Fantasy Painting Challenge VI: Orcs, Part 1

 This is the only post of the latest fantasy painting challenge. Its not a work in progress post because they are done. 

It was a last minute challenge. Even though my friend proposed another challenge, neither of us seemed overly enthusiastic about it and it almost seemed like it didn't matter what we painted. I was still in the armored warrior mood after painting those fighters, so I picked orcs. A whole bunch presented themselves on the Reaper website, but a set of two stood out (those are the two in the middle of the pictures). I then fell in love with a rather fetching female half orc, so she had to be included. In my order, Reaper threw in a freebie plastic orc archer. So, my buddy is getting four orcs. Here they are:

The creative juices really got flowing once I got them from Reaper. It took me about a week to get them done even with my usual limited amount of free time. 

My challenge was to try to make the armor and weapons rusty. I was somewhat timid and didn't heap on the rust colors, but between using a brown wash on top of the usual one I use for iron-based metals and sparingly adding tiny dots of various shades of red-brown did the trick. 

The part 2 of this challenge will be my friend's interpretation of the orcs. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge V: Callie, Female Rogue with Bow, Part 3

 My challenger has sent me his submission. As usual, my photos do not do his work justice. 

I think the two snake men (Yuan-Ti, in 5e D&D) are from Wizards of the Coast. I always seem to paint any snake skin green, but he did his in a brown. I bow to his color choice as he is a herpetologist.

His interpretation of Callie is slightly different from mine. What is notable is the bow. He decided to make the last fourth of each end metallic. 

The scenic base as usual is excellent in my opinion. Nothing complicated to detract from the figures, but gives a nice impression of the situation that Callie finds herself in. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge V: Callie, Female Rogue with Bow, Part 2

 I usually have at least three parts to these painting challenges, but I finished the whole thing up. I am not too crazy about Callie. I think I did a better job on her wolf. She is supposed to be a rogue, but she screamed ranger. That is what I made her into. 

But first, a Pathfinder Brain Collector from WizKids Deep Cuts plastic figures. This was a gift from my my daughter from Father's Day of last year. It took me about four months (if we exclude June), but I finally finished it.

The model came with these clear plastic domes that cover the brains, but when I dry fitted one or two, they seem to blur the brains. The model was a pain in you know where to paint. The "deep cuts" made a lot of parts inaccessible to painting. I am sure there are some spots underneath that I couldn't get to. Nonetheless, I am reasonably happy with it. I texted the picture to my daughter and she really liked it. That is what really counts!

Onto Callie:

I'm glad she has her hood covering much of her face because frankly, it is a rather poor sculpt. I painted her Botox-sized lips with a blend of flesh and a little red,  slathered on a layer or two of Citadel's flesh wash, and called her face done. Other than that, she isn't too bad. I guess she looked better on the Reaper site than in reality. Her pet wolf took a lot more time to paint. Animal fur is definitely a "challenge" as we say in the academic biz. Its one thing to paint a wolf in 15mm, its another in 28mm. Despite the name Gray Wolf, at least in North America, they seem to be more brown and tan than gray. I spent a lot of time staring at wolf pictures on the internet.

Since she became a ranger, I though it be cool to make their bases look like she and Wolfie are in a forest. So, I ordered these fake leaves from Amazon. They are made out of birch seeds that have been dyed various colors. The set came with four colors: brown, green, red and orange. I was not to happy with them when I first tried to put them on. The main problem is that they probably work well for larger model dioramas like 1/35 or even 1/48, but at 1/64 scale, each leaf is about this size of Callie's face! Second, they do not lay down nicely the way leaves are supposed to. I had these giant leaves sticking up vertically or at 45 degree angles. It was sort of like breakfast cereal before you pour the milk on it. Unlike most breakfast cereal, these don't get soggy and flatten out. When I pushed one offending leaf down, it popped up other leaves around it. It was a mess. So, for further applications, I mashed them up as well as I could between two fingers. It helped some, but by then, I was too frustrated to continue with them. Finally, I was not happy with the colors of the leaves. I think it shows in the pictures that the colors are too strong even though I mixed the colors together. They detract from the figures. I suppose I could have toned them down with a brown wash, but again, too frustrated to deal with it.

