A thing a week 2021, week 13 (dungeon tiles!)

Now for something completely different.  My hobbying, the painting and building parts of it anyway, begin with making dungeon tiles circa 2016.  I knew I wanted to play with minis so I bought a bunch and I knew that I wanted a tactical game.  Problem:  aside from my handy vinyl hex maps with hexes that were too small, I didn't really have much terrain.  I certainly didn't have any building stand-ins so I either printed out hex maps on my black and white laser printer (since deceased) or drew on my vinyl maps with wet-erase markers.  That is, until I discovered dungeon tiles (cue dramatic music).  

I probably got the idea from either Wyloch or Black Magic Craft but somewhere in the heady days of 2016 I printed out some crappy maps on my black and white laser printer (now deceased) and pasted them upon multi-level cardboard disasters that roughly matched the shapes.  This would become more refined over the years culminating with these from April of 2019.  These are 4" x 4" x 0.25" chunks of XPS foam hit with a Green Stuff World texture roller (pavement).  With Wyloch's interlocking chipboard mechanism, they fit together acceptably though not reliably.  Once together, they're nice, but they're kind of a pain to work with.  

Well, these are the latest incarnation, iteration five or six or something--I dunno, I lost track.  They're the same 4" x 4" but half an inch thick and I milled them when burning through some of my stock last year.  They were always intended as double sided but by design they also match the height of the last iteration even if they won't lock with them.  I noodled a lot on the attachment mechanism.  I knew I wanted to use magnets but didn't want to have to deal with terrible polarity issues.  First up:  tacks.  They didn't work because of their curved tops.  So then I thought nails and walked away with a $10 box of ferrous roofing nails.  If there's one hint I can give any aspiring tabletop crafter, it's that you can save a lot of money by using stuff you can get at the hardware store.  Pro-tip:  if you're looking to use magnets, bring one with you when buying materials to test against whatever you hope it'll stick to.  

There are basically three nails on each of two sides and three 3x2 mm magnets on each of the other two sides.  They stick closer together which is nice and they're textured on both sides.  One side is Green Stuff World flagstone and the other side is textured with a ball point pen and wire brush as wooden planking.  They're primed with black craft paint + Mod Podge sealer and painted first with crappy craft paints and then with crappy washes I made several years ago adulterated with far more expensive inks and mediums to make them work correctly.  Turns out, you can learn a lot in a few years.  

I am super looking forward to using these sixteen magnetic, double-sided dungeon tiles in person whenever it is we can do that kind of thing again.  These will count as the first of my five "buildings" this year.  

2021 finished "building" counter: 1/5

A thing a week 2021, week 12 (Spiders!)

As threatened at some point last year, I printed out a bunch more spiders at a slightly larger size--sixteen of them, even. They came off the printer at slightly low quality and were painted similarly. I have no illusions that his was in any way high effort painting but they are indeed painted. For this go-around I improved (slightly) on the original set. They were primed and washed and then drybrushed as if by zenithal.  After that some details were slopped on in an off white before hitting them with a Badger Ghost Tint candy coat. The bases were finished very simply in black. They'll count 2:1 because it's my challenge and I'm comfortable with this ratio of almost no effort.  

When I started out this year and was setting goals, I had no expectation that I'd land at 100 in March. I'm still short on the high quality and OSL goals but I'm not super concerned with getting those in at this point. I'm going to do now what I did last year at roughly this time--switch gears to doing other stuff. That'll also give me space to get some effort on one or more more of the missing try-hards.Watch this space!

2021 finished mini counter:  100/100

A thing a week 2021, week 11 (filler!)

This year so far has been a big year for mini painting, following from a strong 2020. Because things are going so well, I'm pushing this week's normally scheduled programming to bring you this news flash:  it's minis. That's right.  Minis. This mini-mini theme is brought to you by "random stuff I have prepped on my painting table."  

This is a Bones 4 Lowland Owlbear which is distinct from its often mistaken cousin, the Highland Owlbear which is renown for its love of dry whiskeys. I prepped this guy sometime last summer because he looked cool and then I didn't get to painting him...until now. Well, honestly, it was a week and a half ago because these posts roll out later than the actual event. This was my favorite kind of painting:  slap some paint around and focus on a couple details. That's more James Wappel shaded basecoat action over top of a zenithal-anti-zenithal-sandwich-plus-some-actual-airbrush-basecoating. I painted him as a cross between a grizzly and a great horned owl and any particular resemblance to either creature is a coincidence since I didn't look up reference for either. Other than the funky smell from the chocolate brown craft paint wash I'm trying to use up, I think it's a good result for the not-even-an-hour that I spent on him. Probably the spikes on his back are too stark but meh.

