Painting: Phase Spider

My party was wadding into a long-lost temple of Gond located deep in the Castle Ward of Waterdeep. In addition to the traps and temple guardians, a host of phase spiders had taken up residence in the final chamber.

I decided to try my hand at painting a few minis for the session. My goal was to come up with something presentable for the table and I think I achieved that. These certainly will not win any competitions but they were enough to put my party on edge.

Materials

I used Elegoo Translucent Resin on my Elegoo Mars 2 Pro to print a design by mz4250. (You can find the stl here). If you are unfamiliar with his work, he has been working through all the monsters in D&D and open-sourcing his sculptures. Truly a man of the people. If you want to support him, here is his Patreon.

Paint wise I used what I had on hand:

• Heather Blue (Reaper Mini)
• Dragon White (Reaper Mini)
• Pure Black (Reaper Mini)

Painting

I used two-sided tape to fix the model of my painting handle.

Base Coat

I then applied a base coat of Heather blue to the bottoms of the legs and the main body of the spider. I was planning on removing the base (more on that later) so I was focused on just getting the paint on the model. The hardest part was the outline on the abdomen. It took me a couple of tries, using a wet paper towel to start over, to get it acceptable.

Then, to get the fading look on the legs, I combined two drops of Heather Blue and two or three drops of water.  then lightly faded the diluted mixture up the legs.

Washes

The next step was to apply the wash.

I mixed:

• Four (4) parts Heather Blue
• Two (2) parts Pure Black
• Eight (8) parts water

The wash itself came out a little darker than I would have liked so I might recommend reducing the Pure Black to a single drop.

Dry Brushing

Next was dry brushing. I did two passes.

The first was a layer of pure Heather Blue to compensate for the darkness left by the wash.

The second was a half-and-half mixture of Heather Blue and Dragon White.

Unfortunately, the pictures don’t do the model justice.

Details

There were three details I added to finish up.

The Eyes:

• 3/4 Heather Blue
• 1/4 Dragon White

The Spots:

• Heather Blue

The Fangs:

• Pure Black

Finished

Removing the Base: One thing you may notice is that this spider looks a little different than the one above. I painted two as I went (same process, subtle adjustments). Unfortunately, while removing the base of the first one, I snapped off three of its legs. In retrospect, I should have kept the base and just painted it.

Keeping a Log: As I paint, I keep a log of what I did. In the event that I want to reproduce the look (or adjust it), I have the reference right there.