A thing a week 2021, week 24 (new campaign characters)

I started a new campaign in the every-other-Saturday slot not terribly long ago. The last one in that slot ran for just over a year and started the first weekend of lockdown. We thought we'd be playing in Roll20 temporarily but little did any of us know that it'd be more than a year until we could go back to playing in person. Well, that time is now (well, yesterday). Among other goals for this campaign, I want to play fully painted so here we go.

First up we have Akoroi, Ork skald played here by Nolzur's Human Cleric. This is not a great sculpt and like many of the Nolzur's figs, it's not a great mold either. I got most of the awful mold lines off but not all of them and more importantly, it was super clear that the person who sculpted this figure wasn't a painter since lots of the fig are hard to reach. This started as a wash->drybrush->glazes operation but quickly sidetracked to normal wet blending and layering. As a player character, I expect this fig to get a lot of screen time so figured it was worth the effort. I could have put more effort into the metallics but I'm not unhappy with this result in about three-ish hours of effort and if you're wondering why he's fleshtoned instead of green-y, it's because this is how he looks in his online key art.

Next up we have Muchasi, Athari shaman played here by Nolzur's Aasimar Paladin. Another player character and one fairly well distinguished by vibrant plumage, this fig also embodies the Nolzur-ness issues. An additional grievance was the wings which were molded in clear plastic that did not want to stick to paint. The saturated colors were played mostly by Pro Acryl and lightened by Daler Rowney inks. That's proving to be a pretty dang good combination since both are highly pigmented and both are thin. Everything else on the character is suitably subdued and done in another four-ish hours of effort.

This is Vheela, Elven scholar and another player character played by Reaper Bones Ostarzha, Elf Cleric. Like a lot of Reaper Bones figs, this is a good sculpt let down by not stellar molding. I did what I could to clean the mold lines but didn't get all of them, the worst of which were on her hair and chin. This is about a three and a half hours of effort about half of which went into her face. The sculpt has really big eyes which is great! I love painting eyes and this gave me an opportunity to put a colored iris, pupil, and well placed reflection point. The leather bits were adequately handled by Pro Acryl Transparent Brown and while I could have cleaned them up some, I didn't feel the need. 

Kyeh of the Waves is a waterbender and yeah, I made my own world and borrow all kinds of stuff. She's played by Nolzur's Female Human Wizard and the first of two NPCs we'll look at today. She was painted over three days in about eight hours, a lot of which was on her face. Nolzur's figs tend to be more realistically proportioned than heroic and such they have very, very small faces. The flowy bits are a mix of Pro Acryl blue and green  (or just blue) highlit with Pro Acryl Turquoise (iirc). The brown bits were mostly Pro Acryl brown and that's it and I thought they looked good enough to leave like that. The waterbendy piece is a layered wash/drybrush with Pro Acryl blue and my ancient pot of Reaper Pro Linen that is almost out. I think she turned out good enough to count her as my second high quality fig of this year.

Last up we have Rokoru the Blade, bestest kitty NPC in this campaign. So far. He's played by a 3D printed cat rogue which are again really hard to find after the fact and featured way back in week 50 of last year. Poor Obeng fig never got to see play in person but I suspect that Rokoru will. This fig is pretty small and I tried to match the key art I've been using for online play. There are freehand stripes on his shoulders which pretty much don't show and despite spending a lot of time on the shading on his clothing, I don't think it shows super well. He's not a bad paint job squeaking in right around four hours all told.

2021 finished mini counter: 140/100, 2/5 high quality

A thing a week 2021, week 23 (misc figs)

This week we're back to painting and we have "figures that I had on my desk that didn't fit a theme." Also, because I'm a dummy, I forgot to shoot and post this yesterday. I've cleverly back-dated it to hide my mistake. I've got quite a lot of figs on my painting desk at any one time and while I don't plan it out this way, I usually end up with batches like this. Also, I'm really trying (and failing) to take better pictures. Some day.

These two guys are old figs from Earthdawn, one of my favorite RPGs of the 90s that no one played, and yes I know they're still developing it. I won't go down the halcyon path of talking about what a Horror is or what space these guys fill in their pantheon of badness, but these are a pair of Wormskulls, not to be confused with numskulls. If I recall correctly, I bought these guys circa 2004 or so at cash-only sale at a game store that was shutting down. I would have likely bought more if I'd had more disposable income at that point. These metal figs were made by Heartbreaker Hobbies & Games in the mid 90s and I have a few of their figs. These are not great paint jobs but they are done to the tune of a couple hours and that counts for something.

This guy is the cooper from Bones 4's Townsfolk III set and he is also a pseudo-speed paint. He was mostly painted as glazes over zenithal and his blister-mate, Ben Franklin look-alike was featured way back in week 1 (the milkmaid will be along at some point). Knowing I wanted to play the glaze speed paint game with him, I hit him with a dark wash and a drybrush first and then he sat around for many months until today a couple weeks ago when I finally got around to finishing. I think he turned out OK to the tune of a few hours though I can't say that with certainty.

