A thing a week 2026, week 39

More Bones 6 this week and a pretty wide grab-bag of subjects.These were notably not painted in this order so any counts from here and probably for a while are sus. I'm also adjusting my lighting setup so these guys are a little darker than normal. 

These guys are Bog Shambler on the left (sadly, no link) and Driftlurker on the right. Both of these guys are mostly drybrush with some work to pick out details. In the case of the Bog Shambler, picking out details wasn't even that involved. I don't have a lot of obvious needs for either of these guys so I don't know if they'll ever get screen time but I've thought that before and been wrong, so who knows? For the effort spent, I think these guys look pretty good though they are helped by their size.  

Next up we have two more skellies with Dragoth the Defiler on the left and Skeletal Houndmaster on the right (no link). It's been pretty well documented herein that I don't use a lot of undead so I don't know when I'll ever use them on the tabletop. Thus, I didn't spend a lot of time on these guys including fixing Dragoth's bendy sword. This is my second happiest scheme for painting: slapping paint around without getting too focused on any particular details. Also notably, I didn't pick out any gradients so no spendy blends on either which helped make them go faster. They were pulled together at the end with a fairly heavy dark wash. This time I remembered that this particular wash was shiny so I hit it with anti-shine additive which marks the first time that I've used this stuff effectively. So I got that goin' for me.

Last up we have Oxidation Beast or my favorite, the Rust Louse, Bloodstone Golem, and Elven Hunting Cat. None of these guys took all that long and probably they'll all get screen time in the unforseeable future. The Rust Louse is mostly painted with various coats of my lowest-utility Constrast Paints mostly a red that sucks and a fleshtone that I hate. I seriously spent more time on the rocks it's sitting on than on the beast itself. The golem is more or less the same thing though I did pick out everything I thought was a rune. Probably that could have been clearer on the sculpt. The Elven Hunting Cat was done at the same time as the wolves and was done mostly as an afterthought. It does look better and a lot less creepy in person. So there's that.

2026 finished mini counter: 224 

A thing a week 2026, week 38

With Bones 5 safely in the rearview, it's time to burn down Bones 6, Fo' Realz this time! These are my missing wolf pack as noted in Week 24 of last year and I'm super stoked to have found them. These are pretty much the same scheme as the previous guys with washes and drybrushes and whatnot with some extra work to put the grey wolf patterning on them. I think they turned out well. These are the best kind of paint jobs: high drama, low effort and I'm hoping for more of these in Bones 6. 

2026 finished mini counter: 217

A thing a week 2026, week 37

This week we get a short interlude and a preview before barreling into our next big push. These two are Female Wizard from Galaad, one of my favorite sculptors. They were printed way back in the summer of 2023 before I had the Saturn 2 settings dialed in. I like this sculpt more in theory than I do in practice and both of these printed badly, particularly their legs which are disjoint. I did what I could but only kind of made it better. I am not a fan of big, flowy loaks and theirs are both big and flowy. This sculpt has some really bad negative space that made them much harder to paint than might have been expected and they have been kicking around on my painting table for years as a result. I had delusions of doing them to a high quality and while their faces are pretty nice, I couldn't get it over the finish line so they're just normal "painted" which is just fine.

This is a high quality work, particularly Ellie the Water Genasi Mage by Twin Goddess miniatures, one of my other favorite sculptors. She also has printing defects, particularly around her hair, and printed in the same batch as our wizards. I was pretty sure she was going to be a high quality work from the get go because I like the sculpt so much. Fast forward many years of fiddling around with basic things until I finally got her over the finish line. These shots show my one big gripe with this paint job: that the lows and highs are underwhelming which is worse in these shots than in person. Her hair could use higher highlights, probably. Also featured in these shots: a lot of dust. Her near twin will hopefully also be a high quality effort and will hopefully be featured here soon (TM). 

These two feathery guys are Raptorkin from Bones 6, specifically the Ranger and Wizard and they're our in-place preview of the next big push. I don't have raptorkin in my fantasy world (our Athari are more humans with wings than humanoid birds). They're painted pretty plainly with a semi-glossy airbrush basecoat and clothes/details picked out after a drybrush. For the effort, they look pretty OK. Notably, these are the first two painted at least partially with my newly delivered Reaper paints kickstarter. Hot take: they're nice.

This week leaves one fig left in the 2023 prints/purchases which means we can't close it out just yet. Sometime soon, though, probably.

2026 finished mini counter:  210, 7/12 high quality

A thing a week 2026, week 36

This week we have the end of Bones 5 and a coupla bonus figs because I needed them painted. First up we have our two bonus figs played by Donna the rogue ranger Ferret lady the sword version of which we expect to get a lot of screen time as a PC and Dreadmere Ranger done with a minimum of OSL. The non-sword Donna glued slightly badly and I didn't notice until after she'd dried and I'm way too chicken to try to pull her off to re-glue. I like this sculpt a lot, particularly the sculptor's restraint to not festoon her with too many geegaws and bajangles. Our ranger guy was mostly a speedpaint and looks like and oldskool sculpt. The gloss is less bad in person.

These are the last three of my Bones 5 list:  Siobhan Redraven, Blood Wolves Swashbuckler, Inari Windsong, and Petey, Pizza Dungeon Dragon. I'd intended to bring Siobhan to a high quality effort but she fell short and I didn't feel like fighting it. I do like the result and would consider getting a copy for a second attempt. If Inari looks familiar, it's because we saw her in Week 41 of last year in metal and this copy has exactly the same sculpting issues as the last one. Petey was the mascot of Bones 5 and should you care to, you can read the fun Scooby-Doo type comic near the bottom of the campaign page. Even though he's red in their campaign material, I thought green would go better with the red pepperoni. I got super duper hungry for pizza when painting this guy.

Bones 5 seems to have been a pretty big step up from Bones 4 both in quality and in sculpts. My Bones 6 efforts should follow shortly and so far it looks like another step up. 

2026 finished pizzamini counter:  205