Writer's Grove

Still Life with Dwarfs and Beer #1

July 18, 2010

Okay, so in an earlier post I firmly established my Nerd Cred. Follow me now I descend fully into madness, kind of like those guys who went exploring the House of Leaves.

See, my friend Alan got me started painting miniatures. And for some reason, the idea of painting miniature dwarfs really tickles my sense of redundancy.

I’m painting a dwarf warband to play a game called Mordheim, which is a skirmish-level version of Warhammer where you can start out with six or seven dudes and build up to maybe 15. And when I’m not playing Mordheim (which is most of the time, I swear), then I can just chuckle at the fact that I have a collection of miniature dwarfs.

Alan is a Golden Demon award winner, which means he paints miniatures so well people send him fan mail and pay him to paint their miniatures for them. When Alan decides to paint dwarfs, they look like they’re going to hack you up if you don’t give them a keg of ale right now. (By the way, that’s a dwarf king being carried on top of a shield by two minion dwarfs. I explain that because I originally thought this was a dwarf mother protecting her children.) Anyway, my dwarfs ain’t that cool. But they’re ready to find some treasure in Mordheim, by golly. Left to right, you’ll see my Engineer, one of my Thunderers, and a Troll Slayer.

Still Life with Dwarfs and Beer #1

You might notice that my dwarfs are a touch out of focus; that the beer, in fact, seems to be far more central to the composition. I could not gainsay you. But I am going to make an excuse: I took this with my cell phone, and its depth of focus sucks just a wee bit. My real camera is in New York and I’m in Arizona, so until we are reunited, I must make do with what I can. Still, there is much to appreciate here:

1. The beer is Mothership Wit by the New Belgium Brewing Company. The pint glass is from The Pike Brewing Company in Seattle, an underground establishment I enjoyed visiting a few years ago.

2. The color of the beer and the color of the Thunderer’s beard are remarkably similar. It’s almost like I planned it that way.

3. The modeling paints have excellent names, like Vomit Brown and Graveyard Earth.

4. You can look forward to more of these Still Lifes because I have plenty of dwarfs yet to paint, and it’s not like I’m going to stop liking beer tomorrow. :)