Hailing from Townsfolk II, this Friar Tuck look-alike had been on my desk primed for quite a while and was also a speed paint. Like the cooper, I'd intended a glazes-over-zenithal job but ended up doing a lot more. I especially like the green cloak action which is an ancient pot of a dark green Reaper Pro paints lightened with a light fleshtone that I had on my wet palette. He was done in like two hours at the end of doing some other work and for that expenditure, I think he looks pretty good.

The tall one is one half of a Reaper Bones Harrowgate Shrines and is the epitome of lazy painting. After priming, we anti-zenithal with Daler Rowney Payne's Grey which is rapidly becoming my favorite anti-zenithal ink. After that it's a zenithal with an off white (Pro Acryl Ivory in this case though I think I like Pale Yellow better for this application). Next we get a homemade grey wash and a dry brush with a light warm grey and we're done. The little token-y things are tokens that came with spider figs that I can't be bothered to look up. They'd been sitting on my desk for quite a while but now with various levels of dry brushing and washing and generally taking up space. Well, this is the time and now they're done!

These last two are 3d prints of a free STL and boy is it hard to find these after the fact. They're scaled roughly to 28mm which, after many difficulties, is starting to be my scale of choice. They were printed at the end of last year (yes, I record this stuff) and like many of the figs sitting on my table, I painted bits and pieces of them as I was winding down with paint of the right color on my palette having finished with something else. It's interesting to note that my normal go-to for metallics, Vallejo Metal Color, didn't perform super well. I think it has to do with the tiny ridges left by the printing. The thinness of these paints which I usually prefer mean that they don't fill in the gaps and thus, the surface isn't as shiny as I'd expect. 

2021 finished mini counter: 135/100

A thing a week 2021, week 22 (city map)

A couple years ago I drew a city for use in a single-city campaign. Over the months I made several regional maps for the game, two of which wound up documented here, and a couple iterations of a large battle map used as the end of that campaign. That turned out to be a pretty good investment and one that shaped that campaign in ways that I could never have predicted.

I'm now running another single-city campaign now so I drew another one. While I freehanded the Cedarwood map, this time around I started with a seed city from the fantasy city generator at watabou.itch.io. Tools like these can save a lot of time provided you're not as obsessive about these things as I am. From the original seed, I used the site to alter some of the roads to fit what I had in mind, then took a download to draw over. 

From the original seed, I hand-drew buildings in Krita across multiple layers and composited them in paint.net (my two favorite free image manipulation tools). These buildings were mostly in the same places and roughly the same size and shape of the seed but altered to fit my needs. In some cases, I redrew the roads based on some critical thinking. For example, there was no southern road out of the castle even though most of the easily reached significant nearby cities are found in that direction. I also changed a lot of the very acute angle neighborhoods because I don't particularly like triangular buildings because they're hard to build props for.

How much use I'll get out of this map isn't clear yet, but now that I have it, I'm sure various versions will be popping up here in the future. 

(c) me 2021

A Pirate's Life part 4 (2021 week 21)

We finish up this theme with the five doods from the purple squad from Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago. Now that they're done, I rather wish I was more careful with them. They are good sculpts and probably deserved more time than I spent on them inasmuch as any mini deserves anything. 

Purple is a lousy color to highlight. White in it gets real extra grainy which I can say from experience. These are Daler Rowney Purple Lake ink lightened with a light skin tone. Vince's hint was that a sunny skin tone could be used as a universal highlight and that's proving to be true in my experience. He also said that Purple Lake was a great color and he's right on that one, too. 

Overall, I think the group came out OK which is better than the time I'd originally allotted to them. I do wish I'd kept better records but my gut tells me that the whole group of 20 guys are maybe 30 hours including assembly. I did learn quite a lot about painting with inks on these and not relying quite so heavily on washes so I think that even though they're not well painted, it was worth the effort.

2021 finished mini counter: 128/100

A Pirate's Life part 3 (2021 week 20)

As threatened last week, we have the five guys of the red squad from Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago crewmen. As this is a theme that I'm stretching out because I've got a lot of other crap going on, I'm also having to parcel out my shoddy commentary. Good, bad, or ugly, that's what we got.

One thing you might notice is their lousy bases. I had grand plans of doing a fun sandy texture putting down multiple kinds of grit. Well, that went poorly. Eventually I switched over to using Vallejo Texture Paste which conveniently holds much better than the PVA glue I'd normally use. This makes the two types stand out in fairly stark contrast. I'd hoped that the primer would hold more of the PVAed grit down (yeah, I verbed that) but this wasn't the case.

