A thing a week 2020, week 52

And we're home!  This is the penultimate post of 2020's crafting challenge but fear not, you'll be getting a wrap-up and a new challenge for 2021 which I goddamn hope is better than 2020 (the year, not the challenge, but dare to dream).  

These three are from Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Personalities, specifically 5611 Barbarian, 5612 Fighting Man, and 5613 Foot Knight which I couldn't find a link to. I'm pretty sure they came three to a blister when I bought them which might have been in the mid-90s or the mid-aughts--I've had a lot to drink since then. They came with three polearms only one of which was ever found so the non-knights got spare spears that I had in my bits box. For all three I tried to push the contrast a little more than normal but all three required different approaches. The skin tones on the barbarian followed the same scheme as the marine above. I did some "sculpting with paint" to make up for some of the mold's misgivings. Like I talkedtyped about last week, a lot of the highlighting was done with a Vallejo Model Air light skintone at Vince's recommendation.  The foot knight was lazy-painted with an airbrush with a bunch of manual shadows and highlighting with metallics and Badger Ghost Tints respectively. All three weighed in at around four hours total though it's hard to put a real number on it since I've been bouncing around the pile of stuff on my workbench.  Oh, and if it looks like the spears don't actually fit in their hands, it's because they've been superglued many, many times over the years and I was too lazy to scape it all out.

I have very mixed feelings about this Vatanis, Maggotcrown Warlock from Reaper Bones. I purchased this figure to represent a player character and did not do anywhere near enough homework before I did so. That was late march when it still looked like we might play in person at some point. Mold lines on this particular figure are awful and they run over all of the difficult details, details of which there are way too many of most of which I don't like. He feels busy for busy's sake and I don't approve. He sat on my workbench for months until I finally got fed up enough to finish painting him and not particularly well, I might add. I should have worked the blends more. I should have been more careful with the washes and shading. I should have done a lot of stuff but I didn't and he's done and I'm not going to be sad about it. I wouldn't hazard to guess how long I spent painting this guy but it was way too long for where he ended up.  

Finishing out my Bones 4 pile of random collections of samey things are these six Graveyard Finial:  Skulls.  Given the problems I had with the last few of these sets, namely that paint didn't want to stick to them, I super washed these before brush priming and still had a lot of trouble with these.  Maybe because they're small they were hard to toothbrush but I scrubbed at them real good.  They were mostly drybrushed and washed like most of my bone things but I really didn't spend a lot of time on them--I just wanted them done.  

This stylish candelabra would be at home in any wizard's arcanum.  It's from the Dungeons and Lasers kickstarter and sat on my desk for most of the year.  With it is a Wizkids Deep Cuts Iron Maiden which was a gift from a pal a while ago.  This was fun because a) it isn't a thing I'd normally buy, and b) it gave me a real fun opportunity to weather and rust some stuff which isn't a thing I often do.  The candelabra is from Dungeon & Lasers kickstarter and took up space on my workbench for most of the year picking up paint when something appropriate was unused on my palette.  It's basically Vallejo Metal Color Gold covered with Badger Minitaire ghost tint.  

That brings us to Wizkids Deep Cuts Cage and Chains.  These are also things gifted to me that I normally wouldn't buy and super took advantage of lazy airbrush painting followed by fun weathering.  The base is detachable and was lazy painted in brown with a wash.  After weathering I did a slight drybrush in a lighter silver color to pop out some of the edges that might get hit more often.  I had a lot of fun with these--turns out that weathering stuff is really fun!  I suspect we'll see more of that next year.  

These three are the last gifts in this batch from the same pal.  When I had the airbrush out and metallics in the cup, they got paint too.  This is a Nolzur's Iron Golem and basically follows the same pattern as the Iron Maiden above.  The two gold fellows are Nolzur's Monodrone and Duodrone.  They're anti-zenithaled with purple which didn't go on cleanly but it doesn't show super well on the gold dudes and was mostly covered up with additional shadow work on the golem.  Beyond picking out details like cracks and eyes and whatnot, there wasn't much going on with these guys.  I was surprised to learn that I didn't have a golem before this guy because it's a monster I use quite a lot.  I'm not sure if I'll use the Monodrone and Duodrone in play but they're fun enough models that I'll be looking for a reason to do so.  All told the three of these were done in around four hours.  

These five are armored goblins, part of a pack of 6 with one featured at the end of last year unbeknownst to me.  More specifically, they are Armored Goblin Leader complete with Giuliani dentition, Armored Goblin Spearmen, and Armored Goblin Sworsdmen.  These didn't get painted at that point because they were in parts!  I'm not used to gluing Reaper Bones together and they proved more fiddly than I expected.  I painted them up as hobgoblins because it's a monster I use a lot and it felt more proper that hobs would actually find, keep, and use real armor more than normal goblins.  These were airbrushed in metallics with a purple anti-zenithal.  More shading on the armor and other details were done with brushes notably with Badger Ghost Tints Purple and Engine Oil, the latter of which I'm starting to like a lot more than Nuln Oil.  All told we're talking maybe six hours for the five of them including assembly.

Much like the hobs above, these five are from Bones 4 and required assembly.  They were also fiddly and airbrushed with a base coat of metallics and an anti-zenithal of purple.  The teal knight next to the black knight doesn't read super well but all of the other ones landed pretty much where I wanted them to.  I put extra time on their highlighting and shadows especially on their armor which mostly doesn't show in the photos.  These guys were a lot more fiddly than the hobs but I had some time to spend and knocked them out in about six hours total.  I think they work even if they're super big.

These rocky looking dudes are D&D xorns.  Two of them are Nolzur's and like most of the line look nowhere near as nice in person as they do in the renders, and one of them is from the Chainmail Box set and for some reason called an Abyssal Maw.  I might not have painted these guys yet except that a) they were prepped and ready to go on my workbench, b) they don't require a ton of effort, and c) I was close to breaking 225 and I'm all about over-delivering.  They were anti-zenithaled and the abyssal maw was zenithaled since he was primed all over.  The first coats were mostly a brown coat provided by Pro Acryl Transparent brown + some random palette sludge green and whatever I had laying around to give them more visual interest.  Some drybrushing, a wash, some details on their teeth and eyes and a candycoat on the eyes got them here.  This is fairly lazy painting and they took maybe a couple hours with another one thrown in as prep for the abyssal maw which had to be assembled.

That's going to do it for A Thing a Week 2020, folks.  Tune in soon for the wrap-up and A Thing a Week 2021!

Final 2020 finished mini counter:  226/50