The Warlock surveys the valley below..

About a year ago I finished my first diorama project. As far as miniature dioramas go it is fairly static, but I’d like to think it tells a bit of a story. I have always loved miniature dioramas, since I first opened the pages of the Lord of the Rings Warhammer rule book, and saw how they made the rivers, rocks and little walls from cork and stones. I think it was important to keep it simple for the first one, and we can get more ambitious as time goes on!

The Mini

I wanted to paint a mini as a gift for a good friend. Initially I had no idea what I would do for him, so I went to my local hobby store and rummaged through the D&D bins until I found this guy. We hadn’t known each other very long at the time, but I knew he liked Hearthstone. The mini was a sort of boar-man with these epaulets that felt very on brand for a character in that world or World of Warcraft - the same kind of colourful fantasy.

I decided he was a Hoard Warlock

The cogs started whirring and an idea began to form in my head. I wanted to paint it in bright colours, purples and greens, and have him standing on a clifftop in the moonlight. I had never done any OSL (object source lighting) before but I wanted to try and capture that in the final piece.

I did find that the way the resin had been cast resulted in the details being slightly less crisp than other minis - and to to define the intricate bits was quite challening. But I was careful enough to capture the essence of what I wanted. I have learned my lesson about painting these kind of resin models! Nonetheless I forged on.

The resin cast has softer features than I'm used to painting

I tried to capture the colder moonlight by mixing a light blue into all my colours for highlights. I think it worked to tie the colours together but I don’t think it particularly has much contrast. There aren’t any shadows that one would expect to see when a light source is directly above.

Telling a story with the Base

The real inspiration I had for doing this was trying to find something to be a plinth. I found the lid of a glass coffee container actually made a really cool plinth. The story I wanted to tell was this rogue Warlock/Druid fellow making a long journey, probably on a quest to do something nefarious. The scene shows him having set up his last camp, looking down into a deep valley at a town or village where his final task awaits him, to which he will attend first thing in the morning. I wanted to add the campsite in with a fire because I felt that my painting skills weren’t quite enough to really emphasise this was a night time scene.

Building

I started with cork roughly stacked on the plinth as jagged rocks. I covered these in ultrathin superglue to harden them up. I wanted to stack up a pile to become a cliff top, whilst leaving a flat area for the campsite below.

Cork piled up on the plinth.

I then smoothed out all the cork layers with polyfilla, which actually gave a really good rock texture - I’ll bear that in mind for future endeavours. I selected an appropriate piece of orchid bark for a Lion-King-esque cliff edge, jutting out over the edge of a valley. This was supported by a build up of milliput, which I textured with the round side of a metal sculpting tool.

Polyfilla and milliput

To make everything a bit more uniform I covered the piece in texture paste, leaving the odd rock jutting out here and there. I then laid out a cascade of round rocks to match the somewhat cartoonish aesthetic that we were going for, and then some smaller rocks with some sand on top. I locked all of this down with a layer of ultrathin superglue, which has a very low surface tension and covers surfaces evenly.

Texture paste does a lot of blending

After the rocks were down I started working on the campsite. It didn’t need to be too complex, just a campfire and some gear resting nearby. I actually went back and forth a few times on how to achieve this, whether to include another weapon (he was already holding his staff though) or whether to try and make it more of a scene with some leftover food or something. Erring on the side of keeping things simple I ended up opting for a backpack, which comes from an Ogre Kingdoms kit (as they were called when I bought them), and a length of rope which possibly comes from Frostgrave Soldiers.

The campfire is just pieces of sprue, shaved at jaunty angles to try to play into the wonky Hearthstone/WoW aesthetic.

The camp scene begins to take shape

I was already pleased with the outcome - it had this anticlockwise spiral moving up from the flattened area up to the edge of the cliff.

I wanted to draw the eye up from the campsite to the top of the cliff, and tried a few things before settling on a wee cat critter. This came from the Frostgrave Wizards II sprue and really helps to tell the story of this piece. Cats tend to be associated with the night time, and I think it turns the perception of what this guy’s mission might be - initially I was thinking a clandestine assassination but now perhaps he is delivering an important message. Or perhaps on the darker side of things, he intends to plant a cursed shamanic totem within the corrupt Lord’s abode… although, why wait until dawn for that? wouldn’t you want to break in during… ah nevermind.

The cat critter surveys the valley

Painting the base

When it came to painting, I knew I wanted to create a red OSL effect for the campfire. I’d been reading that the best way to get vibrancy was to use a light undercoat. So I took a can of bone colour (lightest spray I had) and applied a target spritz to the front of the base.

I applied a few watered down coats of a red.orange mix. At first I wasn’t too impressed with the result at first, but there is always a crap phase when painting so I soldiered on.

Initially I didn't like it.

I wish I had more photos of this process, because it really transformed as I worked more colours onto the base. I began with watered down indigo, purple and applied more of a red brown towards the edges of the fire. I applied the colours in patches and blended them a bit by dragging my brush along the edges, whilst trying to leave distinct areas of certain colours.

Then to try to achieve a moonlight glow on the rear side, I built up a light drybrush of pale blue over the whole backside of the piece. The next photo shows the subtle colour blending quite well.

A subtle mix of colours

I tried to include more browns and warmer tones towards the front of the piece at the edges where the light was coming from the campfire. Over time I was able to tame the initial intense blob to a nicer blend of shadow to firelight. Within the fire area itself I build up thin layers going towards orange and then yellow. The logs themselves I tried to keep dark on the top. I tried to catch gentle bits of red under the cliff where light would flicker, and even put a tiny bit of red under the guy’s hand.

The final touch was to add some shrubs and plants. I aquired these awesome little pop-out plants from GamersGrass (I think?), which were already purple and tied into the night time aesthetic. I also added a few tufts and some realistic little bushes which are incredible and really brought that last little bit of life to the piece. I diluted some paint and washed the plants to tie them in, but the splash of green really offsets the blues and reds I think.

Overall, it came out pretty good considering the amount of experimentation going on. I don’t think it quite sells the idea that this is midnight under a full moon, but it does tell a bit of a story. I think I could really lean in to the contrast and darked down the backside of the whole thing, and probably make the fire more intense. We can imagine it’s a cartoonish scene where there’s more artificial light than in reality, like in a video game with the gamma turned up! Given the overall vibe I was going for though I’d say ‘whimsical fantasy’ strikes again!

My friend i gifted the piece to is an artist. He has done commissions for MTG before and I think he nearly ended up doing some art for Hearthstone which is amazing, and far beyond my artistic abilities! So knowing his standards would be pretty high was a litte nerve-wracking, but I think he appreciated the work that I put into this, and that I had made him something personal. We don’t live in the same country anymore, so I’m glad I was able to give it to him before I left. The Warlocky druid forever looking down from whatever shelf he lives on.

Creative packaging

In the end I learned a lot by trying to challenge myself to go out of my comfort zone. I thoroughly enjoyed diorama building and already have ideas for more in the future, so watch this space.

I actually quite like the starry background

I thought this background was corny when I was initially editing the images, but now after some time, I kind of like it. I think next time I could paint a real backdrop behind which would really add to the scene…

Alright, I’m off to bed. For at dawn…we strike!