A thing a week 2021, week 39

This we have one of my favorite things ever: cheap and easy painting. Bones 5 fulfilled earlier this year and these are probably the easiest paints in the entire batch. Despite the time investment herein, I think these guys look good.

These six guys are listed as Boulderkin and they're apparently too new to be listed on Reapermini.com. They're primed, shadowed (anti-zenithaled) and zenithaled as usual but we use the airbrush one step further: they got a basecoat and basic highlight with the airbrush. After that, an ink wash, dry brush, and picking out their beady eyes finished them off. I put them on desert-y bases because my current campaign is happening in a desert-y environment. I'd intended to take two shots of these as normal but forgot so enjoy this uncentered photo.

I'm calling this guy a stump elemental. I have no idea what he's supposed to be but he's listed with the dark elves. He's painted basically like the boulderkin with the addition of picking out a few details and adding a few highlights in brushwork. He has no eyes so I didn't paint any. Note again my lousy photography and how terribly he's centered. Not clear what I'll use him for or why he's on cobblestones but he's done and that counts for something. 

2021 finished mini counter: 228/100

Elffest 2021, week 5 (week 38)

Thought we were done with Elves, were we? Well not today! This week we have bonus Elves from Bones 5 which fulfilled earlier this year. These are nice figs disrespected by a questionable batch paint job. They follow the typical pattern:

• prime w/stynylrez w/airbrush
• shadow w/payne's grey inks w/airbrush
• zenithal w/white ink w/airbrush
• some ineffective basecoating w/airbrush
• basecoat with pro acryl transparents
• highlight and whatnot

These five are Elf Rangers and they're new enough that I can't find a link on reapermini.com. These are good figs with terrible eyes. Following up from my observation on the Wood Elf Archers last week, these guys are relatively simple with minimal colors needed but still have enough details to be interesting. I went out of my way to texture the leather rather than leaving them as Pro Acryl Brown Transparent as I've been doing recently but don't worry, I'll be back to my normal shenanigans in the next theme. I think these guys came out pretty well despite not spending anywhere near enough time on them and despite their torturous eyes.

These two are a Dark Elf w/Bow and Lanaerel Grayleaf, Elf Ranger (in plastic). As non-rank-and-file figures, I spent slightly more time on them as they are slightly more interesting. After having done these seven, I'm not entirely sold on this color scheme even though it's technically a proper split complementary. Also, now shooting these figs, I should have pushed my highlights higher. 

Overall these seven were done to the tune of around 14 hours which is slightly higher than intended but being better sculpts, I'm good with that. I think they came out OK and I'm happy to add them to my collection of completed figs.

2021 finished mini counter: 221/100

Elffest 2021 week 4 (week 37)

This would be week two of the green team and like last time, these are the archers. If this theme has taught me anything, it's that I'm glad I don't play an army game.

First up we have the other half of Nolzur's Female Elf Ranger. This neither a good figure nor a good paint job and yet she's here shot by herself. The sculpt is questionable and like a lot of the Nolzur's line, they're lousy molds. I have no idea what's goin on with this fig so I mostly guessed and was lazy. Best color? Yes, painted.

And digging deeper into my vintage figs we have some Oldhammer Wood Elf Archers. These are awesome heavy metal figs that I bought decades ago at a going out of business sale. If I'd had any sense (or any more cash) I would have bought more. They're painted in the same scheme as the other Elves in this batch and based with a combination of flocking and old tea leaves. I think these guys look pretty good and looking more closely, I think I know why. They seem to have a critical amount of detail. Not too much to be annoying but not too little to be boring. As this was pretty early in these kinds of figs even being a thing, I don't know if that was intentional or otherwise, though it certainly is today. 

Last up we have Aeris Female Ranger and Alistrilee from Reaper Bones. These share similar issues with all the normal Bones lines. I do like these figures despite that and I spent a bit of extra time on them, though not as much as I might have otherwise done. Poor Alistrilee's face is taking more light in this photo than is strictly needed which is a good indication that I need to adjust my lighting again.

The green team in whole were finished in about 23 hours which is pretty high for 13 figs. I'd expected this to speed up but it hasn't, really. These are rolling in at higher quality and they aren't as self-similar as, say, the Frostgrave Crewmen from A Pirate's Life, so I guess that kind of makes sense. 

2021 finished mini counter: 214/100

Elffest 2021, week 3 (week 36)

This week we start the green team and, as we all know, green is a very Elfy color. Like most of the other figs in this theme we start with the normal steps:

1. Prime with Badger Stynylrez (mix of white and grey)
2. Anti-zenithal with Daler Rowney Payne's Grey ink
3. Zenithal with an off white, probably Pro Acryl Bright Ivory
4. Straight down highlight with Daler Rowney white ink

Just like last time we start with the melee team and this is the twin of Week 34's Elf Paladin by Stanislav Kuznetsov. I feel like I did a better job than on his twin but only marginally. I'm also starting to decide that I don't like all of the bejangles and other crap on him (I was on the fence in week 34 but I'm pretty sure now). Possibly a larger print and more carefully applied paint would be better but I'm not 100% sure I'm going to do that.

