Cuddles
Resin casting from Aradia Miniatures
Painted in 2025
Although it’s going to be a very short article, I thought it was worth writing, simply because I’d like to see Aradia do more of these type of small kits.
There is already a little triceratops sculpted in a similar style, and yes, I bought that one too.
So this is a small figure of a Narwhal, about 5cm long from nose to tail, and comes in just two pieces, the main casting and a separate horn.
To the purist, the horn is in the wrong place really, on the real animal it’s actually a tooth that has grown to immense length and sprouts from the mouth – where all good teeth are usually kept.
In fairness, this wouldn’t look as cute with one massive buck-tooth, so I’ll forgive the sculptor making it more of a seagoing unicorn.
Casting is very clean, with a mould part line under the tail end of the body and a couple of pour lugs to remove.
With that done it’s ready to paint.
The box art shows a cute blue coloured one, and I guess because this is pure fantasy, that any colour could be chosen to suit the painter’s whim.
Having painted a more realistic Narwhal previously for on the base of the Creative Beast’s Dragon, I thought I’d go for fairly realistic colouration on the body using various browns and black for the upper areas and a cream colour on the underside. I did add some Carmine to the cheeks and some big blue eyes in almost a Manga style.
The “Scouse Brows” were a must too.
As a final touch I painted a small resin “rock” casting to represent some floating ice, and perched the little fella on the top of that.
A quick paint-job, pleasing to look at and ever so cute, hence the name – “Cuddles”
This little fellow is now in a friend’s collection, it was “kind of” painted with him in mind, as all through the painting of the Creative Beasts Dragon and Narwhal he took particular dislike to all things Narwhal related.
I thought this might soften his heart towards a perfectly harmless seagoing unicorn.
In hindsight, and seeing him go to his new home, I think I’ll have to buy another one of these to paint.
The one on the Aradia website is painted with a brightly coloured “splash” effect, I wouldn’t mind either a go at that, or just painting a variation on this one I’ve done.