Welcome to Brush tips, an ongoing painting series on the blog exploring a little bit of everything miniature painting.
You may have been able to tell by now that I am a fan of old citadel miniatures, and other miniatures from around the same era, there's something so characterful and alive about hand sculpted miniatures that I can't escape, and over the span of the last few years started to collect up a little collection of these miniatures, some for projects and others bought with no plan in mind other than own a piece of hobby history.
I got into the hobby at the cusp of, what we now know as, 'Oldhammer' making its way out the door and the grim dark muted tones of the early 2000s taking over, a transition where Goblin Green Bases became a thing of the past, long live the brown base rim!, and bright outlandish paint jobs were replaced by darker more grounded schemes.
I got into playing and painting Warhammer around 2004-5, at the beginning of 40k 4th edition and at the cusp of 6th edition fantasy becoming 7th edition, having a flick through the pages of my old army books the death of Goblin green bases, oh the travesty, is evident in the army books between 6th and 7th.
My first ever citadel set I remember getting was the monopose plastic Chaos warriors paint set (sculpted by Dave Andrews in 1994 - a sculpt older than me) - I think I got the 5th/6th edition repack in the early 2000s, Which I amazingly still have to this day, The miniatures still covered in several layers of thick bright red paint and messy gold trim the bright colours of the paint guide - and then the Grim and Dark took hold..
Growing up with 4th edition and the Space marines as my chosen factions with Lord of the rings following on its heals, my painting journey followed, as I'm sure many of you did, into the paint guides of White Dwarf and hobby sessions at the local Games Workshop, full of amazing paint schemes from the 'Eavy Metal team and community members a like, gone were the days of primary colours and bold patterns, Dark more grounded schemes imitating what was on the pages of the latest codex was all that was on my mind.
Even to this day 20 odd years later, my painting still tends towards the darker more muted tones, so... why am I telling you all this?
...Well, There's a fantastic community of content creators, artists and hobbyist that have spent their hard earned hobby time to revive the 'Oldhammer' painting of days gone by into a community of like minded hobbyists creating amazing work, and along with that the aptly named painting competition Olden Demon.
Something I a have followed along with over the last couple of years with great joy at seeing the amazing work people have submitted, and being drawn back into painting 'like its the 80s' by the likes of 'Wightstar' and 'Anvil of doom miniatures' to name a few.
I have decided to test my skills, and likely patience, and paint up two entries for this years Olden Demon 2026, One entry is something I've been planning for quite some time - You may recognise the miniature from a previous Retroplastics! article - and the Classic - Freestyle category seemed like the perfect opportunity to paint this for, and ofcourse I'm talking about the fantastic PsychoStyrene Dwarf Sprue from way back in 1985!
I'll be painting this miniature on sprue mounted on the plinth in the photo, as for what I will be putting on the back drop you'll have to wait and see.
For my Second entry, this time in the Classic - Fantasy Category I will be entering one of the hero miniatures from Citadel Miniatures BME3 Balrog encounter at Kazad-Dum:
I don't have the whole set, but I was given Gandalf, Boromir and Strider from this set by a friend year or so back and they've sat in the same paint job they have been in for, likely, over 40 years.
I've got future plans for Gandalf so that leaves me to choose between Boromir and Strider (Aragorn), Which one would you choose? - Let me know in the comments or on the discord which one you think I should Paint up for Olden Demon.
I'll be sharing updates on these Olden Demon Projects as well as a whole slew of other painting projects on upcoming Brush Tips articles, I hope you follow along for the Journey, I've got to learn about painting in the Oldhammer style and hopefully I can share some of that along to you.
For now, I better get to stripping these models ready for cleaning and priming...
Well, I may have said I wasn't going to jump in to any big projects this year but this sounds like it might be quite an adventure, It looks like I've got a lot of painting on my plate before May, as well as painting up entries for Olden Demon, I've signed up for Games Workshops 1 Million Miniatures pledge, and am working my way through the Misfire Hobby Challenge.
I'll be posting an update on how the first few weeks of the hobby challenge has been going soon but In the meantime I want to say thank you to everyone who has joined in on the challenge themselves, we've had quite a few people join in with some people altering the challenge to fit their own hobby challenges - We've had Miniature painters barrelling through miniatures, avid readers challenging themselves to get through there stack of unread books, Gunpla enthusiasts with stacks of Gundam taller than them to build, and just a few people who may be stuck in the negative points with the new releases being too tempting to resist - it's been fun to follow along with everyone's hobbies!
If you'd like to join in don't forget to join our Discord server where you can start your own hobby challenge Thread.
Thanks for reading,
Will