Painting game figures…

Over the last few years I’ve found myself watching less and less TV in the evenings. There are some great shows, but I’ve become less patient with the idea of sitting and watching my life fritter by while staring at others living their lives. I prefer doing things. Creating. So TV is no longer my default evening activity. I watch when there is something specific that I want to watch. Otherwise, I work on creative projects and listen to audiobooks.

I’ve always wanted a fun chess set and a long while back while scrolling through Etsy, I saw some 3D printed chess pieces that I liked. In time I ordered them. They are printed in resin and arrive as gray plastic. I’ve enjoyed the process of creating my color palettes. I glued washers on their bases to give them more weight, and covered their bottoms with appropriately colored adhesive backed felt.

I painted a set of Humans, a set of Dwarves, a set of Dragons, and both Red and Green Goblins. After that, my neighbors turned me on to the board game, Everdell. Lots of fun… it’s a resource gathering game in which different species compete to create the best village. On Etsy, LB Studios has created 3D printed unofficial game pieces for Everdell, and so I started painting those as well. Still working on those… there are 23 different species. The Everdell pieces are about an inch tall, so they take quite a bit of patience.

It helps to have pieces with a great deal of detail sculpted into the characters. This way I can paint areas of color, and then I paint a dark wash over it all which seeps into the cracks and brings much more detail. It is both easier and harder than it looks, but like life – you just dive in and do your best – and you learn. And you improve.

I even designed and created boxes to hold the chess pieces and created ad copy for the boxes. (Creating packaging is what I have done professionally from time to time – recreating vintage packaging for props for TV and Film. So not quite the leap that it might be for some).