Behold!
Originally posted to Instagram bugboyminis 9 April 2025
I got this Nolzur's Beholder in a bundle on Marketplace. That began a bit of a marketplace bargain hunting addiction in which I've never really topped that first deal.
But this was only the 2nd mini I painted. I used to sketch a lot more and paint in high school and uni. I find minis to be a relaxing form of 3D colouring-in, free from the block of a blank page, with the shapes and model to follow.
I remember when I started painting this, I was energised to try and learn something new with each new miniature I painted. For this it was drybrushing.
I've carried some part of that idea onwards but I expect most people are the same. Miniatures are a space to explore creatively with little fear of messing up. The canvas is small, the stakes are low but when they're held up to your nose or spread out on a table they become a world unto themselves.
I fell of getting anything finished for a long time after this. I hit the hobby spiral of acquiring more tools than I needed and started to make plans of kitbashing and terrain building. Plans that mostly involved collecting household junk, I still had the desire but I struggled to find the motivation to hobby. I started a lot but finished nothing.
I still look back at this as the best thing I've painted.
In the depths of the second lockdown, when I painted this, my partner and I would go out every evening after work for a walk within our allowed 5km zone. We rented a funny split-level house on a hill that had the most amazing views at sunset and when storms blew in from the west. None of the windows worked properly and when the storms came the rain would blow straight under the doors.
We'd go for walks, around the surrounding streets and up though the adjacent reserve. The reserve was mostly an overgrown park, notable for surrounding a disused reservoir and being a popular beat.
On one of those walks I brought a trowel and containers and my partner laughed when I stopped along the way to scoop dirt from the side of the road and pick moss from the path.
I used that to make the base of this model. The dirt from the hill with the beautiful leaky house.