The painting of said bases is similarly lousy. I mostly hit them with Vallejo Model Air Sand which is the same color on most of their shirts. This was highlighted slightly in a damp-brushy kind of way and some of them have some tinting with green in the shadows. This didn't work but my excuse was that they're supposed to be a speed paint. Someday I will revisit sandy bases because, well, these suck. I don't expect them to get a ton of screen time either way but I also don't expect to repaint them.

2021 finished mini counter: 123/100

A Pirate's Life part 2 (2021 week 19)

Unsurprisingly, this week we have five more Ghost Archipelago Crewmen. These felt somewhat speedier than the last five though I have no evidence of this. After quite a long break, it's been good getting back to mini painting but it's show me just how important it is to paint on a regular basis. The good news is that it's a lot like riding a bike, if riding a bike involved putting paint on tiny figures.

Pretty sure I've said this somewhere (maybe youtubes) that if you're not a wargamer, you don't have to paint like a wargamer. For my use case (RPGs) it's way more important that I can tell doods apart than have them look good in a giant blob. As a result, I try to make their weapon and color scheme distinguish between them. Last week we had the indigo squad. That makes these guys the green squad. Next week we'll have the red squad and the last week of the theme we'll finish up with the purple squad.

2021 finished mini counter: 118/100

A Pirate's Life part 1 (2021 week 18)

More mini's this week and a new and shiny theme. These dooders are Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago Crewmen. I really like the official Frostgrave figures which, sadly, I don't think have ever been sufficiently documented here (these and these, if you care, painted very early in my painting journey). I will almost certainly buy more of this line at some point, but hopefully further down the line when (a lot) more of my >1900 figure collection is painted.

These guys come in a box of 20 and these are the first five. I'd hoped to burn through them ten at a time but I've been busy with other crap. They're supposed to have been a speed paint but like all of my best ideas, it didn't go quite how I planned. They're assembled mostly without terrible mold line issues (the ones that remain are pretty bad, however) and pre-shaded with Indigo Daler Rowney from below and warm white from the top as per usual, and that's where it gets weird.

I have a problem buying paints. I like buying paints. I like painting with new paints, so when I was heading out to one of the the Lego stores near me, I stopped by my friendly local game store and nearby craft store and bought some paints. I've been wanting to pick up more Daler Rowney inks for a while...so I did! These guys are primarily colored with these inks which, now, I've learned a lot about. Some of them are fairly opaque. Some of them are really, really not, which I like for certain applications. 

These guys look OK but honestly, I've forgotten how much time I spent on them. I think these five are around five hours not including assembly but that's just a guess. They're not great, but they are done and that counts for something.

2021 finished mini counter: 113/100

A thing a week 2021 (week 17): cheap & easy painting

This week we have one of my favorite kinds of painting: lazy painting. That's not to say that the results aren't good, just that these don't take a terribly large investment in time. 

First up, we have three ghostly guys are hypnotic spirits from the Legend of Drizzt boardgame. I painted the two that on the left because their magnets had fallen off and needed to be re-glued. I didn't think to look for the third guy so they don't look as close as I'd like. It's basically the same as the ghosties I did way back in week 4. Notably I washed the last guy and still had the same paint-sticking issues. Not sure what's up with that. I think these guys are serviceable and probably should have colored the base rings.

These two are Hellhounds from Pathfinder Deep Cuts. Despite my dislike for these types of figs for their terrible mold lines and questionable priming. These have none of those problems being made of harder clear plastic. They clearly went through a lot of trouble making these transparent and I didn't want my paint job to completely mask that so I started with Pro Acryl yellow transparents and walked up drybrushing darker and more opaque from there. I don't think this sells very well and notably they didn't shoot very well. They look OK.

These last three are hell hounds from Reaper Bones 4. Unlike the Pathfinder Deep Cuts hell hounds, these aren't made of hard, clear plastic, but they were painted in much the same way. I wanted more contrast than I got with the other two so I took extra effort to start with a bright yellow in the cracks moving out to hull red darkened down with coal black at the end. Afterward I picked out their eyes and nostrils with a white and tinted it again with yellow to really sell the heat. I also took extra time to prepare some 32mm bases with crackle medium which were painted the same way. I think these three look a lot better and are much closer to where I wanted to get.

Overall these eight figs took maybe three hours all told and I think for that investment, they look pretty good.

2021 finished mini counter: 108/100 

A thing a week 2021, week 16 (stone and wood cabin)

My love of half-timbered buildings stretches pretty far back, really, since I discovered them several years ago. This is not one of those, it's instead a wood and stone cabin which you may have guessed from the title. As an additional challenge, I wanted to experiment with different techniques for getting the same results, namely, using cardboard for walls and chipboard for roofing. Spoilers: this worked out OK with caveats.

Construction was done in chunks over a couple days and finished up in maybe hours all told. The inner walls are single thickness cardboard with a footer of half inch XPS. The planking on the walls is a lot like the planking on my liftships, i.e., roughly 1/16" planks of various widths textured and glued to the structure. 

