A thing a week 2025, week 30

Another special one today but not quite as special as last week's offering. This is Gauth from Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 and he marks the last of the Bones 4 figs that I'm painting with a couple caveats that we needn't dwell on. 

I had serious gap issues on this guy like the guy last week and mostly for the same reason: large bones white plastic molds warp terribly. I also had a differenter fun problem with this guy that I didn't have last week: he was super front heavy since he didn't really come with a base. In retrospect, it looks like his legs (which were individual pieces for reasons) are warped forward which a) puts his face really near ground level, and b) made him tip over prior to basing such that he snapped in half and needed to be re-filled. 

The paint job itself isn't super interesting consisting of a prime/zenithal/basic basecoat with the airbrush followed by some minimal washing. Several rounds of fairly heavy drybrushing popped out most of the texture on him and minimal amounts of brush painting filled in the details. Like last week it's a high drama, low effort piece of work (my favorite!) and I think he came out pretty OK. 

The basing is also a high drama, low effort operation. It's obviously stacked layers of cork with some minimal washing and drybrushing. You don't see all the effort I spent layering joint compound so it would look less like cork and probably didn't even notice all the random rocks I threw down to break up the edges some. You probably did notice the half teaspoon of gold glitter I glued down. Many sins are hidden by that glitter and I'm stoked to have another reason to use it since the last time in like 2019. It's the basing equivalent of working in a pop color. 

2025 finished mini counter: 114, 2025 goal figs remaining: 33 

A thing a week 2025, week 29 (+Seven Years of Painting)

Today we have a special one and just because I can, we're going to jam some extra special commentary in here too.

This is the Blacktooth Terror from Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 and sadly, I don't think it's been released to the public yet. It's one of the nicer sculpts in Bones 4 and I'd kind of like to have another one. This is my favorite kind of painting: high drama, low effort. He's mostly painted with the airbrush which established most of the skintones and the nice fade from orange to tan. The dark brown of his stripes and on his craggly back is an undiliuted Cygor Brown Constrast Paint which pretty much always shows up as black when shooting on a white background. I did minimal drybrushing to pop out the highlights and a bunch of work on the details on his scaryface. I specifically under-highlit the base to keep the focus on the dino but the last wash made that a lot less distinct in addition to adding the shininess which wasn't intended.

In addition to being a striking addition to my painted collection, he's also my 2,000th painted figure at least as far as I've counted correctly. Notably this neglects a handful of vintage Star Fleet Battles metal ships that have almost nothing done to them but does include a dozen or so battlemechs painted with enamels in the 90s. I recognize that I paint an unusual amount but over the years I've gone the full spectrum from hate painting to kind of liking it to obsessing about it on a regular basis. 

So in those seven years, what have I learned? If you're a regular reader here you'll notice some themes, probably.

First up, contrast is king. Provided that you have a good handle on the details of a fig and have a relative level of competence in prepping, nothing will make a fig stand out more than contrast. I really started focusing on this in year like 3 and trying to do more with it has really improved my results. Normally we discuss value contrast which is the lightness or darkness of an element (usually 1 being the lowest lows and 5 being the highest highs) but we should also consider texture, tone, and temperature as well. In addition to the normal color theory composition thought I put into a paint scheme, I'm now also varying the temperature (warm vs. cool, see: beloved Cat Captain's epaulets and shirt vs. her coat, boots, and pants) in adjacent elements as often as I can in addition to popping out or adding texture when I can with hashes, slashes, dots, and other painted-on detail (see: Ragna's cloak). Tone is something I stumbled upon mostly accidentally when trying to work out how best to do red/green color combos without characters looking like Christmas pageant extras (see: Highland Heroine's desaturated cloak vs. her red elements). These things have leveled up my work mostly for minimal cost in planning.

Next up, I now super value pre-painting prep. I've mentioned it before but I hate dealing with mold lines when painting and I've started to really dislike large gaps that make figs look less like proper representations in a miniature world and more like the toys they actually are. It's one of the few places I care about immersion in my gaming as if that were a reasonable thing. This big dino had a shitton of gaps which I filled with and old and way past its good-by date Perfect Plastic Putty. Large molded pieces tend to have big gaps, particularly anything that assembles in bones white plastic and for reasons I don't understand, this guy had the big craggly back piece as separate. It's hidden OK in the sculpt but it was also part of why I painted it in such a dark color. We'll see some figs in the near future that I wasn't quite so careful in filling and they look less cool than they might have. I'll also add to this that undercoating with a zenithal or nadir shading with the airbrush is pretty much second nature for me so I get that part almost for free.

