Mini Monday Banner

Simple Drow Paint Tutorial — Mini Monday, Ep 2

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying table. This week I’ll show you a simple drow paint scheme to have you ready for your next drow encounter in no time.

This paint scheme is perfect for an Underdark campaign and doesn’t take much time at all. I used the drow duellist miniatures from the Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game (Boardgame Geek Link).

Simple Drow Paint Scheme
“This way!” “No! This way!”

Base Coat

Base coat your drow miniatures with a medium to dark grey. I use this as the skin tone for my drow, since black is a very flat color that pulls in light. Your drow figures are going to be predominantly black, so the grey gives you some variation, and you can always darken it with a wash later.

Any Color as Long as its Black

Paint all the armor, weapons, bases, and gear black. Leave only the skin and hair grey. For variety, you could paint the armor and any cloth dark red or deep purple.



Hair

Drybrush the hair white. This works very well with the grey basecoat, which defines the recesses.

Metals

Pick out metallic parts by dry brushing with a metallic color. I used Mithril Silver from Citadel, which shows how old my paints are. Mithril Silver is a bright metallic, now called Runefang Steel. I painted the swords with the same metallic paint, but might have gone with a darker metallic color, like Leadbulcher, just for more variation.

Done, And…

At this point, the simple drow paint job is done. They’re ready for gaming.

Simple Drow Paint Scheme

If you have time, you can go back into your simple drow paint scheme and pick out details like eyes, belt straps, wands, or markings. With white, you can highlight the hair, and use greys to highlight the skin. When you’re done, use a dark purple wash to bring out the detail, but leave the hair.

Painting Heroes and Villains

This tutorial works best for rank and file drow, but you can extend these principles for major NPCs and dark elf player characters. I use this technique as my first stage on all my drow figures, then work in more detail for the major minis.

Pro Tip: Us a purple base coat if you want your drow to look like the ones in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Till next time, play good games!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our store, subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates, and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.