Happily, I am done with this challenge. I hope my friend likes them. Of the four challenges we've had, this was my least favorite as far as how it turned out. It is time to turn to other things. I am done for awhile with painting challenges and the medieval/fantasy miniatures on single bases. There might be some future postings of pictures, but the painting of them has ended. I have other projects that are starting to come together now that I am feeling somewhat better. It is a good sign. For the month of June and the first several days of July, I had little interest in anything other than trying to recover. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge V: Callie, Female Rogue with Bow, Part 1

I seem to be on a roll with the posts lately! Is it the free time? I didn't know I had any. Best not to question it. 

Anyway, a few months back, my buddy who I have these painting challenges with wanted to do another. I was sort of hesitant, but I agreed so long we didn't have to build any elaborate terrain to go with it.  I got to pick the figure. I settled on Callie, the female rogue with bow.

Unfortunately, she did not come with a stand. Reaper Miniatures are like that. Some do, some don't. They should really mention that on their web site for each product. It has been a slow start, mainly because I couldn't decide what to paint her. I settled on a red outfit with a gray cloak. She's a rogue, not a ranger.

I have not gotten too far with her. the cloak is gray due to the primer. Like a lot of either fantasy or scifi miniatures, there are costume pieces on the figure that I am not sure what they should be painted. In this case her knee and shin guards. Perusing the internet, some folks painted them leather, others metal. I went for metal. I found this base in one of my junk boxes. I wasn't crazy about it, but it did the job. I covered the base with green stuff putty. 

I felt she needed a companion, so I got her a wolf.

Last Father's Day, my son got me a Reaper dire wolf made out of plastic. It is better sculpted than this one, but it is way too big when next to Callie, plus he'd kill me if I painted it and gave it away (bad daddy!).  I didn't have a base that seemed to fit the length and width of the wolf so, I cut one out of this thick polystyrene plastic used for mounting posters. It's thickness matched Callie's base height. This plastic is tough but I can cut it with a utility knife and rounded off the edges with sand paper. The wolf also got green stuff smeared onto the base.

Next up is to paint them and then decide on what to put on the bases. I am thinking of getting some of those fake leaves. H-m-m-m, between the wolf and the leaves, maybe I am making her into a ranger after all.

Fantasy Painting Challenge IV: Deep Ones Part 3

 I gave up on trying to come up with a terrain feature to go with the three Deep Ones I painted up as seen in part 2. I sent it out on Tuesday of this week and two days later, my friend's Deep One arrived. All I can say is WOW! 

All of his work have been excellent so far, but this one seems to be the best! My photos don't do it justice. He did a great job of highlighting and shadowing and at the same time, giving the skin a mottled appearance. The colors of the base material and the pedestal add to the Lovecraftian vibe; which was something I wanted to do on mine, but couldn't figure out how. When working on mine, I kept going back and forth on whether to spray it flat or use a semi-gloss coat to make it look wet. I think his flat coat works just as well, if not better, than my gloss. 

We will probably have to take a hiatus from the challenges due to the holiday season, but hopefully will be coming up with a new challenge in the new year. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge IV: Deep Ones Part 2

The Deep Ones are now painted. I did them in a purple with pale green abdomens. 

I am not as happy with these guys (girls?) as I was with the lizardman. For their bellies, the pale green was followed up with a green contrast paint that I wasted a lot of money on. Maybe you can sense my lack of enthusiasm for these paints. They turned the entire surface a very dark green...not feel'n the contract here. I ended up repainting the offending features and starting over again, this time with tried and true highlighting and shaddowing. Contrast paints bumped static grass from the pedestal of hobby products that really annoy me.

The next step is to build the scenic item to go with them. As I think I have mentioned, I am not putting in as much effort into this one as I did for the lizardman challenge

Sir Winfred Oldschool getting directions from some 
Deep Ones who happened to be passing by.

Fantasy Painting Challenge IV: Deep Ones

Well, I wasn't going to do another painting challenge for awhile, but my challenger really wanted to, so I acquiesced. This theme is Deep Ones. I am not up on my latest D&D monsters, but they are included on the Monster Manual. Gee, I wonder where they got them from?

