I got into SDE back when it had just come out in the beginning of 2012. I had never painted before, let alone something so small.

Since the game came with a bajillion kobolds, I practiced my limited skills on them. My husband thought he'd help, too, but after completing only two minis, he decided it wasn't for him. Anyway, I grouped them all into sets and sort of... themed them by color. Though I favored red and brown, in the end I used pretty much everything but blue. The result is a mish-mash band of monsters who usually stick to their own but came together to beat up the heroes who stomped into their territory. I had a lot of fun working on them.









Then I moved on to the dragons. Again, simple, flat colors. I didn't disassemble anything after an initial spree with the superglue (we wanted to play right away) so I learned a lot about getting into those tight spaces without touching the wrong surface. Putting Starfire together was a pain in the soda and it still bugs me 5 years later when I look at that back leg. He's seen a little wear-and-tear thanks to my nephews.

After I got all the monsters out of the way I was finally comfortable enough to try some heroes. I started with the Hexcast. (I'm embarrassed to admit I accidentally dropped her a few weeks ago, which busted her arm off--glued it back on fine--and scuffed her hair pretty noticeably. I swear I usually take good care of my minis!) I made her and the Barbarian like a fire and ice duo.



Next came the Paladin and Ranger.



Then the Ember Mage and Fighter.



And the Rogue, whom I adore.



The Druid/Bear probably turned out the best of the bunch.



And all together:





When I get time I'll take pictures of the newer sets, but for today this is it.

Awesome eyes on the rogue, you nailed it!

great eyes work.
i would recommend thinning your paints and do several thin layers if you are using acrylic paints.

Soulmark & Sandyx: Thank you! I'd like to think eyes are one of the first things I started to do right, haha. As for thinning the paints, yeah. I use acrylics but I do 1:1 now. I didn't when I was starting out though.

When my FLGS got Caverns of Roxor in, I jumped on that thing quick. Unfortunately, I had noooo skills when it came to blending. After a few disasters and so much frustration, I settled back on solid colors. If I can justify getting 2.0 (maybe when I have less medical bills to pay) I'd do much, much better. But it takes me a long time to paint and I have infinite other minis to do, so here are my sad fire dudes. Poor Roxor. He's red with rage at his owner's poor painting skills. Also, the blaze beetle is also missing his fire 'do but I honestly like it better that way.





The heroes were clearly Mario/Peach/Link, so I went Luigi/Daisy/Dark Link as inspiration for their colors.


And the Rocktop Gang as koopa troopas.

Then it was Von Drakk manor time, along with all of the available single miniatures at the time. After a few of these I decided to take painting more seriously and started experimenting with the techniques I was learning.












Some singles:






And the heroes:




By the time I got to the Pumpkin Patch we got FK through kickstarter so here are both of them. And yes, I did try to fix the witches' positions, but they settled back into their odd ways a few weeks later. (I guess I didn't do it long enough...?)

I love the blue bases on Heroes (even when toads!) and red for Monsters. I think I may use something similar... seems like a neat system for making bosses, mini-bosses and even elites stand out more clearly.

Thanks, Meankeb! I also do purple for the dark heroes and I'll probably do green for NPCs when they come out.

Where did I leave off...? Oh, Forgotten King. As I said, I got it through Kickstarter so it came with a bunch of extra goodness.

I did the Salt Pillar first. I know, I was lazy with them but I finally got some blending right with the spawn point. It's really obvious (to me, at least, the pictures might not show it quite as clearly) how much better it looks than the Fireflow. As soon as I saw how much of a difference it made, I resolved to "git gud".



Bramble Knights got some tests with wet- and dry-brushing.






Took a break for some easy stuff. The treasures are old and new.




I had a blast with the Old Growth Hollow.




Then I went for the big guys.

Heroes & Stuff.





I couldn't resist putting a little flair on that bag.






Don't ask me how long it took to do these stripes.









One of the trolls came without his arm, so I made him a new one.

The rest of the dudes I've finished. I'm still working on the Claws of the Wyrm, and I still have Glimmerwing and Stilt Town Zombies to do. Surgery took all my funds so it'll be a while before I can afford the newer releases.









The RK crossovers:





I used a lot of greenstuff on this gal, first out of necessity then because it was fun.



The rest I got as presents from friends and family. The cats look like mine IRL.

EFFING BRILLIANT.

Claw Shrine Time! I've made drastic improvement, and it's easy to tell when you compare my first kobolds and drakes to these guys.

I also finished the Grabby House and Gruesome George, along with Glimmerwing.




Made one of them a buckethead zombie as a tribute to PvZ. I was going to do a road cone too but it didn't feel like it belonged in SDE.

I couldn't resist getting the Takoashi crossovers, and since I no longer had anything else to paint, they got done pretty quickly. I made a decision not to let my skills be held back by previous precedent, so I made custom bases. I was going for "crappy high school tiles" but it maybe looks more like marble, which is okay.






I also got Arena as a gift! It bothers me a bit that they recycled the bangs, but her axe has as much personality as she does and it was fun to paint.

I love their dilated pupils! Hilarious!


One bit of criticism on your painting as a whole. I think you use colors of too high contrast.
Like your brown, it's very dark. And you use a lot of pure black. On the same model you use very light colors, like your flesh tones and light blue, pink and pure white.
For me this kinda makes the bright parts really pop out, while the dark parts almost becomes invisible.



For example: You use something like top left "Brown". But I think you would be better off using bottom left "Brunette".

I know you didn't ask for advice, so take it or leave it

Thanks, GK! I am very serious about improving, so I appreciate the feedback. I fear the photography kills the color a bit (I'd say my brown is closer to that syrup color). I do like some high contrast, but you have a good point. I especially look back at stuff like using that deep purple for Von Drakk and it's Just. So. Dark. Without even a highlight to bring it back up. So all you see is his cloak and eyes. What do you think of the last few compared to previous work? I also changed my view on using matte finish instead of glossing everything a while ago, but even a few months ago I was letting what I had done with previous models get in the way of doing better, so you can see with the last four they don't have that gloss hiding detail. It's only on the cherry and tentacle (wet).

In my opinion gloss finish never does any miniatures any favors except for certain parts that specifically need to look glossy like tongues or cherries.

The school girls are definitely some of the better looking ones. I particularly notice how the dark skinned one actually has a visible face. A lot of your dark skinned characters suffers from being too dark - and in addition being surrounded by more dark.
Von Drakk as you mention, Beatrix, Warden and the billmen are good examples. Too much dark on dark.

The school girls' dresses and hair are fine examples of how to highlight the right way. The dark and the light colors are different enough to make the objects pop.
Shading/highlighting is the place where you DO want high contrast. I'd say they could even take a little more contrast.
Look at Glimmerwing. His dark green body could easily bear to be highlighted with the green color of his breastplate scales.

If you put more contrast into your highlighting, two dark objects can better handle being close to each other as each object would be more distinguishable.

So that's something to get going.
Just ask if want help on anything particular

I agree. As I said, I kept doing it because it "matched" my other minis. But now I will probably go back over them with a matte varnish when I get the time.



That's great advice. Thank you!