The roof is made of medium weight chipboard which is way easier to cut and glue together and both more rigid and more thin than the more typical Readi-Board I usually use. Down side: its thinness means that the front fascia has less to hold onto which made gluing them down harder. Overall, I think there's good and bad with these amendments and while I'm glad I experimented some, I don't think this will be my preferred method for future buildings.

Just like last week, the top floor is held with magnets while the ground floor is held by friction fit like my other buildings. Also just like last week, we start paintage with Mod Podge plus black craft paint. For this paint job I didn't want the planking to be super duper dark unlike the inspiration photo I worked from. I started with a fairly light brown drybrushed with an off white. After that I hit it with a couple layers of wash with the terrible brown craft paint wash I made years ago + Liquitex Raw Umber ink and the same terrible wash + Daler Rowney Red Earth Ink for the roof and top floor. Every time I use it, I'm struck by how wood like the raw umber ink is over a brown + light highlight. 

Probably this building wanted to be darker. The inspiration picture was much darker, anyway. I don't think the roof is quite as nice as last week's and the wood seems newer and is lower contrast than I think it should be. I like the re-addition of the chimney (notably missing from many of my buildings) and despite wanting tighter shingles, they ended up the same size I usually make them. So there's that.

The bottom windows and door are glued into the walls without transparency. There's a piece of yellow post-it behind the granny grating to pseudo-stand-in for a lit interior. In retrospect, I should have painted them instead. The top floor's windows are cut out but with the same granny-grating and post-it construction. The intent was to have translucent window pains to show a dollar store tea light through. Well, it turns out that under normal lighting conditions, the tea light isn't strong enough to show through. That's how we learn--by tryin' stuff. I might redo the windows on this building sometime in the future. Watch this space!

2021 finished building counter: 3/5

A thing a week 2021, week 15 (half-timbered building)

I haven't built a building for a long time. In fact, the last one was way back in May of 2019 in the first iteration of A Thing A Week Weekly Challenge. By the time this article goes to print it will have been nearly two years. Also, future perfect tense--triple sentence score! I've learned a lot about working with foam in that time so it was instructive to revisit the topic. Note that buildings take up a lot of space compared to miniatures and I'm going to need to rethink my storage solution.

I had two goals and (spoilers) I got both. First, I wanted to experiment with magnetizing the different floors which would sidestep some difficult high-precision crafting with low-precision materials. This worked out OK. Second, I wanted a curved roof.  This was less OK than I would have liked but that's how you learn, right? Construction was pretty typical and was completed within a couple days. Painting stretched out for the next couple days but wasn't particularly difficult.

The base is a piece of Readi-Board foam core hit with a texture roller and glued to piece of chipboard. I couldn't work out how to get either a magnet or a nail into the base without a mess so I kept the friction-fit build. The walls are a quarter inch by two inch tall XPS textured with a ballpoint pen. The windows and modular portals are cut out with an exacto. The second floor is the same foam core hit with a different texture roller. The walls are reinforced with craft sticks and I was not super careful when gluing them together so they're not as square as I'd like.

The magnetic mechanism is basically short roofing nails driven into the corners of the second floor. They attach to small 3x2mm magnets glued into the second floor's surface. I started gluing stuff together with PVA with the intent of keeping the seams tight. This was a mistake, though I did need to use PVA to glue the magnets in and for shingles as per usual. Once I switched to using hot glue, everything sped up and generally things went better.

The roof was by far the most complicated part of this build. I had the two roof surfaces cut to size already. I settled upon throwing a beam at the top pretty quickly and settled upon freehanding curved A-frames from drawn patterns on foam core. To these I glued XPS chunks for attach points and glued the roof surface to it. I wasn't as careful as I needed and the place they meet at the top isn't straight and there's a very noticeable bow in it. I probably needed a larger beam since it doesn't hide the tops of the shingles. The fascia on the front of the roof surface is also not straight though it's a lot less noticeable.

Painting started with the typical coat of black craft paint + Mod Podge and was followed by a basecoat of craft paint. I also drybrushed more starkly than usual with craft paint but instead of using my normal lousy ancient stinky washes I used real artist inks this time. Nutmeg brown + antique white drybrush hit with a coat of Liquitex Raw Umber look convincingly like preserved wood. I also used

Daler Rowney Red Earth and Daler Rowney Indigo for the mahogany themed floor on the second story and the blue slate on the ground floor respectively. 

Overall, I think this is a good building and a good reprise of some skills that I haven't put into use for a long, long time.

2021 finished building counter: 2/5

A thing a week 2021, week 14 (corner organizer!)

This week we have something completely different and I didn't enough about what I was doing to take proper WIP pictures. While I'd like to count this as a building, that'd be a stretch even for me so instead it'll just be a weekly entry without progress toward other goals. So WTF is it?

