Meazel Muster

The meazels are done and ready for their moment in the sun (which from a meazel's perspective is not necessarily a good thing). I may be the world's slowest painter so this took longer than it should have, but things went smoothly enough and I'm pleased with the results.

To date I've shied away from painting anything that required metallics or NMM (swords, armor, etc). Given my preferred genre of miniatures, that's a problem. With these three I got the chance to try painting NMM copper using the techniques outlined in an excellent tutorial at Sprocket's Small World. I had to substitute a couple colors but wound up at my destination all the same. You know, I believe I could learn to like this NMM thing after all.

 

 

These guys are covered in pustules. Lots and lots of pustules. Angry red pustules to be precise. From previous adventures with red paint, I feared that painting red over green without first laying down some white would result in dull maroon pustules. Pustules are never a good thing, but the dull maroon variety should be avoided at all costs.

I avoided the white undercoat and tried highlighting with a mix of red and a flesh-tone as suggested on Laszlo Jakusovszky's DVD. Worked like a charm.

Now for some mug-shots:

 

 

 

 

British Invasion

I need more minis like I need another hole in the head. This undeniable truth didn't prevent me from taking advantage of sales recently run by British manufactures Otherworld and Heresy. I picked up some cool stuff at a good price.

And so the lead pile grows.

One mini, however, has earned the rare distinction of going straight from the package to my workbench; Heresy's cyclops. He has been paired with Otherworld's meazels for this month's painting challenge on the OW forums.

The cyclops comes standard with three different heads. I chose the one I liked best, pinned it in place (after some re-shaping of the neck for a better fit), and applied green-stuff.

The arms were attached followed by more green-stuff. After this cured, I addressed a rough spot in my work with some Tamiya white putty diluted with lacquer thinner followed by a light sanding.

The meazels are one piece castings and therefore much easier to deal with. At least that was the theory.

Upon close examination one of the minis turned out to be miscast. A rope garrote was largely missing. This lead to a crash course in making rope from copper wire. Fiddly work to be sure; not least of all because it was necessary first to remove what remained of the original garrote.

My boiler-plate basing procedure, arrived at through trial and error, was used here. Speaking in general terms, the drill goes something like this:

• Minis are shimmed with plastic card so they wind up slightly elevated from their bases. This allows for the thickness of the PVA glue used to secure the basing grit and results in a mini that appears to be standing on the ground as opposed to partially buried in it.

• The tops of any mounting tabs are filed down so that they remain flush with the tops of their bases.

• I collect the grit myself. I find commercially available products to be both too coarse and too uniform.

• Once the grit is applied and the PVA dry, a coat of matte varnish is applied to hold everything in place.

•  Minis are thoroughly washed prior to basing and receive a light rinse before being primed. The second wash is mostly to remove any residual grit that has found its way onto the mini itself. The varnish coat helps to keep everything in place during this step. That said, I still avoid scrubbing the base with my ever-present toothbrush at this point and quickly blot off any residual water with a paper towel. 

 

So much for generalities. Returning to specifics, I now have four minis awaiting primer and paint:

Mean Green Painting Machine

I closed last time with the thought that my next project might be either a hill giant or fire giant. It was idle musing more than a concrete plan but, after some encouragement from Chris at Duke of The Blood Keep and in view of the fact that I really enjoyed working on the stone giant, project hill giant was born.

Not really a project to start. My intent was simple enough; build, paint, and present the Otherworld hill giant as my July painting challenge/pledge entry. I liked the mini "as-is" thereby avoiding my need to "improve" on the efforts of professional sculptors by attacking their work with all manner of tools and green-stuff.

Quick and easy. I would finish my entry early for once.

That was the plan anyway.

Here the first draft of this post went on to detail how my "simple'' task morphed into something unmanageable. Not exactly compelling reading as it turns out. Suffice it to say that my July entry wound up as a dwarf/jackalope/slime combo while August's will hopefully consist of two hill giants (one a heavily converted Reaper mini) and a piece of terrain.

Some pics of the aforementioned July combo for your viewing pleasure:

The jackalope is quite small and sits on a 20mm base. I sculpted the base to match the dwarf's using tools built in accordance with this tutorial. Very handy.

The hill giants are in the works. More on that next time.

The Shadow of the Past

I come before you today bearing eye-candy. As promised, the current post includes pictures of miniatures that I painted back in the day… the 1980’s… when the A-team still walked the earth and enamel paints ruled. For starters, here’s a link to a thread on the Otherworld Miniatures forum where I posted a few examples a while back.

But wait, there’s more! I’ve honed my puny photographic abilities somewhat since then through trial-and-error and the receipt of a tripod for Christmas. At this point, pride of authorship tempts me to shout something cheesy like, “Feast your eyes on these!”, but journalistic integrity compels me to keep my composure. At any rate, here is a new batch to look at: link. Enjoy.