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. 

Health Update

 I got the results back from the CT scan. There was still some infections in my lungs but my doctor saw another thing that probably was why the standard x-rays were sort of hard to read. I have blood clots in my lungs. I should have asked but he didn't say how extensive they were. I am supposed to go to have an ultrasound of my legs, but unless there is an earlier cancellation, it won't be until two weeks. I'm not on any treatment other than to make sure my Coumadin (blood thinner) levels are in the proper range. I am now more paranoid than before about any food that has high levels of vitamin K. 

The weird thing is when and really how it happened. I consulted a old friend of mine who had them about three years ago. First, he said congrats! That I had survived it. Usually, it is severe enough to get you to the hospital. Second, he wondered why I didn't feel anything in my legs. Severe and acute pain in the lower legs is that the tell-tale sign that you are developing clots. My left lower leg has been somewhat swollen for several years but I have never had any pain in that leg, certainly not anything severe. So, it is hard to say where these clots originated from or when it happened, unless they developed in the heart. 

I have been recovering. The weather has been horrendously hot and humid, but I continue to go for walks. I did finish my antibiotics (my digestive system thanked me for that), and I have cut way back on the use of the nebulizer. I am not coughing up junk from my lungs anymore. I actually went in to work yesterday. I am a teacher, so I am off this summer. It was nice to get out of the house for a few hours. I did link up with a friend who is also my department chair and had lunch. It was nice to hear about his recent sabbatical as it took my mind off of my health issues.

I have managed to do a few things at the work bench. My current painting challenge is almost done. I would not say it will be my best, but it is not horrible either.  I have a scattering of a few 15mm left to do. I am going to focus on a newish project of making crude but effective scratch built modern ships. They are not going to really have any specific scale, but they will be more-or-less scaled to each other in size. 

Sick of Being Sick Part 2

 Once again I have been hit hard with a respiratory illness. This time, it is pneumonia. My son had a really bad bout of influenza that knocked him out at the end of May and took him a week to recover. A week later, I got it bad and it morphed into pneumonia. Last week, I was feeling a little better but this past Tuesday, I reversed course. My oxygen levels were actually higher last week than they are now! So, after three chest x-rays, using a steroid inhaler, and lots of antibiotics, I am still feeling like crap. Wednesday, I go in for a CT scan. I have no physical energy and little desire to do anything. The depressing thing is that we were going to take this big family vacation to Texas over the 4th of July weekend to see my daughter who is doing an engineering internship and then we would all go visit Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. Well, we decided to cancel the whole thing. Fortunately, we could cancel the hotels with no penalties. I was really looking forward to this trip. We have not had a family vacation in at least a year, maybe more due to COVID. 

Anyway, as I said, I have had no physical or mental energy to do anything, including hobby stuff and academic (I have two manuscripts I had hope to be done by now). So, here are some figures I painted up over a month ago...I think (brain fog). 

I have been looking up friends and colleagues last names to see if they have a coat of arms. If the search hits show the same or very similar coats of arms repeatedly, I use them. Not that I go into too much depth in my research, but I found that the name of one friend, who is of southern Italian descent, was originally Norman. Another friend's last name, which is Greek, goes back to about the early 11th century. Both miniatures below are Essex15mm from their eastern European medieval range. They are mounted singly for more skirmishy games like Lion/Dragon Rampant.

 

The white things are supposed to be birds

COMBAT!

New Life for an Old Mini

 When I first jumped into 15mm medievals and fantasy, there was not a lot out there. One of the companies I discovered was Thistle & Rose Miniatures. I ordered some Norman knights to see what they looked like. This was before the days of online ordering. I painted them up but I don't know what happened to most of them. As I was cleaning my workbench, I found this guy. His horse was a mess. The legs had broken off. The rider was still intact. On a whim, I decided to see if he was compatible with any horses of other manufacturers. Lo and behold he was! He now rides an Essex unarmored horse.

I rarely, if ever, repaint any of my figures; only to touch them up if their paint is chipped. Keeping them the way they were originally painted is my way of keeping a record of my painting styles and progress over the years. So, while he has a more "advanced" painted horse, he is at the level of painting going back to the mid 90s. 

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.

Size Comparisons

 Its been a crazy ten days. First, I drove up from here in eastern Tennessee to Indiana to pick up my daughter from university. Then, this past week, she and I drove about 15 hours from home to Texas for her engineering internship. I flew back and got in very late Saturday night. Yesterday was Mothers Day, but my wife did most of the cooking. I decided to take it easy today and have been preparing for a D&D that will hopefully happen sometime this summer. My co-workers are interested in having a game. 

I painted up these two right before my daughter and I left on our Texas road trip. I took some pictures now to show the difference in sizer between Essex 15mm and Khurasan Miniatures 18mm. I should have added an old Table Top, now Alternative Armies mounted knight for even more comparisons.

Khurasan from their late 14th Century range

Essex from their Feudal & Early Medieval range

Granted, the Essex knight is riding
a small horse, but what a difference!

As I've probably said in previous posts, the Khurasan infantry are not too out of place when side by side with other makes. I even took one of their mounted knights and stuck him on an Essex horse, and he didn't look too bad. It is their horses that seem gigantic. 

I am winding down this painting spree. My next task is the clean up the work bench. It needs it. I'm just going to close my eyes, hold my breath and throw out a lot of junk that is on there. I suffer from collecting do-dads and brick n' brac thinking I'm going to use this stuff for something.