Several weeks ago by the time of this posting I saw a thing online, a thing that I'd like, that would bring my messy painting table into something resembling sanity. This would be that thing. It's a corner piece for a modular hobbying organizer and one that I might have bought and imported from Poland if they hadn't run out. Instead, I built my own.

Construction is about as dead simple as you can imagine. It's about $1.50 of black Readi Board from a nearby dollar store which is my go-to for this kind of light construction. It doesn't need to hold a lot of weight and doesn't have many moving parts but it does need to sit between my home-made paint rack featuring prominently in week 31 of last year and the much nicer wooden one that someone gave me a couple jobs ago that takes up more space but holds fewer bottles. That space and the surrounding area have accumulated a pile of unsightly junk most of which doesn't get used super often but that I still want handy and there isn't generally that much of it.

The hardest part of the operation was cutting out the L-shaped pieces one of which is the bottom and one of which is the base of the top. The cutouts were used as the two risers and everything was more or less glued together. I got fancy this time around and made the little drawer-y things which have already proven their value. And by moving some of the paint from the nicer holder on the right, I could consolidate some stuff while opening up space to hold extra paint holders made up of 1" dowels. 

I like building tools--I'm pretty sure I've said that here before, and this is no exception. I like even more organizing things and this piece hits both. Besides which, I've opened up space for more paints...and I love buying paints!

Nostalgia, it's a thing

I've spokentyped here about a few of the handful of things I've got nostalgia for. They're few and far between but for me, like I imagine a lot of you, they're special. Space Battleship Yamato, Star Blazers in the States, is one of those things. Some of my earliest memories of a childhood long in the rear-view are of watching this on the small screen in the early 80s. It colors how I think of sci-fi, epic fantasy, and ship design, and it shows in many of the things I build even today. "Is that from Star Blazers?" is one of the comments I fish for with my designs, right up there with "I can't believe that's Lego."

I've been told that 2199 was really good but I'd been disappointed at how poorly the original had aged when I re-watched it about a decade ago. At that time I'd moved hundreds of miles away from anything I cared about and it stood in stark contrast to Robotech which I'd revisited around that same time which had aged well. So I was hesitant and as usual, got swept away in a sea of other concerns. I purchased the complete series of 2199 on blu-ray months ago and for reasons I can't sufficiently explain, the box containing the discs sat unwatched on my desk. 

Star Blazers 2199 is almost everything I'd hoped and dreamed. It's the Star Blazers I'd always imagined existed but was in doubt ever did. It's the spiritual successor of the original but updated and embellished with some 21st century sensibilities. I finished the last episode about 30 minutes ago at a time that I desperately needed it without realizing it. It is a beautiful thing and by no means perfect but then again, what is? I expect to watch it again in the near future and I desperately want more. 2202 discs are on their way to me and by God I need it to be as good as 2199 is. 

Years ago when I started my Lego journey, I knew I wanted to build the Yamato but I also knew that I didn't have the skill yet to do so. In much the same way that the original Mass Effect pushed me to build my SR1, I feel that same compulsion now--a compulsion to do right by a thing that means a lot to me in ways that I can't adequately express. I think I have the skill and resources to feasibly do this now which would mark a thing off my bucket list. I'm hoping that in the months to come I can share that journey, one that I expect to be as meaningful as my first steps into the Lego world, and with a subject that I truly love.

I suppose that's the power of nostalgia and I hope it will carry me through to completion. Wish me luck.

A thing a week 2021, week 13 (dungeon tiles!)

Now for something completely different.  My hobbying, the painting and building parts of it anyway, begin with making dungeon tiles circa 2016.  I knew I wanted to play with minis so I bought a bunch and I knew that I wanted a tactical game.  Problem:  aside from my handy vinyl hex maps with hexes that were too small, I didn't really have much terrain.  I certainly didn't have any building stand-ins so I either printed out hex maps on my black and white laser printer (since deceased) or drew on my vinyl maps with wet-erase markers.  That is, until I discovered dungeon tiles (cue dramatic music).  

I probably got the idea from either Wyloch or Black Magic Craft but somewhere in the heady days of 2016 I printed out some crappy maps on my black and white laser printer (now deceased) and pasted them upon multi-level cardboard disasters that roughly matched the shapes.  This would become more refined over the years culminating with these from April of 2019.  These are 4" x 4" x 0.25" chunks of XPS foam hit with a Green Stuff World texture roller (pavement).  With Wyloch's interlocking chipboard mechanism, they fit together acceptably though not reliably.  Once together, they're nice, but they're kind of a pain to work with.  

