Mushroom Adventurer
40mm resin kit from Dual Forge Miniatures
Painted in 2025
A new company for me, and one that I discovered at SMC 2025.
I think it was the cute appearance of the piece, similar to the thoughts invoked by the little Aradia Narwhal, that made me pick this up and buy it – just something quirky and “different” to paint.
The box is quite basic – photo #1
, and hints that this is a relatively new and quite a small company, with the Dual Forge name on the box, but no box art to distinguish this piece from any others that they might have.
The parts split is pretty simple, a single piece for the figure itself, with the mushroom cap being separate, there’s a small sword and a telescope for him to hold and then a backpack and what could be a map threaded through it to be attached to his back.
All the components are very cleanly cast, with little or no work needed to get rid of mould part lines.
As for painting, I began with the main body casting – photo #2, adding a primer coat of Halfords White, and over that added Buff Titanium Oils with just a hint of Vandyke brown added to darken the colour. Highlights were built up with Titanium White, and in this shot you can just make out the suggestion of a nose that I added to the very flat area between the eye and the mouth.
The tongue was painted a pale pink and the teeth with pure white.
Photo #3 and I’ve painted the backpack with brown oils to represent worn leather, and used similar colours on the main body of the telescope.
The extended part of the telescope is painted with Darkstar Bronze followed by highlights of Bright Gold.
Photo #4 shows the main amount of work done on the cap of the mushroom. It was tempting to paint it red with white spots, but having looked at a lot of pictures on the internet, I found some of a few very glossy, bright blue mushrooms.
“That’ll do for me” I thought, and over the same white Halfords primer, I began with Winsor and Newton Turquoise at the top of the cap, adding Titanium White to the Turquoise and applying that to a central band, and then making a lighter mix to go on the lower edge.
The three colour bands were blended together with a soft brush and left to dry.
Photo #5 shows the cap in place and the model assembled. I’ve added a lot of very fine black lines around the edge of the cap, and once that had dried fully painted on about twelve coats of gloss varnish to give the cap a nice shine.
I decided to add an eye patch to the side he’s got the telescope on – “I see no ships !” and instead of having the sword, I fastened it to a wooden skewer and wrapped some very fine wire around the hilt to fasten them together.
The map threaded through the backpack was painted with off-white acrylics, then oils were used to make land, sand and sea areas on it with green, Yellow Ochre and more of the turquoise respectively.
The Base
I have no idea why portions of the Indiana Jones movies popped into my mind, but rope bridges seemed to appear in my imagination, and I thought it might be an idea to have a portion of one for our intrepid adventurer to stand near.
I found a very old piece of rotted wood in my “It’ll come in at some point for sure” box ( photo #6 ), and after chopping off the upper section to give a flat top, I could then find a suitably sized plinth and start planning what materials I’d use to make the bridge.
The obvious first port of call is coffee stirrers. These could be cut up into short sections to form the planks of the bridge, with some soft lead wire to fasten them together. I sawed down a couple of disposable file handles to make the supports and all of this is shown in photo #7
With the bridge itself being made of the soft wire, I needed something a little more rigid to support it, so the handrails were made from some stiff copper wire, these being fastened into holes drilled into the upright support poles.
More of the soft lead wire was wound around the copper wires and also down to the planked section of the bridge to offer support to the lower run and prevent it from sagging over time.
Photo #8 shows the bridge assembled. I painted the planks and the upright support poles prior to gluing them in place, using a thinned mix of Brown oils, wiping away the excess paint with a soft cloth to reveal the grain of the wood.
Photo #9. Before painting all the wires, I added a few more bits of the lead wire and left ends of it dangling from the handrails. With the bridge in position I could try the Mushroom out for where he’d stand.
Photo #10 and I’m testing that out. The bridge was always intended to hide him a little, he’s looking to see what’s on the other side, and whether it’s worth risking crossing the precarious bridge to get there.
I broke the third plank along, hinting that the bridge might not be as strong as it looks, so crossing is going to be risky.
Photos #11 and #12 show how I’ve had to change position on the figure to be more central to the bridge. A bit of bad planning mixed with wanting to keep the base fairly tight, and if you check with photo #10 then you can see that the spear butt would have been dangling in mid-air had I not changed his placement.
The new position does block the view of the figure with the bridge, but hey-ho, sometimes things like this happen to the best of us.
I’ve added fine sand mixed with cat litter to the top of the base and around the figure’s feet, filling in gaps and creating a solid top to the groundwork.
Photos #13 and #14 show the base with it’s initial coats of paint, beginning with Burnt Umber oils, thinned down a bit with White Spirit so that they flow fairly easily and also so that they soak in to the rotted wood.
I left these to dry for about half an hour, then added some Yellow Ochre oils using a fairly large brush and allowing the yellow to blend a little with the mush darker brown.
A second layer of the Yellow Ochre was added, again using a fairly large brush, but this time not allowing it to blend too much with the wet plaint already in place, and wiping the brush after every couple of passes to remove any dark paint it had picked up off the model.
Finally I added some Titanium White, again trying to keep this from blending with the other colours, and picking out the raised detail.
OK, not finally then. Photo #15, I glued on some very small tufts of static grass – the ready made little clumps that are available and make life very easy indeed. Although they come with a self adhesive blob of glue on the bottom, I still dip them in a small puddle of superglue to make sure the stay put on the groundwork.
Photo #16 shows the packaging for Games Grass laser cut plants, in this case some Plantain Lily, which I bought at Element Games in Stockport. It’s the first time I’ve tried something like this, my memories of etched brass plants not being particularly pleasant, although back then I didn’t know about annealing, nor was I quite as practiced at doing groundwork as I may these days.
Photo #17 shows the actual plants you get, which part from their surrounding carrier material easily and using the rounded end of an old brush handle and some fairly stiff rubber sheet, I could make the leaves have a concave shape and also then press the centre of the plant stems to make the leaves stand up.
Photo #18 shows the plants in position, having fastened them in place with a little blob of superglue.
Either single lily sections can be used as on the left of the picture, or two or three sections can be combined to give a fuller and more bushy appearance, as per the plant on the right.
In the finished shots I’ve neatened up the top of the plinth by painting it black, added some filler around the bottom of the rotted wood cliff and then used some Burnt Umber to blend that in to the rotted wood.
I glued on some very small tufts of static grass – the ready made little clumps that are available and make life very easy indeed. Although they come with a self adhesive blob of glue on the bottom, I still dip them in a small puddle of superglue to make sure the stay put on the groundwork.
Probably the only thing I’ll add to this is some Olive Green oils to hint at algae on the cliff and on the ropes of the bridge, but I need to wait for the oils on the groundwork to dry properly before I can do that.
Final thoughts.
I’m not sure that I planned this quite right. Maybe I should have had the bridge behind him so he seems to have stepped off the bridge and is scanning the trail ahead. That way the bridge wouldn’t be blocking him from view.
Alternatively I could have used a larger piece of rotted wood and have him standing on a raised rock to one side of the bridge, seeming to look across to the other side ?
These ideas came to me too late to act upon, so I’m kind of stuck with him how he is.
However, I’m pleased enough with the finished piece, I like the colours I’ve used, again somewhat brighter than the uniforms of WWI that I was doing just prior to making this kit.
The Dual Forge kit is a really nice little offering and not expensive – I think I paid 25 Euros for it – and it got me back into making a more involved base for it than I usually provide for a single figure.
Overall, highly recommended.
