Bar bar bar bar Barbaros

My technique: First off, grab yourself a decent brush. Something like a Windsor and Newton Series 7 000 Miniature is ideal and will make a big difference. Next, thin your paint. I like to use Vallejo Thinner Medium for this, as I find it makes the paint easier to control at the proper consistency. Now assuming a standard human model, the process I use is this: Paint the eye socket in an off-black colour (black mixed with some medium brown). Don't be tempted to use pure black - it'll look unnatural. This step is what forms the 'eyeliner'. Wait for that to dry fully, and then paint an off-white eye within the eyeliner you just painted. For this I use white mixed with a little bone colour (for the reasons outlined above). You may find that using a slightly heavier-duty paint helps for this. I'm currently using Citadel Ceramite White, which is (or at least was) from their 'Base' range. This will give better coverage over dark colours. Finally, it's time to do the pupil. For this, I tend to use a similar mixture to the eyeliner. For larger eyes (or steadier hands) you may wish to go a bit further with this. To be honest, I find many of the humanoid Malifaux eyes to be too small to paint at my skill level (I'm used to 40k). My Lilith, for instance, currently just has the eyeliner done in a slightly lighter than usual shade. To be honest, I'm pretty happy with that. Here's a 40k Dark Angel I painted some years ago using the above technique. One eye is much better than the other:

That sounds like a fair point. Not played Diablo, but I will have a look. I've seen it, and I think you're right that it's the aesthetic I'm going for. I love all that Castlevania-type stuff! I'm dying to paint up some demonic sigils (hopefully without summoning any actual demons in the process), so I think I will have a go at this.

Haha, cheers! That bloody song pops into my head every time I activate Barbaros, so I figured everyone else could suffer too. I also just got a Dreamer boxed set ... but I know I'm not the only one ... 😶

Sure you can - for the right mini. Airbrushes make priming and basecoating a total breeze, and then you can do something called zenithal highlighting, which I'm still learning, but works very well for anything that's mostly one colour (see the Terror Tot below, for instance). One trick when zenithal highlighting is to use slightly different colours to increase contrast. So for instance, when spraying that Tot, I basecoated in bright pink, but I didn't use dark pink for the shadow coat. What I did was to mix the pink with a little blue, to create more of a purple. I think this is called colour temperature highlighting / lowlighting or something like that. I learned it at an airbrush session I took with a Golden Daemon-level painter. Even with stuff that's multicoloured (character model-type stuff), an airbrush can be useful. I like to prime, then spray many models in a fleshtone for instance, so that the skin areas are nice and flat, and I know they extend to the very edge of the hairline, etc. Makes painting eyes a bit easier when the paint underneath is perfectly smooth. Airbrush wise, I use an Iwata HP-CS, which is a great, if slightly expensive choice. You'll also want a compressor with a number of features, including: -An air tank (to avoid pulsations). -An adjustable regulator (to allow you to spray at different pressures). -A moisture trap (so your paint doesn't get contaminated). I use a Badger compressor, but I think it's a rebranded Chinese item which is widely available. Initial setup costs are not cheap, but this will save you time and money in the long run if you use a lot of rattle cans currently. The Iwata brush I mention will probably get handed down to grandkids too if I ever procreate. It's a real quality piece of kit. Anyway, here's one of my Terror Tots, which was actually the first Malifaux mini I painted. I've been doing Warhammer stuff on and off since I was a kid. This was probably 80% airbrushed (all the skin), with just the details painted by hand. I also sprayed the base black using an airbrush, and then painted the other tiles in bone:

This sounds like a really cool idea! I just measured my Classic Deck and it came out at 88x63mm - the same size as a regular playing card. You could also consider the Retro Deck. It's out of print, but I found one on eBay easily enough. The cards in that deck are plastic, but look older than the ones in the Classic Deck.

I recently decided that I'd make my own custom scheme markers, so I bought a 10 pack of the translucent purple Wyrd 30mm bases. But I realised that I don't actually know what a scheme marker is meant to represent ... I'd like each one to be unique, but still stay within a theme. With my Neverborn minis I've gone for a sort of Gothic mansion approach to the basing (black and white tiles, wooden floors, ornate garden pieces, etc). So I guess my question is, what kind of effect should I ideally be shooting for here? Do you think they should be like tiny generic terrain pieces, or should they be more themed as terrain that a character has interacted with? One of my ideas is to make little wooden signs with 'ours' written on. Equally, I like the idea of making them into tiny ritual sites with pentagrams and candles and stuff, but I don't know if that really works as a scheme marker. What's your take on this? Also, if you've got any cool examples, please feel free to share! 😎