My hobby of building miniatures and taking pretty pictures

Sublime work OP.

Since they're clearly a warhammer 40k fan, here's an unrelated-but-related recent discovery of mine for mini painting: artist gouache or artist watercolor (make sure you get ones that use gum arabic binder) are awesome for pin-lining and recess shading the way oil paint or enamels are often used for those tasks, but only water is needed instead of white spirit. And they're indefinitely "editable" with a damp brush / qtip. The only downside is that you need to varnish to seal the watercolor before painting over it. A black and a burnt umber will get you really far.

Demo of the technique from 3:55 - 5:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vHDq3NJj4E

	▲	specproc 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Been painting for years and not come across that one. Thank you kindly.

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skybrian 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not directly related, but one of the more impressive artists I've seen along these lines. Each photo has a bit of a story to it:

https://bsky.app/profile/maggiemice.bsky.social/post/3mqty4y...

https://bsky.app/profile/maggiemice.bsky.social/post/3mpqrsc...

https://www.maggierudy.com/making-mouseland

	▲	kriro an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Pretty cool. Would love for her to somehow work with the people who make the Mausritter RPG :D
	▲	veunes 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Wow, these are excellent. I clicked for the miniature craft and ended up staying for the tiny mouse drama

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veunes 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The tiny newspaper and individually assembled tulips got me. There is a strange amount of joy in details that almost nobody will ever notice unless they stop and look closely.

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kriro an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very nice. I love the "mirror shot" and the one with the two stools in the foreground. Very fair prices for the coffee :D

My personal litmus test is a pourover not an americano because I usually don't go for the espresso-based drinks.

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amelius an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great to see a hobby AI can't do yet.

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mholt 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ah neat, my daughter likes to do this too, with Rolife. I let her borrow our camera with our 105mm macro lens to take artsy shots of her builds, and it was a fun learning and creative experience together. Highly recommend.

Also, dust and hair at that scale looks hilariously huge, so you might want a cleanroom. :-/

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sshine 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My wife collects and resells these miniatures.

It is quite fascinating. It's kind of like Warhammer.

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kuerbel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They buy them assembled? or rare versions or something?

	▲	sshine 38 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The miniatures come prepainted but as tiny bits, like a croissant, or a lamp, or a sofa. So it's not so much about painting them as it is gluing tiny magnets to them and making small installations that are repluggable. Some of the items have tiny electrics inside, e.g. an actual tiny LED lamp. The "scenery" (much like Warhammer battlefields) are then made from cardboard and hobby materials. You can also buy them pre-assembled, but they're much less impressive (usually one color, generic, e.g. "doll house" or "house sliced halfway"). There's a subgenre for 3D printing the scenery. My wife uses small glass jars upside down. so the items live on the jar's lid. Looks very cute with a small LED lamp and lights off. I think none of this is rare, but surely some items are more unusual than others. The rarity comes from this being a hobby that not many know about. Tiny magnets seems to be the item you run out of.
	▲	tamimio 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I just bought the other day a fully smol garden/green house! It also comes with tiny lamps and a battery.

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sixtyj 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There should be some scale for comparison just to wow people more. I think that most of us underappreciate how really tiny models are.

	▲	veunes 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Definitely needs the traditional banana for scale, although in this case the banana might occupy half the cafe (just a joke, sorry (just in case))

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sebmellen 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Super cool. Love these kinds of posts.