A Lounge of Lizards, part 3 (2021 week 9)

This week we finish up the lizards theme strong with a bunch of figs plus a bonus.  

In keeping with our theme, this is an absolutely enormous croco-gator or something (actually a Dire Crocodile) who came in my Reaper Bones 4 pledge.  I actually used such a creature about a year ago in a sewer fight and had completely forgotten that I had this guy.  I don't recall what my standin was.  He was mostly painted with previously mentioned cheapo airbrush with a little bit of effort pulling out details but after last week's pseudo-try-hard effort, I just wanted to slap some paint around.  So that's what I did.  Most of the hard stuff on this guy was the airbrush but being a natural creature that generally blends into the environment, I didn't do a lot beyond its eyes and teeth.  I'd say it looks good for the roughly hour I spent on it.  

Also from my Reaper Bone 4 pledge came this Wyvern.  It'd been prepped on my priming/building desk for many months with a bunch of other large winged creatures which might make an appearance later this year.  It's painted in mostly the same color scheme as the Dire Croc with some dry brushing and washing in yellows and browns on the wing membranes to pop them out.  It wasn't super complicated painting but I think it looks good for the couple hours I put into it.  If I had it to do again, I think I would have toned down the wing membranes since the yellow is so eye-catching and detracts from his crazy-eyed head.

These guys are Nolzur's Grey Slaad and Death Slaad which I don't remember buying and yet they show up in my records nonetheless.  The more I paint these Nolzur's figs the more I'm disappointed with them.  I hate the mold lines which are awful and I'm not super sold on their "pre-primed" state which sometimes paint doesn't like to stick to.  I basically slapped paint on these guys in a pseudo-shaded basecoat kind of way channeling my inner Wappellious Spellbrush which is quite fun.  They're green and orange because I had those colors out on the palette and I don't particularly care what the models are supposed to be.  They were completed in around 4 hours total and I think they look OK for that investment.  

Next up we have three Runewars Flesh Rippers which I'm pretty sure I bought at steep discount with a bunch of other interesting figs.  I don't play Runewars and I have no idea if they're actually lizards but it's my theme and I'm going to count them as such.  These were a mess and I lost one of their arms which is why there are only three of them.  I don't know what kind of plastic they used but it's hard to get mold lines off of and on these guys they were brutal.  They were base-coated mostly with my cheapo airbrush with highlights and details as normal with a normal brush.  These weren't a hard paint but they came out OK to the tune of ~4 hours for the three of them.  They look a little flat now that I'm not in the throes of painting them and I might punch them up a bit at a later date.

Last up this week we have a Reaper Bones Chaos Toad Sorcerer.  It came with my Bones 4 pledge and since it's holding a fireball, I took this opportunity to have some fun with object source lighting.  And this one was actually fun!  It started out with slapping paint around the model and three hours later that was pretty much what I was still doing.  I don't know what it was with this one.  The details aren't good and there's a lot of crap that is just plain not right but I liked the lighting effect enough to stop painting.  I didn't even get back to cleaning up the mess on the smoke trail.  I like painting OSL and I'm excited to do more--stay tuned!

2021 serious OSL attempts:  1/5

2021 finished mini counter:  79/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 2 (2021 week 8)

Following up last week's lizards we have these scary chaps many of which have seen play.  This week, too, we got some nice speed ups through zenithal + counter shade + base coating with the airbrush.  I might be closer to getting a spendy one than I thought!

These orangey chaps are Reaper Bones Lizardman Warrior, his name-twin Lizardman Warrior, and similarly-named Lizardman Spearman.  Orange isn't a color that I paint in very much and this was a good excuse to see how terrible it could be practice with it.  Red is also a color I've struggled with.  While painting these guys, something clicked.  Brent of Goobertown who I will one day print and paint, said something very similar when painting some Seraphon lizardoods which I find more than a little interesting.  Also, I note that during this work I a) mostly used a resuscitated red sable brush I like a lot, and b) mostly used Pro Acryl paints which I also like a lot and these two things made this process waaaaaay more enjoyable.  I'd forgotten how nice it is to use brushes without a hook and paints that don't suck.  The three of them were done in like 10 hours and while I spent a similar amount of time on them overall, I think the shield and club guy turned out the best and I'm comfortable counting him as my first high quality paint this year.  

These four are two packs of Reaper Bones Spikeshell Warriors.  They saw quite a lot of screen time a few campaigns ago as some particularly vile bads.  I went for a paint scheme like the alligator snappers that these figs seem to be based upon.  That meant dark and desaturated greens moving up to beige and generally making them look like the detritus found on the bottom of ponds.  That seemed like it would work but the beige ended up being a little too desaturated.  A bit of yellow fixed this and I'm not entirely certain why.  At any rate, the first guy took upwards of three hours experimenting with colors and whatnot with the other three completing in the next four.  I guess that's why test figs are so important.  In a better world I would have taken a little more care dealing with their awful mold lines and boy howdy am I looking forward to finishing all of my old Bones figs in like....2030.

