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
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