A thing a week 2021, week 52

Those who have been paying attention know that I've been twelve weeks (nineteen if you count the boulderkin filler) into several heavy themes covering a ridiculous number of minis. So for this week, the last entry for 2021, we're takin' it a little easy. What have we got? The stuff that's prepped on my desk plus a couple other choice bits and the remainder of the goals I hadn't finished yet. 

These are a pair of Orc Guards from Vae Victis Miniatures, a set of sculptors that I really like. These have the bonus of being self-supported which, for those of you who haven't worked with a resin printer, means you get the fig you're looking at without you or someone else having to spend a lot of time making them printable. So, that's nice. I love these figures, enough to pay cash money for them, and I'd been looking forward to painting them for a couple months. Given I've been in speed painting mode for a really long time, it was great to take a little bit of time to slow down and get some of the details right. These two were done in around four hours total while putting paint on a bunch of other figs on my table and I'm not unhappy with the results.

This guy is an Ork from my vintage collection, more specifically a Ral Partha 12-011 Orcs and now that I'm looking at the reference photo, it seems I've glued the wrong shield to him. Not 100% sure where his actual shield went or where this shield came from. I spent a bunch of time on his Ork-y skintones and probably not enough time on just about everything else. The metallics in particular and his cloak are awfully flat and I'm not 100% sold on the color scheme. All that said, I like this fig and I'm not unhappy with this paint job.

This guy is a Reaper Half-Ogre Fighter and mine is not metal as he came with Bones 4. I spent extra time with his Ork-y green fleshtones and probably not enough time on shading his bulky armor. History repeats itself, I guess. I did hit it with a coat of Midnight Ghost Tint and popped out the edges with Vallejo Metal Color Dark Aluminum so it's not as lousy as my usual work, just not as well as I'd hoped he'd turn out. Some day, I'm really going to push metallics to prove to myself that it's time worth spending.

This gal is Ranger Teen by Vae Victis Miniatures 3d print and I really like this fig. In addition to being full of character and bought at a steep discount, she's also self-supported which in my opinion is a superpower for a 3d model. She's been sitting on my painting table for almost a year, having been printed right around Christmas last year and at some point the top of her bow snapped off. Against all odds, I found most of it looking for something I dropped earlier this fall and lo and behold that part had also broken. Despite having only most of a bow and having a few issues that I never cleaned up, I think this is a very good result and I'm comfortable counting her as a high quality paint job and done in around eight hours. I could have certainly pushed more but I'm on a mission. The nice thing is that as a 3d print, I can print out an identical one with a whole bow and try again at a later date. We live in the future and it is good.

Bones 4 has featured heavily in these un-hallowed pixels and probably will for a while. At least, until I get the vast majority of these painted, anyway. Way back in week 9, I painted a dire croc which has subsequently seen a lot of screen time and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had two. Well, I found the other one over the summer and he ended up prepped on my desk for several months. I might not have painted him yet except that I'd mixed up a large batch of dark green wash that otherwise didn't have a home. The rest of it was dry brushing highlights and picking out details for the next hour. 

Those who have been paying attention might note that as of this writing I'm still two short for OSL. Here's the first of those two. This is Sony Jona - Sorceress Heroine from Artisan Guild which I printed last year and now almost exactly a year later, is complete. She got some paint over the summer but since then I redid most of it, shifting the colors around significantly and playing up the OSL. I realize I didn't get a good shot of the dark side of her so you can't see it being sold, but I think she came out well enough in around ten hours to count her as a high quality paint job. She's painted as a PC from a previous campaign so I'm giving her away thus the lettering on the base.

This is Elena - Fighters Guild Beauty also from Artisan Guild and another great example of a figure that I shouldn't like. Her armor is dumb, her torch is ahead of her, and she reads more as a model than as a fighter of any kind. In my head canon (not head cannon which belongs on the Awesome though I suppose technically that's a laser) she's on her way to a rave...with a sword...on some really dark path...or something. Despite all of that, I do like this fig and since she had a torch, it was time to do another OSL. For this and the last fig, I did most of a paint job then shot the umbral side with a well-thinned Paynes Grey ink to sell it. All told we're at something like twelve hours and I'm particularly happy with some of the shadow blends though these shots aren't showing some of the details in her eyes and such. I put extra effort into shading the metallic bits and now that I'm looking at the photos, her hair is awfully flat. She's definitely in the top figs I've painted this year so we're ending it on a high note.

That'll wrap up 2021's painting extravaganza. Tune in next year for the next chapter!

2021 finished mini counter:  370/100, 7/5 high quality, 5/5 OSL