• 2021 high quality counter:  1/5
• 2021 finished mini counter:  71/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 1 (2021 week 7)

With two themes down and quite a lot of figs to go, we're opening this week's theme strong.  I have quite a lot of lizard figures that need paint--fewer now!  This is because a couple campaigns ago one of the antagonists were a cult of ne'er-do-wells corrupting eggs into terrible monsters.  I also occasionally buy cool looking figs on sale from wargames I don't play, so there's that.  

These three are snakes from the Wrath of Ashardalon board game.  I'd already magnetized these guys and hidden them away only to be found when putting away some newly painted figs.  These are not good molds and the sculpts are more than a little confusing and I didn't do anywhere near enough work dealing with their imperfections.  I took this opportunity to do more work with my cheapo airbrush to save time and this time it worked out.  I think these guys look good for the time I spent on them, less than 2 hours all told, despite picking out a bunch of details that I didn't need to.  

Next up we have a Crested Felldrake from the Chainmail Starter Set.  I'd had this guy prepped and ready to go for a while but hadn't found a good opportunity to paint him...until today!  I thought I might paint him in a fun color like magenta or something but when painting the snakes above, I figured that color scheme would be fine, too.  Turns out, I accidentally painted him the right color!  No real difficulty here and it's not a super big fig.  This feels like a good result for the hour I spent on it.

Lastly we get four Legion of Everblight Shredders which are apparently lesser warbeasts but I'm only really typing in what's on the box since I don't play Hordes.  Are these actually lizards?  I have no idea.  In fact, I understand they're supposed to be painted a pale blue or lavender but I painted them turquoise because I could.  It's a mix of the teal Pro Acryl, Transparent Green and Vallejo Game Color Azul Ink both of which I really like over zenithal through the airbrush.  I highlit these with increasing levels of cool grey and white (through the airbrush again) before finishing off details.  Horns, claws, and teeth got a couple layers of washes and an edge highlight.  I didn't spend anywhere near enough time scraping mold lines on these guys, unfortunately.  Minus this, I think they look OK for ~3 hours of work.

2021 finished mini counter:  64/100

Nipponpalooza part 2 (2021 week 6)

This week we have the mounted soldiers which look unsurprisingly a lot like the foot soldiers.   Like I mentioned last week, horses do count toward the total since that's how I've got them recorded in my master list.  

These guys were a mess to assemble.  Because I bought them as bare sprues, I didn't have instructions and I fiddled with them for a long while before hitting up the intertoobs in frustration.  That was better but they were still awfully fiddly.  I didn't end up including most of the extra swords and other bejangles on these guys because again, this was supposed to be a speed paint.  

For this week I put extra time into the horses a) because I could, and b) because up to this point I'd never painted horses before.  I was helped by the fact that the riders were already painted as part of last week's festivities.  As part of my time-saving planning, I painted them all in the same pattern (Bay) with no other distinctions.  I haven't done the homework to know what's appropriate for this time period and breed and in general know very little about horses.  Someday I'll fix that, probably the next time I go out of my way to paint horses, but not today!

At this point I had horse flesh, barding, and other bejangles left to go and I got more paint on the bases for good measure.  The horses themselves were mostly painted with Daler Rowney Red Earth and Liquitex Raw Umber inks highlit with a light fleshtone, in this case, an ancient pot of Reaper paints.  I knew these were more transparent than the normal acrylics I'm used to and boy howdy were they ever.  Despite many (many) layers they only mostly cover and once I brought it all together at the end with a glaze, all of my careful highlighting evaporated.  Notably, these dry considerably darker than when they go on which was a surprise and they dry glossy which wasn't unexpected.  The barding which I only noticed I'd painted incorrectly when they were nearly complete was done with more normal acrylics with a wash throwing on some final highlights and metallics at the very end.

The bases, if you're curious, are potting bark glued to the round with texture paint and flocking to make it look less like what it actually was and they might sell better if I'd chosen less bark-like colors.  They were painted with some random palette sludge and mostly highlit with the same random fleshtone I had laying around.  This worked way better than I expected even after Vince told me that fleshtones were a good basing highlight color.  I assembled everything with the horses pinned before priming and I'm super unhappy about the leaping horse having a paper clip through its belly.  I've seen this fig on its two hind legs but the sculpt really doesn't look correct that way.  If I were bringing these guys to a higher quality level, I would have painted the riders, mounts, and bases separately and assembled them after the fact but this wasn't the goal.  

Overall, I think these guys are acceptable.  If you add a couple hours of fiddly assembling plus the six-ish hours I spent painting the mounts, we end up at 33 hours for the batch of 27 which feels reasonable given where they landed.  None of these guys are going to win any awards but that wasn't really the point.  I learned a lot about batch painting with my terrible airbrush and I'm certain I can speed this process up.  I may manufacture such an exercise later this year so watch this space!

This concludes Nipponpalooza 2021 and I'm confident in saying that I'm well ahead of both my goal and one fig per day so far this year.  I don't expect to maintain this pace but it's good (for once) to be ahead right out of the gates.

2021 finished mini counter:  56/100