Harlequin Miniatures Skeletons... My first airbrushed.

Well I splurged and I got myself an airbrush for Christmas.  Since I ordered it from eBay and my hose never showed it wasn't able to start using it until mid January.  I decided I wanted to try something simple for my first figures with it.  These 3 Skeletons I got off of Kijiji, which if you don't know its a better version of craigslist that people tend to use more in Canada.  They are by Harlequin Miniatures and they were stamped 96', so they are coming close to 20 years old.  They are nice sculpts though and are available here.  I layered them with 3 colors and then gave them a burnt umber oil wash.  The colors go from ocher brown -> bleached bone or bone white -> 50/50 bleached bone/ white.  I thought they turned out pretty well.  I hope to use these with my new pathfinder rule book I picked up.

I know the picture isnt great.  But I think they look good even with bad lighting. 

WIP Lizardmen

So my post yesterday I talked about my Lizardmen war band I am trying to put together for A Song of Blades and Heroes. I thought I would try out the paint scheme that I came up with for them. Let me know what you think so far. FYI this is a wip, I know the pictures are bad and I am not even close to being done with the blue.

#13 Bones Ogre Chieftain

This week is a pretty simple post.  I finished this bones figure of an Ogre Chieftain sculpted by Jason Wiebe.  I have mentioned before that I did back the Bones Kickstarter I picked this guy up before the kickstarter (still haven't received my minis).  I had based this guy for painting before I started my skeleton archers that I posted about 2 weeks ago.  I am still on track with my goal, although only 1 week ahead now instead of 2. I have a bunch of projects on the go right now.  I bought myself a copy of A Song of Blades and Heroes rules and I am hoping my D&D friends will want to give it a try.  I am trying to get a warband of minis together for that to paint.  I have a bunch of GW lizardmen that I am currently modeling and basing.  I might start painting those after this next week if I can get the bases done.  I also picked up a bunch of old Granadier and Ral Partha miniatures off of my local kijiji classifieds and I am really excited to paint those minis up as well. Ok the thing I really liked about this paint job was how the hair on the legs came out.  I found it looked really natural and blended well with his skin.  Something that I think I could have done better was the wood club.  I kept it kinda dark because of all the other brown tones on this miniature, but I think I could have done a better job highlighting. One thing I will say about the bones minis is although they are cheap (this figure was $2.50 while the pewter was $11.49), the mold lines on them can be terrible and really hard to spot. Thanks for checking out the blog again and feel free to leave comments below.  

#7-12 The Bones Brigade

So 6 miniatures in 3 weeks turned into 6 in 4. I know it's been a while since my last post, but in this time I have been able to do some other things with my time than paint (Skyrim, LoL). I doubt I will try to do this many at a time again. It's not that I cant it just begins to feel like a chore. It's probably the reason I didn't get a lot of my Warhammer 40k miniatures painted when I used to play. Although it does feel good to be 2 weeks ahead of my goal.

Alright now for the skeletons. These guys come from the RAFM box set Shambling Death. I have quite a few RAFM miniatures for 2 reasons. They are readily available at The Sentry Box where I buy a lot of my miniatures and hobby supplies, and they are cheap compared to a lot of the other companies out there. This box of skeletons only cost $22 and came with 18 miniatures. I painted the robes on them different colors so that when I use them for D&D I can tell them apart on the table.

Things I liked about these paint job was the blue and green clothing. I think I am going to try and work more with these colors in the future. I didn't like the bone color. Particularly the brown ink. I think in the future I am going to prime white from now on with skeletons.

Let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for future minis. I might do a sci-fi figure in the next couple of weeks maybe even a GW model.

Taking advantage of the warm day to clear coat and prime my minis.

 I need to start editing my photos so they don't look jumbled like this.

