Miniature Showcase

Icy Shards and Boulders

A friend of ours got these for us as a gift and since we are running an ice themed module I wanted to paint them a certain way. My husband helped cut out a lot of middle ground by spray priming the set pieces while I was at work so I could paint them when I got home. He applied about three layers of white primer to fill in some of the 3D printing lines still showing.

I love painting ice, It has been so fun painting miniatures and set pieces for this campaign. It really made me have to up my painting game. I finally perfected the way I like to paint ice. I started off by painting all the pieces in a light grey for the “shadows” in the ice. I know it doesn’t look like much of a difference from white but the work is not over.

After the grey base coat added a heavy coat of frosty blue paint over every surface. It really helped sharpen the edges and created a contrast between the different angles in the set pieces. Now the grey looks more pronounced and the blue adds the beginning of the icy effect I’m going for. I added the paint by swiping up and down with the brush first and going over it again lightly from side to side to blend the blue a little.

After this I dry brushed a little whited over it with soft round brush strokes to blend the blue a little more and add some white to the mix. Now the ice effect is really coming together. I still thought the white part of the ice wasn’t prominent enough in the painting. It might not show in these photos but the blue was still pretty heavy throughout the pieces. I wanted it to look more icy.

I added some extra white paint and used short smashing motions to add small dots of white paint and blended them with a dry brush afterwards to make it part of the piece. You can really see the difference in the pictures if you look closely. It really was more blue than white. With more white paint on top, it gave the piece a really snow swept look and that was what I was going for. Overall I was really happy with how they turned out and I would love to use them again!

These were a really easy, quick paint job and they give off a great effect for terrain options. Have any questions or comments? Message below or find me on Twitter @DnDWifeStories and on Instagram @dndwife. I would love to hear from you!