Basing is the other big pickup that elevated my painting. I started deliberately building, painting and flocking bases several years ago and went back and re-based just about everything I'd painted in 2021 IIRC. Occasionally I'll get into a "just slap paint around" mood and painting bases is a great way to channel that energy. The try hard ones are the fun freehand sci-fi jobs (see: Cuddy Grey's) or painted bark rockery (see: Ork Gal). I haven't done a big batch of fun bases in a while which is a good indication that I should do so and not just because it means I can be lazy later. Added bonus: I should do more freehand.

Last but not least: don't buy more than you need. I started hate painting because a) I got super tired of playing with nondistinct white Bones plastic and b) because I had bought so freakin' many figs. By the time that Bones 4 fulfilled in mid 2019 I was well on my way to a four figure collection. At the time of this typing (about a week prior to posting), I've got around 640 figs left in my pile of shamepotential and print something like 75 figs every year which means that at my current average (~285 for the math-inclined) it'll be another two years before I get close to the end (assuming I don't kickstart or buy any more, obv). As I typed before: I paint an unusual amount and it's damned good thing that I mostly enjoy it. 

 

 

 

 

A thing a week 2025, week 28

We finished up an in-person campaign recently so we needed new player character figs. I took the opportunity to clear more of my painting desk so we have only one shot on goal this week. 

First up: our shot on goal. This is an Angel of Shadows from Reaper and mine is in the soft white bones plastic. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do OSL on this one since she's carrying a lantern but being mostly a speed paint it mostly didn't come through in these shots. It's better in person FWIW. She's the only one this week toward my 2025 goals and I probably could have adjusted this shot a bit. 

This is Desyra Littlebow by Tabletop Terrain and a sculpt that I kickstarted at the end of 2022. I liked the sculpting of her face and her pose but was sold on some pretty nice renders that masked some of the sculpting sins. In particular, I hate her shoes. No one should be running through a forest with a bow in platforms. There also seem to be some proportion issues and I really wish she had some sculpted tone on her arms rather than looking all the world like wet noodles. I still spent a crazy amount of time on her and despite my misgivings, will count her as high quality number nine on the year done in about a dozen hours over the last few months. 

Next up we have Tabaxi Bandit from Vae Victis. The player (naturally) wanted a weapon that wasn't in the modular set that the STL came with so I kitbashed a fancy spear on him from a completely different kit. I kept the saturation on his hood and short cape but kind of lost the highlighting which I'm not super happy about. Not sure how it went so glossy in these shots, either. The highlighting on his sleeves looks better and I really should have used a lower value off white on the stitching. I was originally going to go with black claws which IMO would have been better. He was done in a few hours. 

This is Landsknecht Girl also from Vae Victis painted (obviously) in Ironlily colors. Occasionally I run into a sculpt that does a lot of the work for me and this one is one of those. The details are nicely separated and nothing is particularly fine, indistinct, or close together. The highlighting here is pretty minimal though I did edge just about everything I could. Overall it sells the piece as higher effort than it actually was. I maintained deep separation between all of the major elements and took the extra step to highlight her breastplate since she only had the one piece of metallic armor showing. She was done in something like six hours and is probably one of the more complete pieces I've done. And if you think the black lininig is heavy in these shots--it isn't and sells well on the table. She'll count as high quality number ten on the year.    

2025 finished mini counter: 112, high quality 10/12, 2025 goal figs remaining: 35    

Knight-o-rama week 9 (2025, week 27)

And we're across the finish line (and the crowd goes wild...probably). These five are the last of the archers and have almost OK highlighting. Overall most of this batch was speedpainted (obviously) to the tune of maybe a couple of hours per fig which as I'm typing this, doesn't seem particularly fast. Then again, my normal characters weigh in at like 6-8 hours so that's a significant speedup. It'll also be great if my counts line up which they didn't so it looks like this one's off by one but I trust my spreadsheet more than my maths in these unhallowed pixels and I can't be bothered to go back and figure out where my error was.

While these aren't my best work, I like that they're done and they've been added to my pantheon of baddies that will likely get table time over the years. Next up, some crazy.

2025 finished mini counter: 108,  2025 goal figs remaining: 36