#4 Another Blood Sucking Vampire

I know I did a vampire miniature last week, but wanted to do the other one I had for this week.  I think it turned out better than the last one did anyway. This miniature was a real challenge for me.  There is a lot of detail on the figure that I wanted to capture and really express with different colors, one was the imp. I had completely finished the vampire but hadn't painted that little devil gripping his leg.  I thought that a fire imp theme would look really cool and cause him to pop out in the figure. It almost makes you wonder why they are together when clearly the two are so different.  This figure is again done by Reaper Miniatures and I will include the link for him below.  There are two sculpts for this guy, and honestly if I had seen the other figure first I would have bought it instead. Something I liked about this pant job besides the imp was his robe.  It came out really nicely and contrasts well with the red shirt.  I think I could have done better work on the writing of the book.  I touched up a place where t     he black lines were pretty thick, but I could have spent more time in the area doing some really cool detail.  

 One last thing.  I am using a Cannon Rebel t3 12mp camera to take my photos, but I was wondering if anyone had some tips for helping me improve my photos.  I know lighting is a big issue for me because I am taking my photos in the basement where I paint, but I was wondering if someone out there has seen tutorials for photographing miniatures that have worked for them? Again thanks for checking out my blog, and post your comments below.

This picture has no flash.

Links:

Reaper Miniature: Morrdha Vampire Lord

Epic Morrdha Vampire Lord Sculpt

Cauldron Conversion

Art Ross (left) Stanley Cup (Center)

A few years ago McDonald's put out a line of hockey trophies to sell more hamburgers in Canada, as a result today these babies can be found at most Canadian thrift stores from time to time (not sure if they had this promotion anywhere else).  I was able to round up 3 of them, to convert into dungeon pieces. 2 Art Ross trophies and 1 Stanley Cup.  All I had to do was pull off the cup by twisting until the bottom part snapped off the large base. Once I had them off there was a plastic lip left on the bottem wich was shaved with a hobby knife, and then the base was sanded level. I then primed them black, and base coated with chaos black. I dry brushed the raised detail with Vallejo model color old gold, and then highlighted with a brass. Overall a pretty fast paint job and easy conversion. Even though they are plastic I definitely recommend hitting them with a matte coat sealer just to help them hold up against heavy handling since I just primed right over the glossy silver paint job they had before.  Thanks for checking out this post, and feel free to leave any comments you might have below. 

#2 J27-F2 RAFM Dwarf

The miniature I chose for this week was one that I've had for a while now.  This is a dwarf from RAFM Miniatures fantasy line.  He came in a pack of 3 called the trench pounders (see down below for a link). I have to say they are decent little sculpts, but that I didn't much care for the little base that he came on and I wanted to change that. There is a video done by Doctor Faust's Painting Clinic that teaches his technique for making stone bases (link below). I think the results speak for itself, I definitely will be basing other figures this same way in future posts. I would like to give a shout out to secret weapon washes, I used the stone wash for this base and was really happy with out how it turned out. Something that I really liked about this miniature was the way that his studded leather armor turned out. I mixed a red wash with scorched brown paint to get the color the way I wanted. Something to work on for next time was the shield. I think the red looks good, but it doesn't have a lot of depth to the color. I also could have sculpted something onto the shield to add some flare to it.

You can see how nice the wash worked on the base.

Links:

RAFM Miniatures Trench Pounders

How to Make Stone, Rock, & Tile Miniature Bases

Secret Weapon Washes

#1 January 20-26 Cave Troll

First miniature on the board, and its a good one.  This is a Cave Troll Reaper Miniature code: 77004 from the Bones line. I picked this as my first miniature because I wanted to see if you could skip the primer step with the new Bones miniatures.  Turns out that you can, but it took an extra base coat just to make sure that you couldn't see any of the white plastic that the miniature is cast in. Overall the paint looks good, I think the purple lower lip really added a lot of character to the face of this little guy.  Something I will work on for next time is skin tone highlights. I haven't been very good about painting flesh in the past and tend to get lazy with it. Let me know what you think of this little guy, and give me some suggestions of adventures where a group of PCs might encounter this fellow. 

Link to the miniature:

http://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/troll/latest/77004