Next up we have the twin High Elf Female Guardians again by Stanislav. Their swords are droopy like the last ones and I still didn't do enough highlighting of their armor. These figs, on the other hand, I like more having painted another two of them. I don't think I particularly did any better painting them but there ya go. Next time around I'll probably do a better metallic pop color--I don't think this bronze works super well.

And if you predicted, "we'll have twin male and female Elf Soldiers by Velrock!" then you are indeed correct! I was in no way consistent in where I applied the bronze-ish color but meh. I think these would also be better at larger scale where their details would be a little easier to cope with but I really wish the cloth hangy bits were sculpted a little better.

This is Shardis, Female Elf Rogue and I'm pretty sure she came with Bones 4 seemingly forever ago. I rather like this fig. She's got a nice pose and fun armor and a pair of daggers which is under represented in my collection. Note the pillar attaching her scabbard to the ground. I might have cut that off but painted it black instead. Her eyes are better in person than they look in the picture and despite the fact that I didn't shade her super well, I think she turned out OK.

Next up we have Arael, Half-Elf Cleric. Despite my best efforts, the mold lines on this guy were a mess but as a normal white plastic Bones fig, this is a common issue. I did not appreciate the bajillionty straps on him nor did I like that his foot behind his sword is unsculpted. His left hand is pretty badly deformed which is common with old metal molds in Bones white plastic. I put quite a lot of effort into him and I'm afraid the results don't particularly show here. That said, he's the best color: painted.

Last up we have Fiara, Elf Heroine. I don't particularly like her weapon but her armor is pretty nice. I also put extra effort into this fig and I think she looks good for it. Probably more shading was needed on her weapon and the yellows could pop a little more but I'm pretty happy with the result.

2021 finished mini counter: 209/100

Elffest 2021, week2 (week 35)

As mentioned last week, this week we have the blue team's archers and it seems like all of these figures were challenging in some way.  As per usual, they are primed, anti-zenithaled, and zenithaled. I'd intended to do glazes over a value sketch but that didn't really work out as we shall see. These six weigh in at around fourteen hours total which feels heavy for the intent but heavily weighted toward the last one.

First up we have one half of Nolzur's Female Elf Rangers. The more of these Nolzur's figs I paint, the less I like them and I suspect that I may at some point burn through the rest of them to get them out of the way. Look, I like that I can get a wide diversity of figs for a relatively competitive price, but even with a lot of work, these can't support great paint jobs. I guessed at what was going on for most of this fig which is why she's got so much armor. I have no idea what the intent of some of her details were. I am not fond of this figure and I'm glad I don't have to paint her again. Hopefully her blister-mate will go better.

This is Lindir, Elf Archer from Reaper Bones and I liked this fig more prior to painting it than after. His face is kind of messed up and my paint job did not help this. A lot of the details were soft and if I'd been more into this fig, I'd have popped out the details on his boots like the ones on his jerkin. I think this color scheme works and overall and he looks OK at a distance but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. 

These three are the fun ones. These three are vintage Earthdawn figs from Heartbreaker, ones I bought a long time ago and I wish I'd bought more of. I'm sure I've typed this before, but Earthdawn is one of my favorite RPGs. These three are fairly exaggerated even for early 90s sculpts but that doesn't keep me from loving them. I did what I could with the skintones but their arms and hands are pretty nuts. I struggled to highlight the volumes reasonably partially because I was going fast, and partially because I was being lazy. I do like how these turned out all things considered, but I wouldn't be surprised if I decided to revisit them at a later date.

This is a Wood Elf Scout from the Chainmail Ravilla Box set, and a gift from a pal. She's been sitting on my workbench for many months like most of the Elves in this theme. The non-metallics are mostly Pro Acryl Transparents lightened by light fleshtones and off whites. The metallics are Vallejo Metal Color and highlit with Golden High Flow Acrylics and washed (not very well) with Badger Ghost Tint Midnight Blue (not in that order). I like this fig and spent a lot of time on her and despite the bad shots over here, I think she turned out pretty well. I'm going to count her as a high quality fig for this year. Ultimately, I'm happy but not satisfied and will count this as one of my high quality figs for the year.

2021 finished mini counter: 201/100, 4/5 high quality

Elffest 2021, week 1 (week 34)

This week we kick off a new theme: Elves. This breaks up a month of one and two-off paint jobs some of which were creeping up in the number of hours spent. I have a lot of figs in this batch and my observation is that I generally speed up overall from doing big batches because I have to focus only on the details that really matter to finish in a sane amount of time. This is the first batch of the blue team: the melee line and we've got the usual going on. More specifically, anti-zenithal with Payne's Grey and zenithal with a white or off white after priming. Metallics are washed with Badger Minitaire Ghost Tint Inidgo and highlit with Golden High Flow Acrylics. 

