Reaper Bones Eye Beast (aka D&D Beholder)

Now this one was a LOT of fun.

The Bones material (Bonesium) is great for miniatures, flexible, easy to work with, no need to prime and holds details really well.  And it especially shines when it comes to monsters.

I wanted my Eye Beast to look like the Eye of Flame variant Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons so started with a mid brown base with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade to bring the red tone up.  Over this I dry brushed a light khaki then washed with Agrax Earthshade. 

The Eyes started with a creamy off white with radial spikes of red brown pointing towards the pupil which was pure black then a wash of gloss varnish finished them off. I wanted the teeth to look really rank so they got several washes of dirty brown grading up to pure white at the tips.

One point I would make is that its much easier to paint the inside of the model if you take the two sections apart first.  Once the dark red gums and tongue were painted I reassembled it and painted the rest.  I wanted the tongue to look really human which I thought would make it look even more horrible and i'm pleased with how it worked out.

Overall it was loads of fun to paint and i'm really pleased with how it turned out.  

Reaper Bones Duke Gerard

Hi everyone.

Another day another Bones miniature to get painted.  I had some free time on saturday and spent a very enjoyable afternoon painting this one up.  Its another experiment in Non Metallic Metal painting and worked out faitly well.  I like the overall look at least.

I think the Gold needs more sparkle though and the sword blade isn't as smooth as I wanted, thats mostly due to me not knowing when to stop.  It looked great after the fourth wash but I thought it needed a brighter highlight and that led to a lot of reworking and now it looks a little rough.

This time I started with a darker tan colour as my base for the gold which I think is the right choice.

The white however i'm really pleased with.  I wanted a warm and soft look to counter the hardness of the armour.  It started with a base of creamy mix of Citadel Ushabti Bone and Vallejo US Uniform Drab with successive layers with more and more white added until the final highlight was pure white. 

Starting with a Grey base gives a hard and slightly dirty white which wouldn't have complemented the gold armour very well.  The other alternative would be to start with a blue white base but this gives a very artificial white which works well for Sci Fi but not for fantasy.

The base is another Tiny Worlds Slate resin base with layers of different colour washes built up, it could do with a little more work to be honest so I might come back to it.

I hope you like it, please comment if you would like any more information about colour choices or techniques and i'll be happy to share.

Another Milestone

This blog has just hit 20,000 page views (not counting my own).

Thanks to everyone who's commented, offered advice, support and encouragement.  I'll let you know when we get to 40,000.

Reaper Bones Nightspecter & Ghostly Summoning

These two miniatures were also in the Bones reward box but were made with a translucent green plastic so they sort of work ok for tabletop without painting.  I wanted to see what I could do with them in preparation for a project i'm considering with a similar miniature.

These were speed painted and only took four hours to finish both.  A black base coat was applied followed by a white drybrush layer then Citadel Scorpion Green was used to add the colour, layers of Green & white were used to progressively highlight up to almost pure white. 

Unfortunately the blending was a bit wasted as the drybrushing layer gives a very rough base to work on but for the time spent it worked out ok and i'm sure these two will find some use in a tabletop game soon.

I wanted the second miniature to look like the Blue spirit was being summoned away from the otherworld and losing its green tinge except where her sisters still have a grip.

Reaper Bones Kagunk Ogre Cheiftan

This is the first Bones miniature i've painted from the recent Reaper Kickstarter reward (in fact the first in several months).  It was sculpted by Tre Manor and the level of detail was, as usual, really good.

I wanted to step away from the usual flesh tones I use for Ogres and I've been toying with the idea of a game in an Icewind Dale setting so settled on my version of a Frost Ogre.  He should fit in well with the Storm Giants I have and the other Tre Manor Black Orcs.

I also approached the skin in a different way to usual so didn't use any washes and built up with heavily thinned paint from Vallejo Luftwaffe Uniform Navy into Vallejo Grey Blue with a final highlight of 50/50 Grey blue and White.  It takes longer but seems to have worked pretty well and on larger models the effort is certainly rewarded.

Another thing I did differently this time was to work on one area (like the skin) all the way up to practically finished before even starting the other areas.  I normally try and get some colour on all the parts of a model but this does mean I sometimes don't give each area the kind of attention to detail that I do when i'm concentrating on say the shield until its finished.

Finally I based him on a Tiny Worlds resin base and added some Army Painter snow to help him look frosty.  

I'm particularly pleased with the skin, Hunting horn and the shield on this one although the eyes didn't turn out as well as I wanted.

If you want to know more about how I painted him, which paints I used and why I chose the colours I did just leave a comment below and I'll do my best to explain.

Back with a bucket full of Bones!

I've been away for quite a long time as regular (if I still have any) readers will know.  I've been waiting for the Reaper Kickstarter rewards to arrive since April.

Yesterday they finally arrived.  Was I tired of waiting? Was I getting more and more annoyed with Reaper's refusal to tell international backers what was going on? Was I well and truly fed up with the constant disappointment? Yes to all those.

Am I happy now?  Am I satisfied with the miniatures now they have finally arrived? Have I forgotten the problems and forgiven the mistakes?  I hate to admit it but yes to all of those too.  When a woman gives birth they go through some very intense pain, but once the baby is born good old mother nature generally wipes away the memory of that pain.  Its just the same with my Bones delivery.  

I was ranting on the Reaper forum (sometimes with good reason) and complaining about a company I really like for its god awful communication.  But once I had the Vampire box in my hand and all those Bones miniatures came tumbling out everything was right with the world. 

There are a few issues with some of the sculpts, the Townsfolk Mom with Kids seems to have had a relationship with a potato.  This is the only reason I can think of to explain her potato faced offspring. Ellen Stone, a miniature I was really looking forward to has a face that's oddly similar to Pikachu's and Juliette the female Sorceress seems to have had her fingers burned (off!) casting a spell.

But casting problems are to be expected and with over 240 miniatures to paint i'm not going to lose any sleep over a couple.

As usual, Bones miniatures look like they're a little short on detail but in most cases that's just perception and once the paint is on the detail is excellent.

My next post will be my first paint job, Kagunk the Ogre Chieftain.

1930s Nightclub Singer

I got a call from my regular GM's significant other last month, she wanted to know if I could help her find some female miniatures for Mubaris' 1930s Pulp game as a Valentine gift...aww how romantic is that?

So I looked around and found a few contenders but the PGJ12 Femme Fatales set from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures was by far the most suitable.  This is the first with a party socialite and a Marilyn Monroesque character coming up soon.  Watch this space.

I painted her in the same way as usual with the notable exception of her makeup.  Just a really thin wash of rose over her cheek bones and blood red lips with a dot of white to make them look like they are shiny.  The microphone was also a NMM attempt which worked out ok, high contrast between the darkest and lightest shades make it look reflective which seems to be the secret.

As usual the Pulp Miniatures have solid bases that have to be cut off so I could use the Tiny Worlds resin floorboards one,  not the easiest job in the world but it was worth it.  Another complication was the microphone, its very thin so I couldn't drill too deep but pinning was necessary, just using glue wouldn't have been strong enough.  

I hope you like her!