Back to the D&D Board Game series today – The four eponymous villains from the Temple of Elemental Evil box. Each of the foursome took a rather different style of painting.

These first two of the models come in a dark but slightly transparent plastic – The Water Elemental took some Contrast Paint, as I actually painted it alongside the three from Drizzt. Because of the dark plastic, though, it turned out much, much darker. The extra-swirly details on this model also rendered the look of it rather indistinct. As with the Drizzt models, I drybrushed a bunch of Vallejo Foam Effects white to give it a slightly better look. I’d still call the Pathfinder models far superior to all of these Boardgame models.

The Air Elemental on the other hand was another Contrast Paint Experiment fail – it just looked awful with both grey and white attempts (each of which I quickly washed off). In the end, the best option to make it look like a decent Air Elemental was to go properly white, and then give it some subtle shading. Sure, it looks a little like a snowman, or a soft-serve-ice-cream-swirl-man, but trust me – it looks a lot better than stock. Once again, though – I think the more recent Pathfinder models are better.

The next two models again both take different tacks. The Earth Elemental was another Contrast Paint experiment that had an …average outcome. I don’t recall which of the paints I used here, but it did give the Earth sculpt a real “prepaint-dip” type look, which can pretty plainly be seen in these pics. I gave it a drybrush to finish off, because, let’s face it – it’s a mediocre sculpt that doesn’t deserve more time than I gave it here. Good enough for gaming.

Finally, the Fire Elemental started with a yellow spray – the same bright yellow spray used to base coat the Yochlol. Following this was a paint wash of thin white to brighten the deepest parts of the sculpt, then after it dried, a redo of yellow, then orange, red and then a very dark grey for the highest (coolest) points, including the fingertips, “ears”, and end of the tail. A few layers of drybrushing to give a kind of OSL-effect, as well as a black wash to finish the base in order to increase the OSL-shadow-contrast on the floor.

This final pic gives us a sense of scale for the two larger elementals next to an ogre, as this pair are my final submissions for Ann’s Miniatures of Magnitude Challenge for May & June! Wrap-up post for Ann’s challenge (with a group scale shot) tomorrow!