These two are Nolzur's Female Elf Paladins and like many Nolzur's figures, they are questionable sculpts with bad molds. The gal with the greatsword's skirt's negative space is super hard to paint. The gal with the mace's cloak is extra bad and the one I have is posed such that the shield is directly in front of her face. Good luck with painting eyes! Despite that, I rather like these figs and really wish they were done in, I dunno, nice plastics instead of the typical rubbery Nolzur's junk. I punted on the wood on the shield and the rocky bases they're standing on. 

These two are High Elf Female Guardians by Stanislav Kuznetsov and despite my terrible printing and painting, I really like these figs. The swords weren't properly supported so they're both leaning down and some of the supports have made things difficult. I printed them kind of small and I think they'd benefit from being slightly better and not being part of a batch. Since this is a 3d print, I can make that happen so sometime in the unforseeable future, I expect these to make a return. 

This is a 3d print Elf Spearmaiden also by Stanislav. I like this fig but like many of my other early prints, she's way, way too small. She was printed last October which feels forever away and sat partially painted on my desk from before I conceived of themes at all. One thing I really don't like about this fig is her spear. Like most things in resin, it's brittle and has broken off like a billion times already. It will probably continue to break until I get pissed enough to replace it for a more durable one. This paint job isn't all I wanted it to be and I'm sure I'll re-print her at a sturdier size at some point in the near future.

Also from Stanislav is this Elf Paladin. I did not do a good job with this one mostly because I failed to get the magnet in a good spot and he wobbled around badly while I was painting him. He's mostly metallics and there are a lot of bejangles and doodads hanging off of him. He's also printed fairly small and I suspect that a future print and paint (non-batch) would yield a better result.

These two are male and female Elf Soldiers by Velrock available for free on Thingiverse. Velrock does good work and should you be so inclined, I'd recommend visiting their store on MyMiniFactory. These are great figs and despite my bumbling with their paint job, I still think they look good. Like the other prints in this batch, I probably printed them too small and painted them too fast to get as good a result as they probably warranted. We may see these show up again at a future date.

This last gal is Aviriel Tellerion, Female Elf and an old Reaper Bones figure. This is a questionable sculpt and a terrible mold and like many Bones figs, despite heavy cleaning and good priming, paint did not want to stick to her. I started liking this fig a lot and ended up really not being a fan. Her hair is nuts and there are a lot of awful negative spaces on her. Despite the time spent, I ended up not liking this paint job and might revisit later. For now, she's the best color: painted.

All told this batch of nine was around nineteen hours but at least some of that was burning paint on other figs in the batch so it's a little high. Even reducing colors I ended up spending more time than I expected. It'll be interesting to see if this batch speeds up on a per-figure basis. Next week: blue team archers!

2021 finished mini counter: 195/100

A thing a week 2021, week 33

This week we continue our not-theme of "stuff on my painting desk." I've got some longer projects bubbling in the background that get effort over time but we'll get to those in due time. For now, this is what we've got.

This is Joanna the Cleric by Twin Goddess Miniatures. This is a multi-sculpt figure and of which these are my two favorite, though honestly, I could have done without the high heels. These were a one day paints. A single day for me is between 3 and 5 hours, so still pretty substantial, and since I've got a pile of stuff I want to get through, this is a thing I want to do more of. Since so much of their getup was metal, I did some shadows with Badger Ghost Tints and highlights with Golden High Flow Acrylics as per usual. This is a fairly cheap and easy way to punch up an otherwise fairly dull model. Despite the time spent on them, their faces aren't spectacular but overall, I'm not unhappy with this result weighing in at about six hours all told for the both of them.

I shouldn't like Brianna of the Blade (and yes, I did get the metal version). She's got dumb fantasy armor which I'm just about allergic to. She was sculpted in 1998 by Sandra Garrity, a sculptor whose work I like quite a lot, and I could not resist the 90s era hair. This is a good sculpt, fashion choices notwithstanding, let down by a lousy mold. I did a lot of sculpting with paint and I notice now that I didn't properly give her hair the Pantene Shine(TM) and that's a bummer. She was done over many months done in what I'd guess is three hours and I'm not unhappy with this result. Minus the hair.

Zadim, Iconic Slayer came with Bones 4. I understand he's from Pathfinder, a game I don't play and if I had looked up the concept art, I might have painted him differently. Like many of the others of this week's offering, he's been sitting on my painting table for a while, since the end of last year if I recall correctly, and I didn't particularly like all of his fancy...fancyness. He was done in around three hours which is where a lot of my not-tryhard jobs are landing these days. 

