Thank Heaven for Little Ghouls

Pieface

Joey

Here follows a very short post on the current state of Pieface and Joey, the two smallest additions to the Red Ghouls. (Those are 20mm bases on both.)

Two creepy little dudes. It therefore seems fitting to riff on one of the creepier songs in popular culture for the post's title. An unsettling ditty if ever there was one.

As per my usual practice, all the basecolors are blocked in. This will be followed by highlighting, shading (with washes), and a whole lot of adjustments & touch-ups.

The colors are muted except for the red and the fleshtone of the infant Pieface holds.

It's interesting to see how light falls on Joey. The miniature has a turned head, forward-leaning stance, and an enormous teddy-bear tucked against the right side of the body, resulting in deep shadows in some unusual places. Having seen this, I'll keep the picture handy as a reference while painting.

PTS XVI: Addition by Conflation

Almost by accident, a new batch of Red Ghouls graces my paint table. It all started innocently enough with the intention to paint Wyrd's Baby Kade (sculpted by Edgar Ramos). The miniature's tiny size and single lock of hair make it a good choice to stand in for Joey, sidekick of Dennis (the Red Ghouls having recently acquired a Dennis the Menace sub-faction).

A setback to actually completing Kade/Joey in a timely fashion came with my discovery that Dennis the Menace has both a US and a UK version. (I was unaware of the latter's existence.) This information was provided in the comments to my previous post by Roy of Never Mind the Jankers!.

We here at Minis by Finch pride ourselves in maintaining cordial Anglo-American relations so another sidekick was added to the mix. Say hello to Pieface (AKA Stinky from Heresy Miniatures, sculpted by Paul Muller).

The lack of hair is a concern given that he's slated to receive the Red Ghoul paint scheme (with its red hair). Sculpting a Mohawk hairdo remains a possibility but I think I'll just paint some red spots on his noggin and call it a day.

By now I was in a miniature-assembly mindset and pressed on with a couple more items.

Last year I received some outstanding Midnight Hag miniatures from Mike at Mortal Arrow Miniatures. As I had one earmarked as a second ghoul hag, the time seemed right to finally pull my finger out and get on with it.    

Midnight Hag A (Flying)

Midnight Hag B (Floating)

MA offers two variants, each with multiple head/arm options. The heads from one variant won't work with the other variant's body unmodified due to the way the locator pins are designed. It's pretty straightforward though to address the issue and attach a B head onto an A body as I did.

  

A bubbling cauldron from Heresy (that accompanies their witch) was my final addition.

It's time to paint.

Something Newish This Way Comes

Three additions to the Red Ghouls are done. As the title suggests, the painting here isn't entirely new. The penanggalan was nearly complete last October while the boy and dog had their base colors blocked in at about the same time.

These, and a couple others, were intended for Zomtober '16. I'm either quite tardy with that or getting an early start on Zomtober '17.

All three miniatures were sculpted by the incomparable Paul Muller.

The Penanggalan is from Otherworld... a strange Malayan vampire that appears in the old Fiend Folio. The sculpt is a nice homage to the Russ Nicholson artwork from that book.

The boy/dog combo is something of an undead tribute to Dennis the Menace and his dog Ruff. I may be dating myself with this, I suppose. In my defense, I am rather old... cut me some slack.

Truthfully, it was mostly the sling that lead to this notion. My first impulse was to remove it so the mini would better match Otherworld's unarmed ghouls I'd already painted. Then inspiration struck... Dennis the Menace carried a slingshot... he was small in stature... so was the mini... he had a dog... I had a suitable dog mini languishing in the lead-pile. In short, one thing led to another and here we are.

The boy is from Reaper while the dog is from Wyrd's sadly discontinued line of metal miniatures.

The two were painted in the evil-clown scheme I've been using for the Red Ghouls; the only problem being that red hair was required while they were both bald. I addressed this by sculpting some hair on Dennis and, after rejecting red ears, painting Ruff's tail the appropriate hue.

Yes, Ruff is lifting his leg. Would undead canines need to relieve themselves in this fashion? Perhaps not. I guess old habits are hard to break.

Weasel Words

A weasel by any other name would smell as foul.

I came across these Otherworld giant weasels while doing some tidying-up around the paint cave (a rare occurrence, but that's a story for another day). They were painted some years ago and, if I recall, only ever appeared on OW's currently deactivated forum.

Concurrently, I find myself learning to use a new computer (replacing one with an operating system from the last century... also a story for another day). Before shipping my old machine off to the Museum of Antiquities, I unearthed the references used when painting these three. As actual weasels are rather boring (visually that is... they're the life of the party in most other respects) African civets filled in admirably.

Nothing beats good reference photos.

As the time seemed right, I grabbed my camera and took some pictures.

LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!

Finch Lives

Eh, close enough.

I'm back.

Yes, this is indeed the dreaded I'm still alive post.

2016's hobby efforts, which began with promise, ended with a resounding thud as my Zomtober participation fizzled. It was all downhill from there.

Rather than dwell on past failure, I choose to emerge back into the light and move on. To that end... some work-in-progress pictures seem appropriate.

Spurred on by some rather nifty textured rollers from Green Stuff World I got for Christmas I'm easing myself back into the hobby.

I've seen these in use by James Wappel on his blog for some time. They did not disappoint.

While Mr. Wappel uses modeling clay run through a pasta-maker that is then baked in a toaster-oven, I gave simple plumber's putty a whirl. Unlike green stuff, plumber's putty is brittle when cured. It also sets very quickly and thus allows a limited window where it's workable.

I kneaded the two components together, rolled it out like so much pie crust (on a plastic sheet cut from a freezer bag), rolled the desired texture into it, and called it a day.

When fully cured, I peeled off the plastic and attacked with plyers.

Two unpainted refugees from the aforementioned Zomtober debacle have been based using the resulting fragments.

The larger of the two is from Gamezone. The smaller (he's still pretty large) is from Heresy with its original weapon swapped for a mace from a Reaper miniature. Its left foot was attached to the putty fragment first, then the resulting subassembly was attached to the base. It seemed much simpler to do it this way than to try to get the angles right on the base before attaching the miniature.

At this point convention dictates that I tease what's coming in my next post. I'm tempted, but given my recent track record convention must be tempered by reality. I'm gonna take this one day at a time.