All from Reaper Miniatures.

Deep Ones High Priest

Deep Ones Warriors. They don't look all that fearsome.

Originally, I just ordered the high priest, but I was back in the Motherland (Chicago) and my favorite local brick&mortar store (actually it is the only local store), Games Plus, has a huge selection of Reaper Minis. I mean there is a wall that is about 2/3rds the length of the store devoted to them! So, I picked up two of their plastic ones. They were pretty inexpensive. 

According to canon, they are supposed to be green in color. I am sort of burned out on green from the lizardman, so I am going for purple with maybe a pale green belly. My friend OK'd the color. 

My friend wants to have a scenic included. I told him I'll think about it. Between working on a manuscript for publication, getting ready for the fall semester, and more critically, getting everything lined up for my daughter's big move to college, I have not had too much time for the hobby. I know I spent far more time building the scenery piece than I did painting up the lizardman for the last challenge. At most, I will make some sort of simple stele.

Apologies for the crapy photos. My iPhone has this "sharpen" feature, but it seems to make the pictures more pixelly, or blurry than in focus. The priest photo seems really bad. I don't know why I keep using it.

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 4

 I finally got the statue of the lizard deity finished. Time to pack it all up and send to my friend. I had planned to make it much more "jungley" by putting a lot more plants around, but I didn't want to obscure some of the details on the sides of the base. Plus, I was starting to get burned out on making it and just wanted it finished.

I enjoyed making the statue and I learned a lot, but I think I need a break. It was very time consuming and as I said above, I was getting rather burned out. Hopefully for the next challenge, we will just stick to miniatures. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 3

 I am moving along on my part of the challenge. I hope to be done this week. I leave Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting) for the beautiful state of Kansas and I won't be back until them following Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting). It's a road trip to visit some natural history museums and to hopefully visit some friends that are still out there. Renting a car is a LOT cheaper then flying and then renting a car. I hope the bean counters at my college appreciate this. Other than the weather, I am somewhat apprehensive about the drive. I used to do this sort of long distance thing (about 13 hours), but that was when I was young. Anyways, I want to wrap this project up and send it to my friend.

As I said in part 2, there needs to be some sort of scenic piece to go with the figurine. I decided on a statue of some Lizardman deity. My sculpting abilities are crap and it shows, but I figure that monumental sculpture is not a hallmark of Lizardman culture. 

Most of it is made of polymer clay that is slathered over the an aluminum foil armature for the statue and a block of wood for the pedestal. Most of the bas-relief lizard heads were also sculpted from polymer clay, but for a couple of them, I experimented with Green Stuff. The whole thing rests on some foam core board where I removed one side of the paper. That in turn sits on top of a base made of a scrap of vinyl flooring from our first, pre-flood floor. We have lots of that in our garage. With the except of the pedestal to the foam core, everything is glued to each other with E6000 glue. Its strong but it would have melted the foam board. As of right now, I am at the stage where I need to put some ground cover on the base, paint and then add some sort of foliage. Since this is the first time I'm making something like this, I am not going to make it overly ruin-like. I'm heading to Walmart today to pick up a prescription and might see if there are some cheap aquarium plants to use. We had some plants from an old aquarium but when I picked it up, they fell apart. 

Stay tuned for the final installment!

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: My Friend's Entry Arrived

 I got a package at my door and I was expecting it to be my mother's annual chocolate Easter bunnies for the kids. Instead, it was my friend Chris' entry. While I have been slowly moving along on my lizardman, he got his done. Here is some quick pictures right out of the box.

Well done! Spurs me on to complete my diorama.

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 2

 Here he (she?) is. Turned out better than I thought it would. The figure's base had flagstone-like rocks sculpted into it, so I extended that theme onto the larger base using rocks made out of polymer clay.

Now, the challenge is not over! We decided to add some sort of terrain to go with the figure. I'm not sure what Chris is going to make, but I am thinking along the lines of some sort of totem/alter. I've been looking at various examples from the Warhammer universe for inspiration. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman

 My friend and I decided to do another challenge. We decided we were done with Dwarves for awhile and wanted to do something different. This time its lizardmen. I just got my order from Reaper Minis in the mail so this is an unboxing as they call it out there.

