Little Ronnie - Mantic Games' Goblin Sneek

Now I've finally got a few minutes in-between waiting for various stages of a competition entry to dry, I thought I'd post up the work-in-progress images of Little Ronnie to show you all how he came together.

What I love about this miniature is that it manages to capture so much character, yet it is so utterly simple in its detail.  There is no clutter, no needless over-embellishment, just a great character, perfectly realised.

I'm sure the first thing you'll notice is that I painted the miniature based, and in fact, painted the base first.  There were a couple of reasons for this.

The first was a time issue.  As it was a relatively small miniature, and the base was going to be as simple as the goblin himself, I decided to paint both as one whole piece, allowing me to get a quicker result, but a great one all the same.

I painted the base first because there is always a danger of rushing this type of simple base at the end of a job because when you're so excited about the actual miniature, the base can sometimes become something of a secondary concern.  Painting it first means you are still fuelled by that initial excitement, and of course there is nothing worse when you've painted a fantastic miniature than making a disastrous slip with the brush while doing the base!

I decided on a white undercoat for Little Ronnie, which is a bit of a break from my normal Chaos Black spray.  I wanted to really go to town on the blending, meaning lots of almost water-thin coats of paint.

Even over a white undercoat, the purple robes you see in this image took between ten and fifteen coats of Hormagaunt Purple Foundation before having a good solid base to work from!

I then added some Necron Abyss Foundation and painted it into the recesses using the same thin mix, finally adding some Chaos Black to this before doing the deepest areas.  After that I simply worked up the highlights, blending up with a mix of Hormagaunt Purple and Bleached Bone, before finally blending the edges with pure Bleached Bone.

It's very easy to get carried away trying to blend, adding a little bit more highlight, then a bit more, and a bit more, and so on.  I found from this miniature that this really isn't necessary.  As long as you keep your paints extremely thin, you can complete an area - shade-to-base-to-highlights - in just five stages.

Finally, I completed the sleeves and hood in a similar manner with an unobtrusive dirty-white.

It's always down to personal choice, but I always prefer to leave skin until last.  Many painters agree, but an equal number would disagree too!

Because faces are the focal point of the miniature, I like to leave them until the end so that I can gauge the skin tone when compared with the rest of the finished miniature.  With that in mind, I painted the leather on the goblin, simply as it was the next largest area.

This was basecoated Bestial Brown and then shaded with a little Liche Purple and a lot of Scorched Brown (with the addition of Chaos Black in the deepest recesses).  The highlights were blended up with Snakebite Leather and (again!) Bleached Bone.

To try and keep a universal colour-scheme that held the miniature together at the end, I tried to use some form of purple in all the shades and equally, Bleached Bone in most of the highlights.

After painting the remaining detail on the Sneek, I finally got to paint the flesh, which was what I'd been looking forward to since the beginning!

I went for a Goblin Green basecoat as I wanted the skin to stand out brighter than the rest of the model, shading it with purples and blues (Liche Purple and Necron Abyss) rather than going for a straight dark green.  This is because I think that adding different coloured tones to the skin makes it much more real and more pleasing to the eye.

As for the highlights, these were gradually blending up from the basecoat with just Ice Blue. Normally, for Orc-ish skin, I would use a yellow for the highlights, but for this particular Orc army, based on snow bases, I have used Ice Blue throughout to give the flesh a much 'colder' look (both literally and figuratively!).

And, aside from a few fingernails and a couple of red eyes, that's it!

If you want to see more pictures of the finished Little Ronnie, get over to the 'Bloody Hells!' section of the Flare Gallery to see him in all his diminutive glory!

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave your comments below, or email Flare Miniature Painting directly!

Next time, I'll hopefully be able to show you the finished Orc Flagger that I'm currently working on for the Chelmsford Bunker's BunkerBrush2012 competition!