Knight-o-rama week 3 (2025, week 21)

More knights this week...and next week...and probably the week after that. I like making progress but I've been pretty open about not liking big batches.

These would be the spear dudes and one sole bill hook dude. Not 100% sure why I've only got three spear dudes but I've only got those three so the bill hook dude fills out the rank. These are at least partially painted like their historical intent, at least the color choices. It looks like the wash on the red and the green ended up more satin-y than I intended. Note for future reference.

2025 finished mini counter: 82, 2025 goal figs remaining: 62

Knight-o-rama week 2 (2025, week 20)

Buckle in, folks because we're on this ride until it ends...sometime several months from now. Also note that last week and this week I've again changed my photography setup and things are still a little washed out. 

These are some (most?) of the brigandine guys, one of my favorite and under-represented medieval armors. I also like that they're equipped with polearms (halberds on the right, billhooks on the left if you like). I think a couple of these guys were metallically zenithaled like last week's offerings but some of them weren't because I wasn't sure which was the best approach (spoiler: more work with the airbrush is usually better). I took the effort to pick out the rivets on two of these guys which is pretty clear close-up but doesn't read as easily on the table. I'd intended to do so on all of them but forgot.

2025 finished mini counter: 78, 2025 goal figs remaining: 66

Knight-o-rama, week 1 (2025 week 19)

This week we have two awesome things: four more figs on goal and a brand new theme! I was originally going to call it a mini-theme but we're going to be here for quite a while. These are from Perry Miniatures, particularly War of the Roses Infantry (1455-1487). I purchased these in the heady days of 2018 as an early birthday present and aside from the two that I painted way back in week 43 of 2020, the entire box of 40 (!) of these guys had remained unpainted...until today!--well, until last week when these guys were actually painted.

These are the heavily armored guys who I mostly painted with an airbrush since they were mostly metallic. They're metallically zenithaled top to bottom which made everything go a lot faster. I didn't have any appropriate fancy bases left and (obviously) didn't take the time to build and paint new ones. After a bunch of large miniatures (or, bigatures if you prefer) these were a welcome return to form. These four were done in maybe five hours total outside of assembly and I'm pretty happy with the results.

2025 finished mini counter: 74, 2025 specific figs remaining: 70

A thing a week 2025, week 18

For reasons entirely under my control, I failed to post this on the proper day. Luckily, through the power of the Internet, I've back-dated it to Star Wars Day so no one will be the wiser! This week we have three biggies and one not-quite-so-biggie but all four are part of the hallowed group of "figs I want to finish painting this year," so I got that goin' for me. 

First up we have a Young Fire Drake from Reaper. He was done mostly as a speed paint trying out some new formulas as I'm continuing in my quest of using my airbrush more. The base airbrush ink coat went on glossy (as usual; that was part of what I was hoping to fix) and I made a real mess with a seemingly congealed bottle of Reaper Anti-Shine Additive. I really have no clue how to use this stuff. It has never gone on without leaving a weird blotchy finish. I ended up painting over it with successive thinned down coats of Speed Paint and then doing a very minimal amount of detail work and this guy was done. He might have took a couple hours and only because of the anti-shine debacle. This isn't a good paint job but he's done and that counts.

Next up is Ziba, Female Efreeti from bones 4. Scale doesn't show super well in these shots but she's a good six inches or so tall which is bigger than my normal setup finds reasonable. I also note that the studio model features the same bronze-y metallics and yellow eyes that I landed on but I super should have done the fiery hair now that I'm looking at it. Ziba was also a speed paint, mostly trying really hard not to mess up the work I'd already done and wearing gloves while doing so which isn't something I normally do. More work could have certainly been done across the board but I'm not unhappy with the result (aside from her skintone shininess--done again with the airbrush) and she was complete in like four hours which sounds like a lot but I really struggled with her size. Probably the best part is the blue metallics which were a mix of Vallejo Metallic Aluminum plus painfully glossy Golden High Flow Phthalo Blue.

This is Ashana, Female Genie also from bones 4. She's maybe a skosh bigger than Ziba but I had a cunning plan this time. I wanted to do a weird sparkle pony color shift across multiple primaries and I figured the airbrush was the right way to do this. I started with the magenta from a mostly downward angle and followed that up with the strong yellow from the bottom which gave a nice reddish shift at the lateral. I then hit the same downward with a saturated pink from Pro Acryl which does go very smoothly through the airbrush when thinned properly. The last step with the airbrush was a cyan ink from the top around the hair. This time I wanted the over-spray since I figured that as a sparkle pony creature of light and smoke, that her hair would be luminous enough to blend some. What followed was another painful couple hours of blending her hair, applying metallics, an painting the base. Note the nice blue metallics on her sword again--super happy with that. This isn't 100% what I envisioned but I'm really happy with the result.

Last up we have the biggie-est of this week's offerings again from bones 4. This is a Thunderfoot Behemoth and I had a cunning plan again! I wanted to put a fun lizard-y pattern on him with some false eye spots on his crest. The patterning was a fairly saturated set of contrast paints followed by a couple applications of the camo green wash made from a variety of Pro Acryl paints and Army Painter Speed Paint Medium which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite additives. A bunch of detail work later including going over the larger scales in the patterns and we're done. He landed somewhere around six hours over several days which seems like a lot but it was another challenging gloved operation which I don't super like. According to my records, this leaves two guys bigger than this remaining in the bones 4 figs I'm tackling. Notably, the two I've opted to not paint this year are even bigger! Good times.