Void & Atelier

Hi, I am Bogdan.

Name: VoidAtelier
Address: PL

A one-person grimdark studio in a quiet corner of Poland. I print and paint miniatures one commission at a time, for people who care about the stories hidden inside small objects.

A finished grimdark miniature — the kind of figure VoidAtelier delivers

The Trigger

It started with a single Sororitas

Two years ago I painted my first Warhammer figure — a full set of Adepta Sororitas — as a way to decompress after long work days. The brush became therapy. I had loved dark, realistic drawings since childhood, and grimdark miniatures gave me a place where that love finally made sense.

The name is simple. Void — the darkness from which every character is pulled. Atelier — a small workshop where things are made slowly, by hand. No production line, no subcontractors. Just me at the desk in Poland, and Thomas Shelby, a persian cat with strong opinions about glazes, helping with all four paws.

I work only in the grimdark and dark fantasy register — Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, Forbidden Psalm, Mörk Borg, and independent sculpts that share the same mood. Painting to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, thinking about Bosch and Lovecraft. If you can hear Bohren und der Club of Gore in the slow shadows on a cloak, good. That was the idea.

Two years later the studio exists. A grow tent in a room in Poland. A Saturn 4 Ultra. A wet palette. A persian cat named Thomas Filip Shelby who signs every commission by walking across it. I print and paint only in the grimdark register — Warhammer 40k, Trench Crusade, dark fantasy, the worlds I grew up reading about.

Narrative First

Every brushstroke serves the story. I am not painting miniatures — I am capturing moments from dark narratives in pigment and resin.

No Compromise

I take a limited number of commissions each month. Each one gets my full attention from the first primer coat to the final varnish. Quality is non-negotiable.

Transparency

Progress photos at every major stage, honest timelines, direct replies from me personally. You are part of the creative process from the first sketch to the final varnish.

The Armies I Have Painted

Two years across four factions.

Every army taught me something different. Click through each era to hear the full story.

Year 1

Space Marines

The figure that started everything.

A standard Warhammer 40k Space Marine from a Citadel starter set, bought on Allegro alongside my first paint pots and a single brush. I primed him, painted him, and for the first time I did not think about getting a model ready for play. I thought about the soldier inside the ceramite — what he thinks about between shots, on a battlefield that never ends.

Is he in the void, or on a planet caked in mud? Is he wounded? Is he covered in his enemies' blood? Who was he before the helmet went on?

Citadel starter brushes and base paints
Learned priming, basecoats, washes
Realised painting is storytelling, not prep

The Workshop

A sealed room inside a room.

A 1.5 × 1.5 m grow tent in Poland turned into a quiet, clean little workshop. The printer. The wash station. The ventilation. The chair. The respirator. The gloves. Click each card to hear why it matters.

The studio: a 1.5x1.5m grow tent housing the resin printer, wash station, and ventilation

The Printer

Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra

12K mono screen. The workhorse behind every print.

I chose it for the 12K resolution, the large print volume, and the Wi-Fi workflow — I slice in Chitubox on my desk and push the file straight to the printer without moving an SD card.

The Wash & Cure

Mercury Plus V3.0

Two-in-one station. Cleans, then cures under UV.

I rotate prints through the detergent bath, then under the UV lamp for final cure. Having both in one unit keeps the handoff short — less exposure for me, less mess.

The Resin

Elegoo ABS-Like 3.0+

Tough, detailed, reliable.

It holds fine detail at 0.03 mm layer heights, snaps cleanly off supports, and survives clean-up without shattering. I have tried other blends. I keep coming back to this one.

The Enclosure

1.5 × 1.5m Grow Tent

A sealed room inside the room.

Resin printing needs ventilation, isolation, and cleanliness. The tent gives me all three. Inside: the printer, the wash station, a small desk, a chair — a complete self-contained workshop.

The Ventilation

AC Infinity + Carbon Filter

The air leaves the flat cleaner than it arrived.

Before I do anything inside the tent I turn on the fan. The air passes through an activated-carbon filter before it ever reaches the vent, so no one else in the flat smells resin.

The PPE

Full-Face Respirator

Non-negotiable. Always.

