A thing a week 2025, week 42

More miniatures this week but instead of finishing out this year's goal, we've got a handful of small batches this week and for a while. This might be because I'm doing something complex with the last two figs or I might feel need to crank through a bunch of same-y figs in a set of mini-batches. Tune in to find out!

These four dudes are mud men from Bones 6 and I can't seem to find a link on the Reaper site. these are the best kind of painting: easy. Aside from mostly not dealing with their awful mold lines, they were primed, zenithaled in a ruddy brown then hit with various washes to darken down their details. I made sure to use glossy finish washes/paints to indicate that they're wet because they're made of mud. In this case, the gloss is doing the work for me rather than making me sad. If I had to guess, from prep to painting to coloring their bases, they were done in less than two hours. 

This guy is actually a Clay Golem from Bones 5 but I painted him in exactly the same scheme as the mud men because a) I could, and b) it'd be easy. I didn't even color his base differently because I figured he was made out of the same stuff he was standing on. When I'm doing encounter design I like having a heavy or boss version of the bads to make it a little more interesting so even though this guy is technically a different kind of thing (construct vs. elemental) I figured he was better off with the little guys. 

2025 finished mini counter: 156, 2025 goal figs remaining: 2

A thing a week 2025, week 41

Still working through the blown out shots here, obviously. Some day I'll learn how to use this dang thing. In other news, we've got four more figs on-goal and they're all metal which I continue to like.

First up we have DHL Classics: Fighting Women from Reaper and I am here for their big 90s hair. I am also here for their practical armor and pseudo-reasonable poses. The middle gal could use a hat, tho. I had intended to do a bunch of non metallic metal on these three but obviously didn't. As most of them are metals, I did spend additional time in the shading and highlighting which is really blown out in these shots. Similarly, their faces and hair got extra attention even though it's hard to tell here. They read well on the table, just not in close-ups.

This would be Inari Windsong also from Reaper and we'll be seeing her again since there's a non-metal clone in Bones 5. I spent quite a lot of time with this fig trying to get her arms to look weird. There's some weird sculpting on both of them and I was only able to do so much with the paint. In these close ups her abs are way more defined than they are in person and I put extra effort into smoothing out some of the blends on her cloak. For the non-color-theory-nerds out there, she's in a secondary triadic and I really couldn't find another place to put an orange accent. Her face could probably use a little more work around the eyes. One bad thing about metals is you often get weird artifacts around eyes that make fine detail work difficult. 

2025 finished mini counter: 151, 2025 goal figs remaining: 2

 

A thing a week 2025, week 40

We're on the home stretch now, folks, with these four on-the-goal figs. Also of note, these four are all metals which I prefer and were pretty good fun to paint. These shots are a little blown out. Hopefully I can get that resolved for next shoot. 

First up we have Mal: Catfolk Warrior and Nicia, Tear of Vengeance from Warmachine: Protectorate a game that I notably don't play. We saw Mal way back in Week 34 of 2020 painted in oils and many iterations of my photography journy (I swear they look better in person). When I get the opportunity to paint the same figure multiple times, I usually paint them in different color schemes so Mal gets his orange cat energy on in this iteration. In retrospect, his armor should probably be in blue but in my defense, originally was going to paint him black. Nicea was purchased in 2020 on steep discount and I didn't notice that a) she was in like a million pieces, and b) that she has a dumb sword-gun thing. I like her pose and sculpt beyond that but the dumb weapon means she'll probably not get any screen time. She is the last of my unpainted 2020 offerings. 

These two are Chosen of Sekhmet and Daughter of Sekhmet and I've been looking forward to painting them for quite a long time. Kitty people are common in my world which I'm pretty sure I've typed before, but getting figs for them is surprisingly difficult. So when I found these two with spears and in metal I could hardly believe my good fortune. I thought I'd covered up all of the contrast paint basecoat but these shots prove otherwise. These two were otherwise in my happy place: not too big, not too detailed, and well sculpted. At some point when I'm buying figs again, I'd super like to pick up copies of these two.

2025 finished mini counter: 147, 2025 goal figs remaining: 6