This is the Paladin out of the Chainmail Starter Set. She's metal (and heavy) and the mold defects were pretty awful. Yes, I said defects instead of lines because these were way worse than lines would have been and, naturally, there's one going right over the left side of her face. Her armor is the typical fantasy trope crap but she was a fun paint nonetheless. I did minimal shading/highlighting on the armor--just the stuff that would pop out, but I think it all works. She sat partially painted for months on my table before finishing for this week's offering so I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how long it took.

These are 3d prints of Amazon Warriors by Artisan's Guild whose work I quite like. The STL is available for free. I printed these too small at roughly 25mm scale at a time when I thought I wanted that. Their eyes in particular were exceptionally difficult because of this. On the other hand, I got to do a lot of work with fleshtones which I'm actively trying to improve. These mostly show that with some improvement but ultimately I think I need a lot more work. The two of these gals were done in around eight hours total and I'm not unhappy with them.

The last two are figs that I don't like. The sculpts are soft and the molds, like most of the official Pathfinder and D&D lines, are crap. These were purchased for a PC in my last intended-to-be-in-person game from last year so they hadn't gotten painted. Well, they're on my bench partially painted and I finished them off in a few hours in early August. The fleshtones probably needed to go to a higher highlight. These aren't good paint jobs but they a) don't particularly have to be, and the figs themselves won't hold a good paint job but they're done and I'm happy with that.

2021 finished mini counter: 186/100

A thing a week 2021, week 32

This week, big surprise, we have minis. While not a theme, we're into "crap I have on my painting table," now newly rearranged. It probably goes without saying that they're primed, shadowed, and zenithaled with the airbrush as per usual. While not a speed print, they weren't full ballsack efforts but as characters, I put more than a speed paint's worth of effort per fig but they also gathered paint at the end of a session where I had the right colors available on my palette.

This is a Shadow Dragon from the Legend of Drizzt board game. It's been on my painting desk since early last year. It's a pretty good sculpt suffering from an awfully lousy mold and I didn't do anywhere near enough work cleaning up mold lines. Where I hadn't done enough with them, I did a couple layers of gloss varnish which kind of hid them. After several old layers of paint, I did a bunch of the expected work including a few light drybrushes on the wings. I left the eyes pupil-less since I think they looked good that way. This is probably around five hours of effort most of it was painting over the existing crap I'd put down last year. I didn't push the contrast as far as I could have but I've got way more dragons to paint so stay tuned!

These two are Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts Half-Orc Female Barbarian, a SKU name that defies all ledgers to contain its girth. These were bought last year with one of them (the non-chain cloak gal) intended as a PC in my last campaign...that we never actually played in person. As a result, they never got painted...until NOW! These sculpts aren't terrible (though, they're not good), but the molds are awful. They're full of mold lines that real hard to deal with. There's a lot of sculpting with paint going on here and despite the six-ish hours spent (mainly on their fleshtones and faces) they're only OK. That saidtyped, I learned a lot painting these and I feel like this is time well spent.

This kitty assassin is a 3D print of Skivvara - Tabaxi Rogue from Twin Goddess Miniatures whose work I'm quite fond of. I like this figure despite her non-armor and the complexity of the rim of the base which is both difficult to paint and unwarranted. I put about seven hours into this fig which is about three hours more than I wanted to but it was fun despite the fact that I don't think it's a good paint job. It's hard painting black and like Obeng from last year, I rather failed to get anything resembling proper shading on her not limited to not bringing the shadows down as far as they should have been. I'm also noticing that I missed painting her belt buckle which I'll fix shortly. At the end, I just wanted to be done so the gold coins and chest and all that was a rush job. Luckily, being a 3d print, I've got more of her and mayhap I'll do a Black Cat Challenge(TM) every year. Seems like a good idea.

These two are 3D prints of Human Female Paladin by The Lion's Tower on (you guessed it), MyMiniFactory.com. This is a free STL which I think I printed at something around 28mm. Normally I like smaller figs--they're cheaper to print and easier to paint most of the time. In this case, their faces were so small they were a real struggle to paint. That didn't keep me from spending a lot of time on them. I intended them as a one day paint but because I had so much fun painting their faces, I got a face on a completely different fig. Instead, these took two (which is fine) and because the metallics were so much of these figs, I did some work with Badger Ghost Tints and Golden High Flow Iridescent Silver which are both glossy and which are both very transparent. Also of note, Badger Ghost Tints and normal metallics wet blend surprisingly well which is fun! These two gals took about six hours all told and I think the results, particularly their faces, are good.

2021 finished mini counter: 177/100

Three years of painting (2021 week 31)

I've been painting minis For Realz(TM) for just over three years now, and in a recent perusal of Paint All the Minis facebook group, I came upon someone who's starting their painting journey. That got me thinking (in a drunken stupor, naturally) that it'd be fun to document my journey at a less-than-weekly cadence. This would be that post.