Well, these are the latest incarnation, iteration five or six or something--I dunno, I lost track.  They're the same 4" x 4" but half an inch thick and I milled them when burning through some of my stock last year.  They were always intended as double sided but by design they also match the height of the last iteration even if they won't lock with them.  I noodled a lot on the attachment mechanism.  I knew I wanted to use magnets but didn't want to have to deal with terrible polarity issues.  First up:  tacks.  They didn't work because of their curved tops.  So then I thought nails and walked away with a $10 box of ferrous roofing nails.  If there's one hint I can give any aspiring tabletop crafter, it's that you can save a lot of money by using stuff you can get at the hardware store.  Pro-tip:  if you're looking to use magnets, bring one with you when buying materials to test against whatever you hope it'll stick to.  

There are basically three nails on each of two sides and three 3x2 mm magnets on each of the other two sides.  They stick closer together which is nice and they're textured on both sides.  One side is Green Stuff World flagstone and the other side is textured with a ball point pen and wire brush as wooden planking.  They're primed with black craft paint + Mod Podge sealer and painted first with crappy craft paints and then with crappy washes I made several years ago adulterated with far more expensive inks and mediums to make them work correctly.  Turns out, you can learn a lot in a few years.  

I am super looking forward to using these sixteen magnetic, double-sided dungeon tiles in person whenever it is we can do that kind of thing again.  These will count as the first of my five "buildings" this year.  

2021 finished "building" counter: 1/5

A thing a week 2021, week 12 (Spiders!)

As threatened at some point last year, I printed out a bunch more spiders at a slightly larger size--sixteen of them, even. They came off the printer at slightly low quality and were painted similarly. I have no illusions that his was in any way high effort painting but they are indeed painted. For this go-around I improved (slightly) on the original set. They were primed and washed and then drybrushed as if by zenithal.  After that some details were slopped on in an off white before hitting them with a Badger Ghost Tint candy coat. The bases were finished very simply in black. They'll count 2:1 because it's my challenge and I'm comfortable with this ratio of almost no effort.  

When I started out this year and was setting goals, I had no expectation that I'd land at 100 in March. I'm still short on the high quality and OSL goals but I'm not super concerned with getting those in at this point. I'm going to do now what I did last year at roughly this time--switch gears to doing other stuff. That'll also give me space to get some effort on one or more more of the missing try-hards.Watch this space!

2021 finished mini counter:  100/100

A thing a week 2021, week 11 (filler!)

This year so far has been a big year for mini painting, following from a strong 2020. Because things are going so well, I'm pushing this week's normally scheduled programming to bring you this news flash:  it's minis. That's right.  Minis. This mini-mini theme is brought to you by "random stuff I have prepped on my painting table."  

This is a Bones 4 Lowland Owlbear which is distinct from its often mistaken cousin, the Highland Owlbear which is renown for its love of dry whiskeys. I prepped this guy sometime last summer because he looked cool and then I didn't get to painting him...until now. Well, honestly, it was a week and a half ago because these posts roll out later than the actual event. This was my favorite kind of painting:  slap some paint around and focus on a couple details. That's more James Wappel shaded basecoat action over top of a zenithal-anti-zenithal-sandwich-plus-some-actual-airbrush-basecoating. I painted him as a cross between a grizzly and a great horned owl and any particular resemblance to either creature is a coincidence since I didn't look up reference for either. Other than the funky smell from the chocolate brown craft paint wash I'm trying to use up, I think it's a good result for the not-even-an-hour that I spent on him. Probably the spikes on his back are too stark but meh.

These four penguins are from, you guessed it, Bones 4 and available for purchase as Penguin Attack Pack.  These are also not exceptionally difficult painting though the dire penguin (the one with spikey bits) did have a few more details. I'd hoped to paint them mostly with the airbrush but forgot that they're counter-shaded and had to work a little bit harder. They landed in a couple hours for all four and even though I could have pushed the contrast more, I'm not unhappy with them. Not sure why my camera felt the need to blurrify these shots. 

This is a pig, also from Bones 4. The cart, if you're wondering, was last seen in week 45 of 2020. This guy has sat on my workbench for many months partially painted. I wanted to practice my brush blends but that's way too much work. Instead, he's about 5 minutes of easy airbrushing and maybe 5 minutes of additional detail work for his trotters and eyes and such. I'm not going to pretend this is high art or anything, but it's painted and that's something.

2021 finished mini counter:  92/100

A Lounge of Lizards part 4 (2021 week 10)

This has been a good theme:  four whole weeks! In actuality, these were finished some weeks ago in the middle of February. It's been a really good traipse through my backlog and some figs that I really like even if they don't get a ton of screen time. Being able to use the airbrush a lot more was a real boon despite having to wrestle with the dang thing so much. Additionally, I'm trying to take better pictures. I mean, I bought this expensive camera, I may as well get to using it better.  

This first guy is a Snakeman Warrior from Reaper Bones. I don't remember why I didn't paint Mr. Snakeman in orange and with the last batch, but I'm sure I had a reason that wasn't "make my life harder," but there ya go. I like this fig and I spent a little extra time on him. Like the other figs in this theme, he was mostly painted with my cheapo airbrush. Most of these green folks have brush-painted bellies/details and drybrushed and washed and completed quite quickly. I spent not quite enough time on the shading of his metallics and not quite enough time highlighting and shading his excessive gear. So there's that. I think it's an OK result.   

