A thing a week 2025, week 13

More right-down-the-plate work this week, plus a short rant. 

First up we have Elven Blacksmith and Sarah, the Seeress. If Sarah looks familiar, it's because she showed up way back in week 51 of 2022 which seems a lot further in the rear-view than it actually is. Mold lines on both were pretty awful and I did not enough work to deal with them sanely. None of the details on either is as good as it could have been (speed paint) though I take some pride in noting that this version of Sarah done in less than half the time turned out much better. I guess several hundred figs of practice does add up. The blue on her dress got a little chalky in the higher tones but I think I got the volumes correctly. The orb on her staff looks particularly good in this shot but in stark reversal, it doesn't look as good in person. The blacksmith is kind of a mess. The right side of her face was a mess of mold issues and I did what I could to give it any definition. Also, there wasn't any indication of a shirt in the sculpt but I was dumb to not paint one on--wouldn't even be the first time. She looks dumb without it especially with her armored leg plates. Which blacksmiths commonly wear. Or something. Anyway.

Here we have Finari, Female Paladin and Isabeau Laroche, Paladin both in bones white. I noted yesterday that practically-armored gals are under-represented in the hobby and I stick to that assertion. This week we have an excellent example. Finari is in ridonkulous boobplate fantasy armor and I bought the fig nonetheless. While not as bad as a lot of the examples you can find, it's not great, Bob. I give a pass for figs to not have helmets on so you can see/paint the face in expressive ways FWIW. Isabeau is far more realistically dressed though I had to paint out the boob window because I had to, that's why, and you can still tell she's a gal without it. Finari's hair is going to be a mess in actual combat as opposed to on a Hollywood set. Isabeau's cleverly tied it all up where it won't be a problem in either case. Neither of them is in heels (I have some standards FFS) and they're clearly both martial characters but Finari is clearly in the armored gal pinup vein while Isabeau isn't. Hollywood and video games on the whole have so warped our understanding of how things should look that we expect the former when the latter is actually way better and not less cool on the table. Last rant: those are clearly two handed swords. As in most sculpts, there's stuff to like about both and they're easy to tell apart on the table even though I painted them in mostly the same scheme. I missed another opportunity to put some heraldry on Isabeau's shield just like last week because: speed paint.

Last up we have Innkeeper Sophie from bones 4. I assume she's a mascot for Reaper or something since she shows up in every bones kickstarter and apparently as ReaperCon semi-exclusives. I haven't found any lore online but there are many Sophies in my collection now, though this is the first one I painted. She's got some weird mold issues around her face which I painted around and I am very thankful I painted her wings as a subassembly because it made everything much saner. The texture of her wings and the highlights I did got washed out in the last minute wash I stuck on there. Lots of this paint job is phoned in and probably a half hour more of refinement would have been good. Maybe in the future when I don't have a several hundred long backlog. 

2025 finished mini counter: 51, 2025 specific figs remaining: 88

A thing a week 2025, week 12

Back to the grind this week with four offerings right down the middle of the plate. These and next week's are basically what passes as speed paints as I get these days.

First up we have Hagar, Dwarf Fighter and Durok, Dwarf Ranger from Reaper both in bones white. I've spent a lot of pixels on decrying the difficulties with bones white material and these guys have all of that in spades. The molds are soft and really don't flatter the molds at all. Looking closely at these shots, I'm thinking that Hagar's torso covering shouldn't be a breastplate. I also note that Durok's cloak looks like it's shiny but it's actually just patchy. Not sure if that's better but they'll look fine in my small squad of Dwarves. They were done in something like four hours for the two of them.

Next up we have Erick, Paladin Initiate and Alandin, Elf Paladin, the former as normal bones white, the latter from Bones 4. Erick is pretty much what he looks like and, yes, I missed an opportunity to do some freehand on his shield--speed paint here. Alandin would have been painted much earlier but I glued the wrong arm in the wrong place and then convinced myself I was missing a piece only to realize my mistake not super long ago. I painted Alandin as a gal because I thought it fit the sculpt better but I don't think that was the sculptor's intent. I like cheesecake-y fantasy pinups as much as the next guy on the Internet but I feel that normal practical armor non-boobplate martial gals are sorely under-represented in the hobby. We'll get a nice contrast next week so tune in then!

2025 finished mini counter: 46, 2025 specific figs remaining: 93

A thing a week 2025, week 11

Two offerings today, both from the year's goal list and both larger than they might appear.  

