Blacklist backlog week 3 (2024 week 6)

Continuing our mini-theme of finishing up the Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 figs, we begin with Half Orc Bard and Inkeeper. These two are speed paints and I'd like to pretend that I picked a color scheme that would be easy but that isn't actually true. The Ork probably needed more work on his skintones, in particular to desaturate it some. I probably needed to do more with his leathers, lute, and mug but this is what we got. The innkeep got even less attention and probably needed more. His fleshtones were a mess for reasons I don't fully understand and I did nowhere near enough work on his face. In retrospect, his curly mustache and purple gear gives him a very unintentional Wario vibe. I sprung for the freehand planking on the base rather than cutting him off of it and gluing a chunk of basing material. They're painted and that's good and I don't know if/when they'll ever get any real screen time.

Next up we have a pair of durids, particularly Male Human Druid and Female Half Elf Druid. I'm not entirely sure that either of their setups really screams "durid" to me but I'm not a sculptor. She repeats the purple of our Wario cosplayer above and I liked the red on her curls. I did not like painting her curls, however, as they were really shallow and my freehand just isn't that good. I did enough washes that it looks OK at distance but really does not hold up under scrutiny. Her face is the same way. I went back and forth on his hair which looks a lot like a turbin, reinforced by his curved sword, but the closer I looked the more it looked like hair. His face, hair, and other details needed more work than they got and again he looks OK at distance but not up close. I did do extra shading on his shield FWIW, but IMO it doesn't save anything. For a coupla speed paints, I'm not unhappy with the results.

And now we get into the fun ones. This is Male Elf Wizard and high quality #1 on the year. I experimented with a redder leather courtesy of a fun Speed Paint 2.0 color that I like a lot and the desaturated-ness of it makes the opposite saturated green work a lot better than I might have expected. The highlighting on him is minimal but effective and I kind of wish I'd stuck a tuft on his base to punch him up a bit but I didn't. You can also see the mold line that I did not enough to deal with. In my defense, mold lines over cloth folds are awfully difficult. I did a lot of darklining to separate stuff and did a bunch of work on his hair. Overall, I like this result done in about five hours.

Next up we have female human fighter and she shares the same red leather only a lot more of it. I worried a lot that the composition wouldn't work but it turned out OK on accident. Looking more closely we've got a classic red/yellow/blue triad with a desaturated yellow and red which works. I'll almost certainly do that again at some point. You can also see the difficulties I had with moldlines and similarly did a lot of darklining. Her face sells better in person than in these shots. My camera has been shooting more of a downward angle than I wanted and only just realized it. There are probably a couple more details I could have picked out but for the same five-ish hours, I like where this fig landed and she'll count as high quality #2.

I have a hang up for OSL which is similar to my hangup with NMM. I know how to do it more or less and when I get into it, I like it a lot more than I expect. So you'd think I'd remember that before I get going. I put off painting this fig until the end of the normal sized ones because I was dreading the OSL and then when I got into it, I had a lot of fun. In retrospect the composition isn't as good as I'd thought and probably her hair and the fire should have been yellow. I did her leather bits in a more saturated red but IMO it reads as a little more candy than I wanted. Her face is a lot better in person, as is the lighting but she's looking down a lot which isn't helping and my hot lights sadly blew out a lot of the more subtle shading. She'll be high quality #3 for an investment of 8-10 hours or so and I like the result. 

2024 finished mini counter: 43/208, high quality: 3/12