I wear a full respirator whenever the tent is open. I keep nitrile gloves, paper towels, tweezers and a dedicated lab coat inside. Resin contamination is the one thing I will not tolerate.

The Slicer

Chitubox

Where the file becomes a plan.

I orient, hollow, drain, and support every model by hand. Chitubox is the one place where a raw STL becomes a printable object — and where most of the failed prints are prevented.

The Brushes

Kolinsky Sable + Synthetics

Kolinsky for detail. Synthetic for everything else.

I use Kolinsky sable for fine work — the tip holds, the belly carries paint. Synthetics are my everyday: dry-brushing, base coats, glues, pigment work. No snobbery here, just the right tool.

The Palette

RedGrass Wet Palette

Paint stays alive for days.

A wet palette changed my painting. Colours stay usable overnight, blending happens on the palette instead of on the model, and I waste less paint.

Behind the Brush

The Studio

I do not work alone. The desk has its own small ecosystem.

Chief Fluffy Officer

Thomas Filip Shelby

A persian cat with opinions about glazes. He supervises every priming session, inspects every freshly-snipped support, and occasionally walks across a wet palette. He participates in every commission — with all four paws.

“He is next to me for every painting session. I credit him on every finished piece.”

Occasional Co-Painter

The Other Half of the Desk

Sometimes my wife pulls up a chair and joins me under the lamp. She paints slower than I do, and notices colours I miss. Some of the pieces on this site passed through her hands too.

The Craft

From file to figure. From grey to story.

Two workflows run in parallel at VoidAtelier — one at the printer, one at the desk. They share discipline, tools, and a refusal to rush.

Painting desk at night — kolinsky brushes, wet palette, paint pots

Workflow A

Printing

From STL to a clean, cured, boxed part.

Slice in Chitubox
I open every STL and study it — orientation to the platform and vat, hollowing, drain holes, the exact support plan. Fifteen careful minutes here saves four hours of failed print.
Push over Wi-Fi
The sliced file goes straight to the Saturn 4 Ultra over my local network. I hit print and leave. The tent hums to itself for anywhere between three and twelve hours.
Enter the tent
Respirator on. Zip the door behind me. The fan and carbon filter run constantly. I let the platform drip resin back into the vat before I even touch it.
Release & wash
Lay the platform on paper towels, slide the spatula under the parts — gentle, never rushed. Then into detergent for the wash cycle to strip all surface resin.
Remove supports
Supports come off carefully while the part is still slightly flexible. Every nub is checked under light. A bad cut here leaves a crater you cannot hide under paint.
Cure under UV
Into the Mercury Plus for final UV exposure. This is when the part stops being soft plastic and becomes a real, finished miniature.
QC & pack
I check every face under strong light, bag the small parts in separate zip-locks, sort them logically, wrap in bubble, box, and ship.

Workflow B

Painting

From grey plastic to a miniature with a past.

Lay the mat. Arrange the tools.
Work mat first. Wet palette from RedGrass, Kolinsky and synthetic brushes fanned out by size, water jar, paper towel. Thomas Filip Shelby takes his seat. We begin.
Prime carefully
An even acrylic primer from spray or airbrush. Too thick and the sculpt dies. Too thin and nothing sticks. This single step decides the next forty hours.
Base, layer, shade
Start dark, build up. Base colours, layers on the raised areas, shadows in the recesses. I am thinking about the story the whole time — where the light hits, where it fails.
Write the history
Chipping, scratches, glazes, blending, weathering. This is where a painted plastic becomes a character with a past. Mistakes happen here. I have drowned a figure in wash. I have stripped a figure with Wamod and started again.
Varnish & enamel
Matt lacquer to protect. Enamel pin-washes into every recess, thinner and a cotton swab to clear the highs. This is where grimdark happens. This is where Grimdark Compendium earns its keep.
Final coats & selective gloss
A second matt or satin pass, then a pinpoint of gloss on eyes, blood, wet metal. A finished piece is never perfect — I can always see more. At some point I have to choose to stop.

3 – 12 hours

Slicing, the print itself, and roughly forty-five minutes of careful clean-up.

