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