Three years ago with my giant Army Painter starter kit (the older version of this one) and a set of really awful synthetic brushes, I painted my first minis. These three Reaper Bones orc spearmen are the first three followed by the three orc archers. IIRC, they're rattle can primed with a very rough dry brush value sketch followed by a more-than-heavy glaze. I've documented the process here but I stole it from Vince Venturella as a cheap-and-easy way to paint at a reasonable quality level in a reasonable amount of time. I poured time into the speardoods to the tune of about 24 hours which today seems extremely long but the results were good enough that I haven't stopped yet. Note that these guys were rebased last year when I rebased the vast majority of my painted figs. Yeah, it was that kind of year.

Also note that these six guys don't have painted eyes--the last group that I didn't paint eyes on. In one of his videos, Vince gave the guidance "always paint eyes." His reasoning was that if you do it all the time, you'll get used to it and get better at it. He's not wrong. Now, after around 600 figures most of which have painted eyes, I not only don't fear it anymore--I actually look forward to it most of the time. For anyone struggling with super fine detailed work, it does get better and despite the hype to the contrary, it is a place where specialized tools can help. Specifically, a nice sharp brush of a stiffness you can work with and paints/additives that will a) flow off the brush appropriately, and b) won't dry on the tip will really make things easier. 

I remember 2019 as "the year before covid" which I suppose a lot of us do, also as "the year of youtube" where I made a video every week for not quite half the year. I did have figs completed right around that time (Regault Battle Pods, if you're curious) but I don't feel like those guys are particularly comparable. Instead, here are five Reaper Bones 4 bog skellingtons painted in August of 2019. These are not well painted. They were a speed paint after a half year of not painting very much. IIRC these beasties were done in about eight hours for the five of them which at the time was about as fast as I could go and one of the first times that I started to seriously appreciate the power of batch painting. Finished mini counter: ~157

Last year was a mess for just about everyone--some moreso than others. This week in 2020 was a week of characters and IIRC, at that point I wasn't pushing a bow wave of posts. These are some of those characters minus one which I gave away (the whole batch can be found here). This was right around where I realized that covid wasn't ending anytime soon and was starting to settle into working from home. I was also experimenting with James Wappel's shaded basecoat and pushing both speed and quality. The speed hadn't arrived yet, but the quality was markedly improved. Looking at these figs up close now, I'm only able to see the flaws and the places I'd put maybe a half hour more in and get a lot more out. Finished mini counter: ~259

This year I wanted to drive hard on the progress I'd made in 2020 and started the year off strong with some fairly high quality figs. I hit the year's count goal in March (under promise, over deliver, yo) which is way before I thought I would. I've yet to finish all of my goals, but we're well on our way. Last week we saw this year's early July offering in all of his glory. He started as a batch paint but ended up being a solo paint trying to get a lot of stuff more right than usual. He weighs in at around 10 hours and I think the result is good. I mean, I was going to keep pouring in hours until I was either happy with the result or super tired of working on him so I suppose that was a given. I hope I'm still painting this time next year to see how far I've come and I also hope I have the wherewithal to do these kinds of hobby journey posts semi-regularly moving forward. Finished mini counter: ~591

I recognize that my painting volume and drive to improve is not typical. Most folks in the hobby aren't going to paint 100 figs in a year and aren't probably as committed to learning as I usually am. That said, if you're at least as interested at getting better in this hobby, keep going and keep learning.

Gnollathon week 3 (2021 week 30)

This week we round out the 2021 Gnollathon with twelve, that's right, twelve figures. They're painted more or less the same way as last week's gnolls. This includes the typical prime-anti-zenithal-zenithal maneuver followed by an acrylic basecoat, oil wash, and minimal oil details. Bases were mostly Vallejo texture paste. I'm really liking this technique by way of Marco Frisoni.

These three are 3d printed Gnoll Chieftains, a part of the Gnoll Marauders set by Cult Minis which you can purchase on MyMiniFactory should you be so inclined. I scaled them down to be roughly in scale of other 28mm figures. Because I had to support them myself, this wasn't particularly more difficult than it might have been. These are modular which I like! They're also stupidly complicated, which I don't like, and they have lots of areas where I couldn't easily get a brush. They were also a pain to pull the oil wash off of given that they have so many negative spaces. Honestly, I could do with fewer pieces, details, and bejangles and whatnot. I like these guys, but not as part of a speed paint where they really don't fit. The normal gnolls were slightly less complicated and I'm sure we'll see more gnolls from this set here at some point.

These two are mirrored Gnoll FREE by Evgenii Tkachenko and as you might have guessed, it's a free model available on MyMiniFactory. I have mixed feelings about these. They're free which is nice, and they're OK to paint being fairly open but are a little derpy and I generally don't care for their shorts. Dunno, They work, I guess, but despite being gnolls, I'm not overly fond of them. I think they came out OK despite their derpitude. Possibly there's a better paint job in the far-flung future. Maybe a better basing job would help. 

