Earlier this year I decided to do something I’d never done before: paint an entry for Golden Demon. I went in feeling pretty confident (okay—cocky), thinking I could adapt my larger-scale painting habits and knock out multiple entries in six months. Reality check: I finished one. This little Blood Bowl halfling ate 80 hours of my life and came home with a highly commended pin—and the real point of the video is what that process taught me, not where it placed. I break down how I chose the model (open pose, readable character), why I picked a cold green/white/gold scheme to survive the cabinet lighting, and how I used chaos black’s satin reflections to plan my light placement. From there it’s the actual grind: sketching the whole model before refining, building skin with glazes that shift hue but also darken, stippling leather texture on the ball, and fighting for clean freehand stripes that behave like cotton. The “next level” details—bounce light, tighter black lining, tiny freehand—are where it starts to feel both rewarding and kind of torturous. The hard truth is that painting for Golden Demon isn’t just brush control—it’s whether you actually enjoy the late nights, the tiny corrections, and the moment you go a bit blind to your own work. Don’t make the worth of the process dependent on the medal. If it doesn’t feed you, step away and paint what makes you excited to sit down again.