A thing a week 2022, week 50

This week we continue our non-theme of "stuff that's been on my desk for too long" though if we're really honest, that's most of the figs I haven't painted. For reasons I can't explain, I regularly end up with a backlog of prepped and zenithaled figs dozens if not hundreds deep.

First up we have a rage drake from Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. This is a good sculpt let down by a lousy mold like a lot of the D&D boardgame figs and I wasn't able to un-warp his awful base. This is high drama, low effort speed paint with a very deliberate color shift from below to above which I really like. He was mostly painted with the airbrush first the yellow tones and magenta basecoat before hitting him with a transparent yellow from above to shift his back toward orange. I intended his scales to be glossy provided by Golden High Flow Acrylics which I really like out of the airbrush. The rest of the details were done with a brush afterward. The base is basically the airbrush overspray tinted with several layers of Seraphim Sepia. This worked far better than I thought it would and makes it look like he's radiating red. 

This big guy is a Reaper Bones Dragon Tortoise which I own most of two of. The first one was purchased for a campaign I ran in 2016 but found too late that he had arrived with two left legs. Reaper was kind enough to send me a whole kit as a replacement for free, not that I need more reasons to like them. Earlier this year I decided the time was right and after basing and priming I set him aside for the better part of six months. Airbrushing seemed like the right approach which is most of his basecoating. I did some highlights on these in acrylics including most of his details and hit him with an oil wash. If he looks at all glossy in the photo, it's because he hasn't completely cured yet. Oils upside: works like magic. Oils downside: sometimes takes forever to cure. Overall, I really like how he came out and he'll count as this year's second large figure.

D&D is filled with weird monsters and the owlbear is no exception. This entry is from Bones 5 kickstarter and I think he's probably the best sculpt of the bunch. He's also gigantic. The fur basecoat was a green wash that I was mixing that didn't end up particularly green and I can only guess why. The rest of the fig including the base is more or less phoned in but a) he's painted, and b) it didn't take very long. I might do more work on his wings at a later date if I can be bothered but more than likely I won't. 

These last two are of a couple Reaper Bones Griffon sculpts. I bought the dark one for a previous campaign that I expected to play in person in 2020 but 2020 had other ideas. He'd been sitting on my desk taking up a lot of space for quite a while now. The other guy came with the Bones 5 kickstarter. The tawny fur was done mostly with the airbrush and my shots don't really sell all the volumetric shading I did. 

The wings are mostly done with Vallejo Dark Grey Wash. The dark guy could go a shade darker but I didn't want to chance losing the texture any more than I already had and I didn't want to mess around with another drybrush. The other guy probably could have some better feather detailing. As much as I like painting wings, I didn't spend a lot of time on these guys, sadly. But they're painted and I suspect they'll get some game time sometime soon. 

2022 finished mini counter: 232/100, 2/2 large