This week we're back to minis, these particular ones done over the span of a few weeks in between liftship builds. I've talked about James Wappel a lot in the last handful of posts so I figured I'd post a WIP to show what I'm talking about. On the right is an in-progress of my lousy interpretation of a shaded basecoat. This is about the one hour mark for the two and only because I started with inks that took forever to dry. Doing this allows me to block in colors quickly and to start studying the fig to see where light and shadows should be. It also helps pop out the details which, on Reaper Bones figs, are often hard to spot.
This is a Gauth, particularly one named Bellax from the Wrath of Ashardalon board game. Like a lot of these the sculpt is good but the mold is lousy. I really wanted to mess with this color scheme and this was a good opportunity to practice blending. My blends aren't good but then again, this is a speed paint. All told, base coats and finishing this guy took around three hours. The magenta and purple are Pro Acryl with Vallejo Game Ink Violet. For whatever reason, the basecoat didn't want to stick so the teeth are wonkier than I'd have liked.
Next up we have Gwyddis, Dwarf Valkyrie. I didn't actually order this fig--it came as an extra with one of my big Reaper orders. The more I looked at her, the more I liked the fig. This continued as I got to painting and I ended up painting for longer than I expected. The mold isn't great and I did a pretty lousy job of dealing with the mold lines. I have no idea what the thing on her back is supposed to be and I realize that I painted them as if they were metal but then didn't use metallic paints. I could certainly have pushed the quality up more but I've got other stuff to do and stopped after a fairly enjoyable five hours.
This guy is one of the first miniatures I purchased a really long time ago. He's an Adventurer with Spear from Grenadier's 312 Fighting Men line apparently re-released in 1992 right around when I bought them. This guy got quite a lot of use as one of the only figs I had for a while and has the distinction of being the first metal fig I've painted this generation. The distinction is due to the rediscovery of my old metal Battletech and Mekton figs painted in college with enamels. I had lofty dreams of finally doing some NMM and freehand with this guy and his blister-mates but after a painful night of failure followed by another three-ish hours of trying to cleanup the mess, I bailed and hit him with normal metallics and gloss wash. I was more than a little hung over and shaky from doing a lot of heavy lifting during the day and I can't help but think I should have taken more time.
This is the second guy out of the same three pack and painting went a lot better. It's a surprisingly good sculpt and despite having started painting him in blue I'm super happy I switched to red. Given my issues with the previous fig and most of a night's rest, I put extra time in. Total painting time was around four hours with a mix of the crap on my wet palette and Pro Acryl Transparents which I like more every time I use them. I experimented with mixing my own colors from the transparents and an off white which went really well. I'm hoping that experimenting more with this will help me see and understand colors better. I also tried working with a filbert which went poorly and a liner for the first time which went a lot better.
This is the last guy from the three pack and he had the distinction of a few globs of brown paint, probably enamels, on his pants. I thought the tip of his sword was broken off, but that seems to be the sculpt. He's not half-swording but seems to have a Conan-like weapon. I painted the green surcoat and gambeson over the blue base I'd put down the day before in much the same way I did the red. I probably could have put more time into this guy but he finished off in a couple hours. I'm pretty sure I primed these guys last century and I did zero prep because I didn't know you could remove mold lines.2020 finished mini counter: 47/50
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