These four are also 3d printed and are mirrored gnoll warrior male and gnoll archer by Velrock whose library is well worth checking out. They are free on Thingiverse and I like them a lot. Like the chieftains, I scaled them to around 28mm and since I had to support them myself, this wasn't a big deal. These are fun. They have just enough detail to be interesting but not enough to be a pain. I could have done without the bejangles hanging from their belts some of which didn't print super well. I may very well print and paint more of these, particularly the archers, which I never seem to have enough of. Have I mentioned that I like gnolls?

This is a gnoll barbarian print by XSpyroid, also free and available on Thingiverse. There's stuff to like about this fig and a lot to not like. I like the pose and the face. I don't much like the thickness of the straps which are crazy, and the pseudo-armor which makes almost no sense. The pose is fairly open which is nice but I'm pretty sure I'm going to snap off the spear at some point. I think this guy came out well but ultimately I don't particularly like this fig.

These are Blacktongue, Gnoll Archer, and Toghra, Gnoll Leader from Reaper Bones. They're good sculpts even if their molds aren't fantastic. These fit well with the other Bones gnolls I have which usually play the part of bruisers or bosses. Put multiple of them on the board to scare the fertilizer out of the PCs. Note: they usually win anyway--they're resourceful like that. Like all of the Bones gnolls, I like these guys a lot and wish I had more. They're nice, open, figures which are fairly easy to paint with good detail.

This will wrap up the 2021 Gnollathon to the tune of about nine hours for these twelve figures. I think this is a good result for the time spent (~8 hours all told) and feel that they'll make a good addition to my growing gnoll army.

2021 finished mini counter: 171/100

Gnollathon week 2 (2021 week 29)

Today we have a single figure, purpose picked as a high quality one because I haven't done one in a while. In particular, I wanted to see how much I'd learned about contrast on a fairly straightforward fig without a lot of embellishments. Our subject today is a gnoll which I suppose was a giveway with the title. He's a 3d print of a model made by the great Manuel Boria and you can find him here at MyMiniFactory for free. This is a good fig and a fairly easy paint which isn't true of many 3d prints.

We start with printing I suppose, followed by priming, zenithaling and anti-zenithaling. From there we get a layer of Pro Acryl transparents, a psuedo basecoat of the blue like last week's gnolls because I thought this guy was going to be a speed paint, and after that, layer after laborious layer. This is my typical try-hard approach with acrylics only slightly spruced up by a slight wash on the mane and wood. The wood is just the wash over the normal shading which I thought looked pretty good so I left it that way. 

The metallics are Vallejo Chainmail Silver with a coat of Badger Ghost Tint Oil Discharge (and no, I don't get kickbacks for these links). After that we get a stippling of random earth and orange tones for rust and a nice midtone of the same Chainmail Silver and a highlight of Golden High Flow Acrylic Iridescent Silver. This silver is super transparent which makes it ideal for glazing tasks like this. The silver over the top of the Ghost Tint shading gives some good control of the lighting in a non-metallic way with actual metallics. As a not-very-good painter, I like this because mistakes are harder to spot but I still get to practice my NMM without things looking like crap. In this case, I'm not sure it worked out well mainly because I wasn't sure what to do with the highlighting on the axe blade.

I think this is a good result weighing in at around ten hours over three-ish real days and the first day of going down a very different path. Despite the time I spent, I don't think the highlights are as good as I can do partially because I kept forgetting which way was up. Note, it was not up from the cork he was pinned to and he kept spinning around on his pin which made everything harder. I was also stupidly tired from a historic heatwave and all the life disruption that came with that. And for those who are wondering, yes, I do push a bow wave of posts here. Life happens, OK. I'm happy with this result nonetheless, though not particularly satisfied.

This marks the beginning of year four of my serious painting efforts and in that time I've painted north of 600 figs. That feels like a lot, 2020 quarantine notwithstanding, and I'll sum it all up in a future update. Fair warning: there might be some nostalgia in there. Three years is an awfully long time, after all.

2021 finished mini counter: 159/100, high quality: 3/5

Gnollathon week 1 (2021 week 28)

I've been looking for new ways to speed paint and recently I ran into this video by Marco Frisoni using oils and gurdurnnit I haven't painted in oils in a long time. (This one's good too.) What would make that better? Gnolls! This week we kick off a new theme in a big 'ol batch for use in my every-other-Saturday game.

These are ten Frostgrave Gnolls, the first ten of whom were painted about a gajillionty years ago (ok, it was actually late 2018).  I love these figs and some day when I don't have a pile of potential in the four digit range, I will buy another box. These guys are supposed to be a speed paint. I feel like I type that a lot. Instead they were an experiment and I think it's turned out well.