First up we have Chaos Toad Brawler from Bones 4. He's a big fella, and despite my best efforts, I did a lousy job with his mold lines. Quite a few of these guys have gotten screen time and probably this guy would have as well if he'd been painted. I was going to do some demon dots but decided against given the excellent texturing...that I pretty much failed to pick out. I like the red and did an OK job with the highlights but it doesn't super sell in these shots. The dark carapace, teeth, and spikes don't sell in either these shots or in person, so I got that goin' for me. The black eyes are just as creepy as I intended

This guy is obviously a Zombie Shark and he's also from Bones 4 and also a thing of nightmare. This guy had some weird mold issues which mostly show as noise which is nice but he's really lazily painted. Most of him is a speedpaint base with a drybrush over the top. He's not countershaded which isn't correct and his guts are painted mostly with palette sludge which I guess tracks. The black teeth don't super sell (was going for a megalodon fossil tooth regardless of its incorrectness) but the slop of washes and on the oozy bits and guts and whatnot do which are also not correct. What I did do that kind of works is the base. It's stacked cork (probably obvious) with a bunch of grit and what not on it. I didn't have any sellable underwater vegetation so I spent extra time grunging it up. I had an intent to do a bunch of caustics on both the shark and the base but I didn't do any of that. I like being done and this guys is just that and I'd like to forget all about it since it still creeps me out.

2025 finished mini counter: 42, 2025 specific figs remaining: 97

A thing a week 2025, week 10

After perhaps too many weeks making limited progress toward this year's goals, we're about to plow straight into them starting this week. First up we have two questionable sculpts and two very questionable molds. The guy on the left is an Anhurian Cavalry and the guy on the right I found as Onyx Chevalier, Overlords Solo but was listed as Overlord Cavalry in the Bones 4 Fan Favorites catalog. The sculpts are made much worse by the quality of the molds and the bones white plastic. I did what I could with the mold lines and warped features but could not get the lean out of the overlord dude. The results are OK and the Anhurian guy can go with the other questionable sculpts/molds of Anhurian crossbow and Arnhurian spear dudes I painted very early on. 

This guy is clearly a mammoth and from Bones 4 and until I went and looked up the link at reapermini.com, I was puzzled by why he's so small. Turns out, he's a Pygmy Mammoth! This is about the pinnacle of lazy painting consisting of a zenithal, a contrast paint base coat, a minimal drybrush for highlights, and a handful of details picked out. The tusks were probably the most expensive part since the paint I was using was too thin on my wet palette requiring far too many coats. The result is OK for a speed paint but better than I might have hoped.

2025 finished mini counter: 40, 2025 specific figs remaining: 99

A thing a week 2025, week 9

Like I promised last week, we also aren't making any progress toward our greater yearly goals this week though there are some high quality works herein. I'm still dialing in my photography setup some but it's overall, way easier than it was this time last year.

First up we have a generic old-skool space marine. I don't know what set he comes from or if the color scheme is a proper chapter and TBH, I don't super care, either, since I don't play any of James Workshop's jamesgames. I'd mentioned offhand to a pal who also paints that I'd never painted a space marine, probably because he was showing off an army of them. The next time we met, he handed me this guy. He's mostly painted with the airbrush and he came to me primed very heavily so his details are pretty soft. The highlighting is pretty subtle in normal light and especially these close-ups, but they looked so strong when painting him. The yellow was a choice since a) it's hard, and b) I don't paint in yellow very often. I don't regret that choice, but it was significantly harder than a red or a green or something and now I've painted a space marine.

Next up we have a copy of one of my all-time favorite sculpts, one that's shown up here a couple times already, even. This Cat Captain from Vae Victics was one of the last prints on my old Mars Pro and if you missed it last time, she's a self-supported sculpt which is still a super power on my newer Saturn 2. I'd intended to paint this one in the color of one of my favorite Internet cats, Yoshi from Eevie and Yoshi, particularly as a cream point or something like that; I'm not a cat expert, but ended up just doing the cream part for reasons. I got the shadows, I think, but am missing the highlights in a bad way, especially on the yellow details. I like the scheme, otherwise, tho. The double base is because I wasn't confident in my ability to drill a magnet into the original base despite having done it twice already. Our favorite kitty officer will undoubtedly show up again in the future, likely with fewer layer lines.

Another very old print, this is Valera, Angel of Rock from Twin Goddess. I was super excited to paint Valera when I first purchased the STL. As one of the second batch off my old Mars Pro like the Black Witch Tabaxi from last week, she kicked around for far too long. I had a heck of a time gluing her together mostly because she's in the super brittle old resin, and because her wings are so heavy so astute viewers can see the mess where they connect. She also broke off of her perch at one point so there's a discontinuity that I painted over on her left foot. She's got awful layer lines and yet, I still super love this fig and have spent dozens of hours on her over the years. She'll count as my sixth high quality work for 2025 and, Fate willing, she'll show up again here in the future with fewer layer lines.

Last up this week we have another high quality work and a sculpt I super like. This very leggy gal is Ragna, Blade of the North from Drunken Dwarf. She embodies two of the things I look for in sculpts: she has a lot of character and a nice open pose. She's short of the last one as she has a surfeit of details that don't make a lot of sense, but two out of three ain't bad. I spent somewhere around eight hours on her and I think it shows. I wanted texture on her cloak which is maybe a little less sharp than I'd like, and I wanted to take the highlights on her face and hair higher than normal both of which I got. Other than a handful of lousy support scars, her print is pretty good, too. I did extra work shadowing and highlighting the various metallics on her and keeping the color in her skin tones. She's probably the most complete work I've produced so far.

2025 finished mini counter: 37, 7/12 high quality