It was very difficult to choose. Reaper has pretty big variety of Lizard folk, including Dragonmen. We weren't really sure what the difference is between Lizardmen and Dragonmen. The only thing I could tell is that Dragonmen have tinier heads and longer necks, as well as more armor. This guy seems pretty cool plus he has a shield that looks like its made out of scales or scutes. 

As a freebie, I got this Reaper Bones Hobbit (?). Usually, they throw in a mystery paint bottle. Maybe this is a promotional item. I won't complain.

No, the eraser wasn't included in the order.

I couldn't resist ordering some paints. I'm really putting the love on Reaper's paints. They are very smooth and cover well. I have been disappointed with Vallejo paints the year or so. I kept getting ones that don't seem to dry no matter how long I shake them, or they "dry" very shiny. Army Painter paints are not bad, but tend to be a little on the thick side. Citadel paints are nice, but rather expensive. Plus it seems they are making a whole bunch of specialty paints whose colors I would prefer in their base line.

I'm pretty excited to start this new challenge. I already know the colors that I am going to use to paint it. It should be a good one!

Fantasy Painting Challenge II

 I got my friends interpretation of the Dwarf we picked for the latest painting challenge. It puts mine to shame. To add insult to injury, I still haven't shipped mine out yet.

He really went all out, even including a terrain base:

I am not sure if he is fighting the dragon, or just teaching it to behave. Very cool either way.

More Odds and Ends

 Just some more pictures of things that I recently finished. I am trying to get things done before I leave for Chicago for the holidays. 

Dwarf Challenge 2:

My old buddy from grad school days and I decided to do another painting challenge. This time it was dwarf magic users and he got to picture the figure. I've had a lot of bad luck with Reaper Miniatures. They seem to come broken. I had one earlier whose weapon came broken. Reaper was nice enough to send me a new one. This time, the top of the dwarf's staff was broken. I figured that I'd just work with it. After painting him, I glued a red translucent bead on top. I think it looks better than what was originally on there. Hopefully, it will hold. The guy standing next to him is a bonus that I will send my friend. He is a Reapers Bones figure that is made out of a plastic similar to what 1/72 figures are made out of. He's supposed to be a dwarf ranger, but looks like he's holding a giant wrench for a weapon. I bought him for my son to paint, but he didn't seem interested, so off he goes with the magic user.

More 1/600 Moderns:

As part of my effort to paint lots of stuff, I got these done for the Bovatopian army. I was also testing out a new shade. Its one of the Citadel shaders. 

Baron Henri of Emoree:

This is another pair of 15mm fantasy figures that were at the bottom of my lead pile. I ran of of ideas for coat of arms, so I used the symbol from the college I teach at. These are Demonworld Empire figures.

The car finished:

Here's the Cub Scout all ready to march in the Christmas parade. Fewer scouts than we thought built one. Hopefully, more will build one next year.

Dwarf Painting Challenge

 Facebook is a pretty good way of keeping up with old (real) friends. In fact, the whole reason why I signed up with Facebook, was to keep up with my friends from my graduate school days at the University of Kansas. I come to find out over time, that one of them is a big D&D gamer. Had I known that way back in the day, we probably could have did a lot of gaming. A couple of weeks ago, we challenged each other to a paint contest, or really a painting swap. We picked out a 28mm figure from Reaper Miniatures, painted it, and then sent it to each other. As I was ordering mine, I ran across another Dwarf who would make a nice companion/partner in crime/girlfriend. I thought I'd surprise my friend with this extra figure. Below are the results.

His miniature:

My miniatures:

He opted for a base of sand, which was courtesy of  Lake Eerie. The skull came from a GW set of a 100 skulls. I used MDF bases that I had lying around for a long time. I wanted a dungeon effect, so I used this rubber stamp that I had bought awhile back and pressed it into polymer clay. For best results, according to the company that makes the stamp, you are supposed to use Green Stuff. I don't have any, but the polymer clay work just as well. 

We ended up with different interpretations, though it was funny that I had originally thought to paint much of my dwarf's armor in blue metallic, but then decided not to go with that. I enjoyed the challenge, but it reminded me of why I don't game in 25/28mm scale anymore.