We start, as usual, with a prime, shadows from below in Payne's Grey ink, and zenithal white from above. In a video I watched recently, someone noted that you want to zenithal that reads white from above.(Marco again? Can't remember). This matches pretty well with a thing that I noticed doing glaze speed painting--that my highlights aren't super bright. So for these guys I switched back to a white ink, Daler Rowney, like the Payne's Grey. This did seem to fix my zenithal problems but I pretty much painted over the whole thing anyway.

Next up I did a flat basecoat which is not normally a thing I do. I'm either starting with a Pro Acryl transparent base or a shaded basecoat which I like a lot better. Both of these add contrast cheaply and easily which is a better set up for the typical acrylic many layers method that I've been doing since, well, January, and it felt very, very wrong. I used an ancient pot of blue Reaper Pro Paints that I bought just after the turn of the millennium and a Vallejo Game Color terra cotta that I like a lot. The browns were played by my old (and terrible) Army Painter paints with backups in white from an off white Vallejo Game Color and metallics by Vallejo Game Air Chainmail Silver. In this case I was painting some 3d prints in the batch which fight with the normal Vallejo Metal Color Steel that I might otherwise prefer.

Now things got crazy. Re-activating my prepared oil paints, I cut up some makeup sponges, pulled out my q-tips, and found my eyeliner sponges (something like this and boy does my Amazon purchase history look weird). I slopped down an oil wash mostly in the right colors on the first fig and then wiped off most of it with the aforementioned wipey team. This mostly worked. The yellow and brown mix did not play nice with the blue mix as one might expect and the result was a mess but I soldiered through and even did some minor highlights. Every figure from there on out was washed in variations on the same color with a mustard-y wash for the base.

This was fun and they got better with each gnoll. There are three vectors to control here: the thickness of the paint, the length of time on the mini before wiping it off, and the color of the wash. I experimented with all three and by the tenth one I think I finally got it. Ten to fifteen minutes is what seemed to work the best for me in a relatively humid and slightly warm environment. This was just enough time to slop paint on three of them (the last three in this case) before going to wipe off most of the paint. You want to avoid pressing too hard on the fig even if you want to take off most of the wash, say, on their adorable gnoll-y faces, and if you don't let the wash set for a bit, capillary action will pull most of it off into the sponge. The consistency that worked well for me is around halfway between a well mixed Army Painter paint and a Vallejo Model Air. For the color, lighter colors were fine but the darker colors seemed to work the best, even on the blue base.

The last step was highlighting which I also did in oils after a day of paint drying on the figs. I'd considered waiting a couple days and finishing details with acrylics but wanted to do some sweet, sweet oil blends since I had them out. I also futzed around a bit with edge highlights but I don't think those turned out super well. Probably my paint was too thick.

This has been a fun return to oils and I suspect there will be more of these shenanigans in the near future. These guys were prepped in right around fifteen hours including assembly and painting was completed in around twelve of those hours. That seems good given the outcome and that I did a bunch of experimentation along the way. Next time should be faster! 

2021 finished mini counter: 158/100

A thing a week 2021, week 27 (desert forest)

And now for something different. My current every-other-Saturday game is in a desert and I didn't feel like deciduous trees would cut it. Turns out, it's really hard to get models of date palms and other desert trees. What you can get is coconut palms and most people wouldn't know the difference. One of my players is from Guam and does know the difference. I've sworn him to secrecy so we should be fine.

These are literally the least expensive coconut palms I could find on Amazon. Notably, today, I've found some less expensive ones but I didn't find them when I ordered mine. They are not great props but they'll work and they were inexpensive so here we go. Step 1: scrape mold lines. They're made in very soft and cheap plastic as one might expect but that results in some pretty heinous mold lines. I didn't bother trying to deal with the mold lines on the leaves which come off in separate pieces but dealing with the trunks wasn't hard.

Step 2: base them. This was slightly harder than you might imagine. The larger trees are large enough to want to fall over pretty commonly. I weighted the larger 32mm bases with some steel nuts I had lying around which make them almost stable. The larger ones are still a mess. These were all hot glued down to a base and textured with Vallejo texture paste which is my current go-to. While I'd normally throw some grit down on the wet paste to give it some variety; these guys are terrain and don't really warrant such steps.

Step 4 is washing the trunks. The leaves pull off so this wasn't hard. Step 5 is painting the texture paste. I didn't bother priming because I didn't think it was necessary and still don't have the airbrush control to not get it all along the trunk. Step 6 is black rimming the base and that's what we see in the "glamour" shot. These do break one of my rules: avoid obscuring the battlefield, but they're thin enough that I'm not super worried about it. These work and I'm counting them as "buildings." Maybe I should rename the requirement as "terrain" or something. Next year I guess.

