2026: Updates for Dark Heartwood

It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to focus on Dark Heartwood - a lot of that was general life happenings and it’s taken a while to settle into it all. Moving house, moving out of a studio across the country, full time jobs etc. All things that have made it more stable to continue with Dark Heartwood, but all things that slow down progress.

Dark Heartwood started during the time of the pandemic as a personal project for me to get my head around zbrush and miniature making and as it grew my space to contain it shrank. The pandemic strangled the convention scene and the council that owned our studio space decided to wind down the support in aims of demolishing the building to make way for a block of flats (which never actually happened!). So Dark Heartwood limped along. However, like the crocodilians at the end of the K-Pg extinction event it endured, waiting out the hostile environment and devouring the small scraps that came close enough to be consumed.

And now it has stability, a territory to grow, replicate, consume, devour.

Shipping.

Since we have been in hibernation the world has shifted as it often does. Trees are young in comparison to the apex predators of the ocean, Mountains appear static to those who exist too briefly to admire their ebb and flow and America decided to change how it handles import taxes for small items.

We have the solutions - squarespace will allow us to add duties and our postal service will allow us to pay those duties on your behalf. This means what you see is what you pay and there will be no additional stress on your part. We will be looking into adjusting prices so you don’t see a bump in costs.

Coming next year! The freshly dead march under the standard and along to the bang of the skin drum.

Following the Heart

The world does shift indeed.

Maybe it is nostalgia, maybe it is the way we have to exist in this sickly digital forest or, maybe one is a symptom of the other. The ever unsatisfied demon for newness is the loudest it has been. Use zbrush it whines, use photoshop, subscribe, update, Sign in, sign up, no! use this instead! How about this price plan?

Now it has it’s hooks into generative AI to flood the world with it’s own tedious ideas that it swears are yours.

A subscription and dependency on a software to make art? No thank you. Printer no longer supported? again no thank you.

So we retaliated and took a look at why we started all this. What we loved and what we were fooled into thinking was the only way we could do something. We spent the last year and a half learning how to sculpt miniatures by hand. Why? Because art is personal to every artist. For us, we felt it should be made by hand where we can, it should a little bit imperfect and now more than ever we appreciate the tangebility of its tactile present matter more than 0’s and 1’s.

Coming next year the Winchester Ghoul and her baleful gun hound.

We looked at why we enjoyed miniatures in the first place, looked at the miniatures that got us hooked in the late 90s. The craft and hand sculpts of Trish Carden, the Perry twins and Nick Bibby and many others.

Miniatures are painted by hand by you, so it feels like a greater connection to the process is to sculpt them by hand too. Are they a little wonkier? yes. Are they are little chunkier? yes. But are they a little more human? Absolutely.

To Round Off

From now on all the Dark Heartwood miniatures will be sculpted by hand, because for us Dark Heartwood has become a safe harbour away from the static, a place to sit and immerse ourselves in the flow of learning and making something by hand. A place away from screens and distraction. A place that is dark, quiet and is happening as fast or slow as it feels is right.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. We hope to see you in the Heartwood soon. Oh, and remember if you hear the trees cry you must run, the direction matters not, it is the act of running that holds weight. Do not look up or down as you do so and when you feel safe enough to stop you must not discuss what just happened.

Stay safe out there

Tom