A thing a week 2021, week 1

New year, new week, new figs, so lets get to work.  

As 2020 wound down I had some time off and started catching up on my "wouldn't it be nice" tasks.  One of these was refilling my pre-thinned oil paints and helped by the fact that I bought two new tubes to fill a couple holes in my current lineup.  So today's offerings are painted in oils (finally) and done mostly as a speed paint even though they weren't super speedy.  In these shots they're shiny because they haven't cured yet which is also why they're still on painting handles.  They were painted over several days in a batch to the tune of around twelve hours total.  When they are cured, I'll probably hit them with a clear coat.

These four folks are from Reaper Bones 4 and are in Townsfolk 1, 2, and 3.  The others from those sets should be on the way soon.  The beggar and farmer are from 1 and are done mostly in earth tones.  I think they came out OK but are ultimately not that interesting.  The courtesan is from 2 and despite spending extra time on her face and details, I don't think she turned out super well.  Oils, I'm learning, require a lot more care when it comes to putting down additional colors even if you intend on a blending step.  The Ben Franklin lookalike is from 3 and I'm not 100% sure what he's supposed to be.  A cartographer maybe?  Overall, I think these are fine if not interesting.  

Last year we saw Anuminar Winterbeard back in Week 35 painted in oils.  These three folks are from the same group from Bones 4.  In green we've got Oman Ruul, Wizard complete with pale yellow crystal ball.  While I think he turned out OK, I probably should have spent more time on the crystal ball which doesn't super sell.  In magenta we have Zenfis Zadar, Wizard.  His robe is slightly more red than his cloak which lost its warmer color in all of my blending.  This guy has been on Reaper's landing page for a while so when I ended up with almost the right colors on my palette, I figured what the heck.  This is a great figure and I spent quite a while working on the details I got.  I might get another copy (in metal if available) for future fun.  Arakus Landarzad, Wizard rounds out the bunch in Gandalf blue.  I would have painted him in desaturated tones except that I had some awesome blue available.  I think these guys read OK on the table and I really liked the opportunity to use really saturated colors.

Before I do more in oils at this scale, I think I need to figure some stuff out.  I love the blending but I'm struggling with finding the right thinness and keeping the right amount of paint on the figs.  I've also had to spend quite a lot of time fixing the brushes I use for oils which I've not taken great care of.  This has led me to quite a lot less detail work on these seven than I'd normally attempt.  Also, given their long "not safe to handle" time, I'm going to need more painting handles.

2021 finished mini counter:  7/100