These four penguins are from, you guessed it, Bones 4 and available for purchase as Penguin Attack Pack.  These are also not exceptionally difficult painting though the dire penguin (the one with spikey bits) did have a few more details. I'd hoped to paint them mostly with the airbrush but forgot that they're counter-shaded and had to work a little bit harder. They landed in a couple hours for all four and even though I could have pushed the contrast more, I'm not unhappy with them. Not sure why my camera felt the need to blurrify these shots. 

This is a pig, also from Bones 4. The cart, if you're wondering, was last seen in week 45 of 2020. This guy has sat on my workbench for many months partially painted. I wanted to practice my brush blends but that's way too much work. Instead, he's about 5 minutes of easy airbrushing and maybe 5 minutes of additional detail work for his trotters and eyes and such. I'm not going to pretend this is high art or anything, but it's painted and that's something.

2021 finished mini counter:  92/100

A Lounge of Lizards part 4 (2021 week 10)

This has been a good theme:  four whole weeks! In actuality, these were finished some weeks ago in the middle of February. It's been a really good traipse through my backlog and some figs that I really like even if they don't get a ton of screen time. Being able to use the airbrush a lot more was a real boon despite having to wrestle with the dang thing so much. Additionally, I'm trying to take better pictures. I mean, I bought this expensive camera, I may as well get to using it better.  

This first guy is a Snakeman Warrior from Reaper Bones. I don't remember why I didn't paint Mr. Snakeman in orange and with the last batch, but I'm sure I had a reason that wasn't "make my life harder," but there ya go. I like this fig and I spent a little extra time on him. Like the other figs in this theme, he was mostly painted with my cheapo airbrush. Most of these green folks have brush-painted bellies/details and drybrushed and washed and completed quite quickly. I spent not quite enough time on the shading of his metallics and not quite enough time highlighting and shading his excessive gear. So there's that. I think it's an OK result.   

Reaper bones show prominently on these un-hallowed pages and I've had these Nagendra prepped on my desk for quite a long time. These particular guys are Nagendra Swordsmen and mostly airbrushed with some basic effort to shade their metallics. I'm not 100% sold on the turquoise runes on their weapons but they work OK. Airbrushing sped this whole batch up quite a lot and even though they were a speed paint, I think the quality is higher than the effort I actually spent on them. 

Next up we have Nagendra Warriors who (quite obviously) follow the same scheme as the other folks in this batch. The texturing on the bow and haft of the polearm (a pudao, I think) looked good and I decided to paint them in the same bronze as the armor of the other folks. In retrospect, I don't think a bronze bow would actually work so it's, um, maaaaagic. Now that they're done, I'm fairly sure they'll get some screen time when we can play in person, whenever that happens.

This heavily armored guy is one half of Nagendra Leaders and I really should have spent more time on him.  His armor is a mix of Vallejo Metal Colors gold and copper with a candy coat of Badger Minitaire Golden Yellow like the hoplites from last year. This year I'm making a real effort to highlight/shade my metallics and this guy didn't really get enough of that. I like the yellowy-bronze but it's still really flat. The volumes aren't picked out correctly which was admittedly lazy. I don't  particularly like this figure which is part of why I didn't expend more effort. It's a soft sculpt and despite my best efforts, his swords are still awfully bendy...but he's done now. Overall the greenies here sans the last piece were done in roughly ten hours total which seems quick for me given the results.  

I don't think the leader holding the fireball makes any sense (lizards tend to have neither mammaries nor birth canals) but I did like advantage of the situation to hit up some OSL on her anyway.  For this application, I revisited James Wappel's techniques which start with a very rough initial application slapping paints on in roughly the right places and refining in further steps.  I like painting this way and I really like painting in OSL even though I'm terrible at it. Taking a closer look at the photos, I may have overdone it--probably the light is too stark. Despite this, I think the results are good for maybe a couple hours over a couple evenings.  

This is going to finish off A Lounge of Lizards 2021 and these folks were done in roughly five hours total which seems quick for the results I got.  Handy airbrush using?  Check.  Drybrushing highly textured figs for good effect?  Check.  Focusing on the right details and a gratuitous use of OSL?  Check.  I'ma call this one successful.

2021 finished mini counter:  86/100, 2/5 OSL, 1/5 high quality