Behold!

This miniature is somewhat special to me, as it is a gift from a generous fellow member on the Lead Adventure Forum* who goes by the name Elprez.
So I decided to give it a bit more attention when shooting pics of it.
Here it is, the Beholder:

The miniature is a Black Tree Design "Evil Eye".
I painted the miniature up from a ruddy brown basecoat, highlighted up to a pale, almost tan brown. Initially I simply drybushed, alternating with various purple, brown and red washes and glazes to smooth the colour transitions and tweak the colour to the tone I wanted. For the last few passes I painted the highlights instead. Quite an unusual experience to paint what is essentially not much more than a textured ball. It meant I could spend my time and mess about with texture and tone of colour instead of needing to focus on getting all the details, and making different colours work with each other. It's a nice change of pace to try and make a single-colour model look interesting.
I hit the eyes with a layer or two of gloss varnish, to give them a more natural shine.
Thank you again Elprez, for giving me the opportunity to paint this model!

I painted this model over the Easter weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed myself doing it. I just didn't have the time until now to get a photographic backdrop set up. (Should have taken the time to clean the lens too, but didn't discover it wasn't clean until after I took all my pics... Then again, it adds a slight dreamlike quality to the pics. ;-p)

*: A really great forum, full of lovely folk. If  you don't know of it already, you should really give them a visit!