy for a first project, right?

First lesson – wear your painting gear even if “it’s just a quick little thing” and avoid ruining a shirt.

Second lesson – look at the weather report. Your paint will run if you have to move it / hang it up before it’s dry because it starts to rain (spray painting is not an indoor sport).

In the end, I mostly succeeded. I have a painted box to use as a back drop and a single, starting project under my belt.

Do you have anything you’re working on?