Reaper bones show prominently on these un-hallowed pages and I've had these Nagendra prepped on my desk for quite a long time. These particular guys are Nagendra Swordsmen and mostly airbrushed with some basic effort to shade their metallics. I'm not 100% sold on the turquoise runes on their weapons but they work OK. Airbrushing sped this whole batch up quite a lot and even though they were a speed paint, I think the quality is higher than the effort I actually spent on them. 

Next up we have Nagendra Warriors who (quite obviously) follow the same scheme as the other folks in this batch. The texturing on the bow and haft of the polearm (a pudao, I think) looked good and I decided to paint them in the same bronze as the armor of the other folks. In retrospect, I don't think a bronze bow would actually work so it's, um, maaaaagic. Now that they're done, I'm fairly sure they'll get some screen time when we can play in person, whenever that happens.

This heavily armored guy is one half of Nagendra Leaders and I really should have spent more time on him.  His armor is a mix of Vallejo Metal Colors gold and copper with a candy coat of Badger Minitaire Golden Yellow like the hoplites from last year. This year I'm making a real effort to highlight/shade my metallics and this guy didn't really get enough of that. I like the yellowy-bronze but it's still really flat. The volumes aren't picked out correctly which was admittedly lazy. I don't  particularly like this figure which is part of why I didn't expend more effort. It's a soft sculpt and despite my best efforts, his swords are still awfully bendy...but he's done now. Overall the greenies here sans the last piece were done in roughly ten hours total which seems quick for me given the results.  

I don't think the leader holding the fireball makes any sense (lizards tend to have neither mammaries nor birth canals) but I did like advantage of the situation to hit up some OSL on her anyway.  For this application, I revisited James Wappel's techniques which start with a very rough initial application slapping paints on in roughly the right places and refining in further steps.  I like painting this way and I really like painting in OSL even though I'm terrible at it. Taking a closer look at the photos, I may have overdone it--probably the light is too stark. Despite this, I think the results are good for maybe a couple hours over a couple evenings.  

This is going to finish off A Lounge of Lizards 2021 and these folks were done in roughly five hours total which seems quick for the results I got.  Handy airbrush using?  Check.  Drybrushing highly textured figs for good effect?  Check.  Focusing on the right details and a gratuitous use of OSL?  Check.  I'ma call this one successful.

2021 finished mini counter:  86/100, 2/5 OSL, 1/5 high quality

A Lounge of Lizards, part 3 (2021 week 9)

This week we finish up the lizards theme strong with a bunch of figs plus a bonus.  

In keeping with our theme, this is an absolutely enormous croco-gator or something (actually a Dire Crocodile) who came in my Reaper Bones 4 pledge.  I actually used such a creature about a year ago in a sewer fight and had completely forgotten that I had this guy.  I don't recall what my standin was.  He was mostly painted with previously mentioned cheapo airbrush with a little bit of effort pulling out details but after last week's pseudo-try-hard effort, I just wanted to slap some paint around.  So that's what I did.  Most of the hard stuff on this guy was the airbrush but being a natural creature that generally blends into the environment, I didn't do a lot beyond its eyes and teeth.  I'd say it looks good for the roughly hour I spent on it.  

Also from my Reaper Bone 4 pledge came this Wyvern.  It'd been prepped on my priming/building desk for many months with a bunch of other large winged creatures which might make an appearance later this year.  It's painted in mostly the same color scheme as the Dire Croc with some dry brushing and washing in yellows and browns on the wing membranes to pop them out.  It wasn't super complicated painting but I think it looks good for the couple hours I put into it.  If I had it to do again, I think I would have toned down the wing membranes since the yellow is so eye-catching and detracts from his crazy-eyed head.

These guys are Nolzur's Grey Slaad and Death Slaad which I don't remember buying and yet they show up in my records nonetheless.  The more I paint these Nolzur's figs the more I'm disappointed with them.  I hate the mold lines which are awful and I'm not super sold on their "pre-primed" state which sometimes paint doesn't like to stick to.  I basically slapped paint on these guys in a pseudo-shaded basecoat kind of way channeling my inner Wappellious Spellbrush which is quite fun.  They're green and orange because I had those colors out on the palette and I don't particularly care what the models are supposed to be.  They were completed in around 4 hours total and I think they look OK for that investment.  

Next up we have three Runewars Flesh Rippers which I'm pretty sure I bought at steep discount with a bunch of other interesting figs.  I don't play Runewars and I have no idea if they're actually lizards but it's my theme and I'm going to count them as such.  These were a mess and I lost one of their arms which is why there are only three of them.  I don't know what kind of plastic they used but it's hard to get mold lines off of and on these guys they were brutal.  They were base-coated mostly with my cheapo airbrush with highlights and details as normal with a normal brush.  These weren't a hard paint but they came out OK to the tune of ~4 hours for the three of them.  They look a little flat now that I'm not in the throes of painting them and I might punch them up a bit at a later date.

