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The Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy

Welcome to the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy, the place to learn how to paint your favourite miniatures with regular, in-depth and highly detailed tutorials, painting challenges, courses, give-aways and best of all, a thriving community of amazing Academy Members!

LATEST TUTORIALS

This Week's Tutorials

Monster's Lair Base

The first full-length tutorial dives into the world of basing and is a fantastic example of adding a theme to your miniature or characters for any game system or miniature range. These types of bases can show the bravery of your character, taking the fight to a monster on its own turf, or maybe this was what is left of an adventuring party where things ended badly for your RPG character.

In this video, we show you how to create your own themed base by focusing on the following:

  • How to add an undulating surface to the base for interest whilst taking into account the size and shape of your miniature.
  • How to create a realistic texture for the ground that blends nicely with boulders and rocks.
  • How to add bones to your base including great tips on where to get them.
  • How to paint the base to completion including great advice on adding blood over the bones.

Making these types of bases that add instant character and narrative to your miniatures is great fun and can be used for any miniature in your collection. They are particularly effective for monsters, Flesh-Eater Courts or Vampire Counts miniatures from the worlds of Warhammer.

3 Top Tips for Beginners

Our second tutorial for the week returns to the spotlight of beginners to the hobby and is a great guide to help start those taking their first steps into miniature painting.In this video, we show you three great tips for getting started with miniature painting by focusing on the following:

  • An introduction to dryrushing which is a great technique for bring out the features on your miniatures. Here we explain how to do it correctly, illustrate common pitfalls, and explain what to do if things go wrong.
  • Next we give a great introduction to the technique called edge highlighting, this is a fantastic skill to learn and in doing so you will hone your hand-eye coordination and neatness. In this section, we illustrate a useful exercise to get you off to a great start.
  • Finally, we then take a close look at caring for your brushes. this is often overlooked but is extremely important because if you look after your brushes, they will look after you.

These tips highlight some essential parts of the hobby and whilst in the video Duncan uses a Space Marine miniature, these techniques can be applied to absolutely any miniature in your collection.

What is the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy?

The Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy, or DRPA for short, is a Membership site where you can come and learn to paint your favourite miniatures. Whether you are a beginner or even an experienced miniature painter, the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy will teach you all the techniques you need to know and give you the confidence to paint any miniature you desire.

Want to know which miniatures we’ve made tutorials for? Then just click the link below!

enjoy these sample tutorials

This is just a small taster of the video tutorials we have on the site. We will be adding new, exclusive content every week that can only be found right here for our members. We will be covering all manner of miniatures, techniques and advice, everything to help you improve your painting skills. Check out the full list of videos and a gallery of the tutorials on the site by clicking the link below.

Tutorial of the Month!

Ushoran, Master of Delusion

The tutorial for this week is the impressive Carrion King, Lord of Masks, The Master of Feasts, Nagash’s most dreaded Lieutenant and Father of Abhorrants… His Royal Highness, Ushoran, Mortarch of Delusion. . This fantastic new character is a very welcome addition to Games Workshop’s Age of Sigmar and adds flavour to a fantastic range of miniatures in the Flesheater Courts. Ushoran adds so much depth to the already deranged and deluded vampires of the Flesheater Courts who believe themselves to be the heroic protagonists of the Mortal Realms and the miniature reflects that insanity perfectly. The thing to consider when approaching this miniature is that his pose makes it extremely difficult to paint the underside of Ushoran, so sub-assemblies are key to overcoming this. In the video we go into detail showing what sub-assemblies we recommend and why we chose to do them this way. 
 
In this video, we show you how to paint Ushoran in the box art colour scheme by focusing on the following:
  • What three major stages to begin with that lead you around the miniature before circling back to focus on the smaller details. 
  • A great way to paint his green tinted blue skin using easy to replicate techniques. 
  • How to paint the various pelts draped off his shoulders including the many severed heads (not forgetting there are also two severed Orruk heads!).
  • How to paint his filthy red cloak showing you in detail how to blend the various colours and add the dirt at the very end. 
  • What order to go through the minor details of the miniature so as to not to tie yourself in knots. 
  • A great way of painting stone on the base and advice on when you should paint the dirt to match your basing scheme. 
  • How to add finishing touches to your model with some great weathering effects.  
This miniature is fantastic and covered in details that really expose the monster  behind the veil! The techniques in this tutorial would be great for not only Ushoran but any miniature from the Flesheater Courts range and most Undead miniatures in your collection.

Check out the gallery below for a sample of our 380+ Tutorials

WHY BECOME A MEMBER

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FULL PAINTING TUTORIALS

Whether you want to paint a single figure, a vehicle, a monster or even a piece of scenery and not to mention new techniques, you will find an in-depth tutorial here just for you.

Lannisters Swordsmen

NEW CONTENT EVERY WEEK

Every week we will be adding brand new content for Members only. Whether it's video painting tutorials, blog posts and online painting guides, you can be sure you'll always have something to both help and inspire you.

Duncan Rhodes drpa

WE HAVE A DUNCAN

With over 10 years experience, running painting seminars all around the world and hundreds of video tutorials under his belt, there is no one better to both teach and give you the confidence to achieve the results you've always dreamed of.

£3.99 PER MONTH

That's about the same price as a really nice cup of coffee. Not too bad for expertly produced painting tutorials and tons of inspiration.

MONTHLY PAINTING CHALLENGES

Every month we host a fun painting challenge on our Forum where Academy Members can show off their amazing work and get both inspired and motivated by an amazing community of hobbyists. The winners get an exclusive DRPA Pin badge and an hour online hang out with Duncan where they can ask any questions they want or just simply hang out and paint.

COURSES

The latest addition to the Academy is Courses! Here we host full, in-depth courses that will, over time, cover various, large subjects starting with a full course for beginners - The Fundamentals of Miniature Painting.

MONTHLY GIVE AWAYS

Every month we have a give away for a lucky Academy Member. Prizes in the past have ranged from an amazing core sets like Leviathan to an Airbrush from Harder and Steenbeck.

Here's what our Members have to say

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Keep up with all the Academy News

Sign up to our weekly newsletter to find out about what’s happening in the Academy from upcoming video tutorials, teasers, giveaways and announcements. Just fill in a few details below and you’re ready to go. 

Subscribe to our Newsletter here.

Small Studio Shoutout_01

There are many fantastic, small, independent miniature and games studios out there and we believe in helping each other out wherever we can. If you feel like checking out something a bit different, then please feel free to give these guys a look-see. You may just be surprised at what you can discover…

Thanks

Dunc & Rog