2021 finished buildingterrain counter: 5/5

A thing a week 2021, week 26 (cheap & easy painting)

Not all weeks are filled with high effort art. Sometimes, just sometimes, I spam out some of the crap I've had sitting around on my desk as quickly and cheaply as I can. (I like to pretend that this makes all the other painting I do all that much better.) Remember: just because it's cheap, doesn't necessarily mean it's crap.

These are two sets of Reaper Bones Bags and Jars and looking up the link took almost as long as it took to paint these. They count two to a pack for reasons I don't fully comprehend but they're done and that counts for something. These are zenithaled as normal (yes, I verbed that again) with Daler Rowney Payne's Gray from below and Pro Acryl Ivory from the top. It's a simple set of glazes with brown and terra cotta. They're highlighted minimally (which shows) but they were done to the tune of like fifteen minutes. I might feel guilty about padding my mini count if I weren't already over my goal. 

Next to them is an orby platformy thing, otherwise known as Tiny Terrain Seer's Stone. It's drybrushed and washed and re-drybrushed and re-washed ad nauseum. It's been on my painting desk for a while and I don't like that I can see the striations from the original print (it's a resin cast). I went back and forth with how I wanted it to look but I settled on a not-subtle-enough OSL over dark grey stone. All I know is it's the best color: painted.

Next up we have a Legend of Drizzt board game Handmaiden of Lolth. If I'm honest, I mistook it as a Roper and was all ready to lazy-paint it in a stone scheme. Well, joke's on me! Instead, the candle-like dirty yellow is mostly played by a mix of Pro Acryl transparent yellow and brown over the same zenithal above. Highlights were played by that with some random yellow and some random white. Because I (still) didn't want to spend a lot of effort on this fig, I only did highlighting around the eyes, top of the "head", and top of the tentacles. It's really obvious when you compare the front to the back. The eye is glossed with a Reikland Fleshshade Gloss which I use infrequently enough to forget that it'll pull up white paints. This was to avoid painting blood vessels but still keeping that bloodshot quality because again--lazy. Done in about a half hour, I'm not unhappy with this result.

This is a Sealed Sarcophagus that arrived with my Bones 4 pledge. It's the usual zenithal and anti-zenithal followed up with a wash and drybrushing. It's hollow which means I couldn't magnetize it but I figure it'll kick around with my other similarly sized terrain. I might hit it with  dullcoat if the paint starts to chip.

This scary thing is the other half of Harrowgate Shrines from week 23 and you can probably guess what's going on here. The only difference is the flesh to magenta to purpley color drybrush over the top. Why so many colors? I couldn't decide what I wanted and was having fun dry brushing. So there ya go. 

A thing a week 2021 halfway milestone:

• 148/100 finished minis
• 2/5 pushing high quality
• 2/5 serious attempts at OSL
• 4/5 "buildings"

A thing a week 2021, week 25 (double sided hex tiles)

If you tuned in last week you know that at long last we're playing in person again and for this campaign we're playing fully painted. In the campaigns that came before, just about any cheap-ass, stand-in, or bodged-together terrain was fine--nothing really looked good anyway. Of particular offense was my old 8"x8" hex tiles. They're stacked cardboard with a poorly-chosen tiling ground fill overlaid with a slightly squashed hex grid. They've always been a fiddly and they slide around on the table in the most annoying way and don't really want to fit together because I wasn't super precise when I cut them. Well now, I want slightly better and while we're at it, let's make them slightly more user friendly.

These are a play off of my last set of tiles back in week 13 just on a larger scale. They're a foam-core sandwich of single ply cardboard which end up at right around a half inch tall so they match the height of most of my other tiles. Like the week 13 ones, these are also magnetized in pretty much the same way. Two sides have ferrous roofing nails and two sides have magnets. Despite putting extra effort into precision cutting, cardboard and foam core just aren't precision-friendly materials and they're all slightly off. This means that the magnets don't hold super well across all tiles but they work well enough.

I still wanted hexes since my game was built for them and I'm not confident in my ability to freehand hex patterns over 640 square inches of tiles so instead of flocking & painting like I'd originally intended, I printed out some better chosen images and pasted them to either side. I think I would have liked the flocked/actually textured tiles better but a) flock gets everywhere no matter how well I've tried to seal it and b) grit on the other side isn't friendly to my very expensive gaming table. The gluing didn't go as well as I'd hoped and the PVA buckled the paper. 

I think these worked out OK. They're much nicer than the old ones even though they're basically the same kind of thing and the magnets are a nice value add. They don't entirely work since the placement of the magnets was rough and cardboard really isn't a precision material. Having ten instead of eight means I can do a 3x3 or 2x5 setup which is nice. The textures work OK though I'm not completely happy with them but the good news is that pasting over them won't be hard when I get tired of them, so I got that goin' for me. 

2021 finished "building" counter: 4/5