Paint

Weeks. Sometimes months.

I stretch it on purpose. The goal is the finished piece, not the quickest piece.

Hard part

Patience and focus.

Harder than any technique. You either bring it to the desk, or you do not.

Honest Notes

Things I did not know at the start.

Two years of mistakes, small wins, and the occasional stripped-down figure. No mythology — just what actually happened on the way to here.

I used to be afraid of wasting paint.

Every dropper felt expensive. I would procrastinate, avoid the desk, stare at a primed figure for weeks. One day I gave myself permission to waste — to mix, to experiment, to ruin figures. That permission is what taught me to paint.

I used to drown miniatures in wash.

Too much pigment, too little control. I have over-weathered models until the sculpt disappeared under rust. The only way through is to finish the piece, look at it honestly, and if it is wrong — strip it with Wamod and start again. I have stripped a lot of figures.

I used to hate calibration.

Levelling the printer, filtering resin, changing vats, cleaning the workstation. At first it felt like interruptions. Now it is just part of printing — the same way sharpening is part of woodworking. If you skip it, the next print lies to you.

I used to think technique mattered most.

It does not. Patience and focus are the hardest tools. A single figure takes me weeks, sometimes months. Not because it is hard to paint — because I want the work to come from a place where I am actually present.

Where the Darkness Comes From

Influences

Grimdark does not come from a paint pot. It comes from the books behind my desk, the albums I loop at 2 a.m., and the painters I keep going back to. If any of it is audible in the work — that is intentional.

On the page

Clifford Simak
Stanisław Lem
Ray Bradbury
J.R.R. Tolkien
George R.R. Martin
H.P. Lovecraft
Arthur Conan Doyle
Jack London

On the screen

Film noir
Horror
Sci-fi
Dark fantasy

On the speakers

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Bohren und der Club of Gore
Slow, patient jazz

On the wall

Bruegel
Bosch
Dalí
Picasso
Renoir
French impressionism

“If you can hear Bohren's glaciers in the slow shadows on a cloak — good. That was the idea.”

Where I Draw the Line

I do not paint Stormcast. I do not paint anything bright. The studio is grimdark by choice, not by trend. If you are looking for heroic fantasy or bright tabletop colours — you are in the wrong place, and that is okay. I respect painters who do that work well. I am not one of them.

The People On The Other End

The customers are painters too.

Nearly everyone who orders a print or a commission here shares the same hunger I do. They love miniatures. They want to paint them. They just cannot set up a resin workshop in their flat. So they come to me, and I print for them what I would print for myself.

Later — sometimes weeks later, sometimes months — my inbox lights up with a photo. Their version. Painted their way. A figure I made grey and naked, now wearing a story I never wrote.

That is the whole loop. That is why I do this.

I keep those messages.

Start a Commission See the Work

How a Commission Works

The Process

From first contact to final delivery, every step is deliberate.

Consultation

I start with a detailed conversation about your vision. Lore, aesthetic preferences, reference images, and the story you want the piece to tell. No detail is too small.

Concept & Planning

Based on the conversation, I sketch the concept — colour palette, lighting direction, basing theme, and key techniques. You approve the direction before any brush touches the model.

Assembly & Preparation

Meticulous assembly, gap-filling, pinning, and magnetization where needed. 3D printed elements and custom conversions are integrated at this stage.

Painting & Detailing

The core work. Layer by layer, I build the narrative — base colours, shading, highlighting, NMM, OSL, weathering, and atmospheric effects. Progress photos shared at each major stage.

Basing & Finishing

The scenic base is constructed to complement and enhance the miniature. Final varnishing, display preparation, and professional photography of the completed piece.

Secure Delivery

Custom foam-cut packaging with full insurance. Your art object arrives exactly as it left the studio. Worldwide shipping with tracking.

Begin Your Commission

Your Vision.
Our Craft.

Every piece begins with a conversation. Tell us about your project, and we will bring it from the void into reality.

Start Your Project

Void & Atelier

Hi, I am Bogdan.

A one-person grimdark studio in a quiet corner of Poland. I print and paint miniatures one commission at a time, for people who care about the stories hidden inside small objects.

The Trigger