Last up this week we have a Reaper Bones Chaos Toad Sorcerer.  It came with my Bones 4 pledge and since it's holding a fireball, I took this opportunity to have some fun with object source lighting.  And this one was actually fun!  It started out with slapping paint around the model and three hours later that was pretty much what I was still doing.  I don't know what it was with this one.  The details aren't good and there's a lot of crap that is just plain not right but I liked the lighting effect enough to stop painting.  I didn't even get back to cleaning up the mess on the smoke trail.  I like painting OSL and I'm excited to do more--stay tuned!

2021 serious OSL attempts:  1/5

2021 finished mini counter:  79/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 2 (2021 week 8)

Following up last week's lizards we have these scary chaps many of which have seen play.  This week, too, we got some nice speed ups through zenithal + counter shade + base coating with the airbrush.  I might be closer to getting a spendy one than I thought!

These orangey chaps are Reaper Bones Lizardman Warrior, his name-twin Lizardman Warrior, and similarly-named Lizardman Spearman.  Orange isn't a color that I paint in very much and this was a good excuse to see how terrible it could be practice with it.  Red is also a color I've struggled with.  While painting these guys, something clicked.  Brent of Goobertown who I will one day print and paint, said something very similar when painting some Seraphon lizardoods which I find more than a little interesting.  Also, I note that during this work I a) mostly used a resuscitated red sable brush I like a lot, and b) mostly used Pro Acryl paints which I also like a lot and these two things made this process waaaaaay more enjoyable.  I'd forgotten how nice it is to use brushes without a hook and paints that don't suck.  The three of them were done in like 10 hours and while I spent a similar amount of time on them overall, I think the shield and club guy turned out the best and I'm comfortable counting him as my first high quality paint this year.  

These four are two packs of Reaper Bones Spikeshell Warriors.  They saw quite a lot of screen time a few campaigns ago as some particularly vile bads.  I went for a paint scheme like the alligator snappers that these figs seem to be based upon.  That meant dark and desaturated greens moving up to beige and generally making them look like the detritus found on the bottom of ponds.  That seemed like it would work but the beige ended up being a little too desaturated.  A bit of yellow fixed this and I'm not entirely certain why.  At any rate, the first guy took upwards of three hours experimenting with colors and whatnot with the other three completing in the next four.  I guess that's why test figs are so important.  In a better world I would have taken a little more care dealing with their awful mold lines and boy howdy am I looking forward to finishing all of my old Bones figs in like....2030.

• 2021 high quality counter:  1/5
• 2021 finished mini counter:  71/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 1 (2021 week 7)

With two themes down and quite a lot of figs to go, we're opening this week's theme strong.  I have quite a lot of lizard figures that need paint--fewer now!  This is because a couple campaigns ago one of the antagonists were a cult of ne'er-do-wells corrupting eggs into terrible monsters.  I also occasionally buy cool looking figs on sale from wargames I don't play, so there's that.  

These three are snakes from the Wrath of Ashardalon board game.  I'd already magnetized these guys and hidden them away only to be found when putting away some newly painted figs.  These are not good molds and the sculpts are more than a little confusing and I didn't do anywhere near enough work dealing with their imperfections.  I took this opportunity to do more work with my cheapo airbrush to save time and this time it worked out.  I think these guys look good for the time I spent on them, less than 2 hours all told, despite picking out a bunch of details that I didn't need to.  

Next up we have a Crested Felldrake from the Chainmail Starter Set.  I'd had this guy prepped and ready to go for a while but hadn't found a good opportunity to paint him...until today!  I thought I might paint him in a fun color like magenta or something but when painting the snakes above, I figured that color scheme would be fine, too.  Turns out, I accidentally painted him the right color!  No real difficulty here and it's not a super big fig.  This feels like a good result for the hour I spent on it.

Lastly we get four Legion of Everblight Shredders which are apparently lesser warbeasts but I'm only really typing in what's on the box since I don't play Hordes.  Are these actually lizards?  I have no idea.  In fact, I understand they're supposed to be painted a pale blue or lavender but I painted them turquoise because I could.  It's a mix of the teal Pro Acryl, Transparent Green and Vallejo Game Color Azul Ink both of which I really like over zenithal through the airbrush.  I highlit these with increasing levels of cool grey and white (through the airbrush again) before finishing off details.  Horns, claws, and teeth got a couple layers of washes and an edge highlight.  I didn't spend anywhere near enough time scraping mold lines on these guys, unfortunately.  Minus this, I think they look OK for ~3 hours of work.

2021 finished mini counter:  64/100