Crunch Time

I have pledged on the Otherworld Miniatures forums to paint at least one OW miniature per month throughout 2013. I haven't missed a month yet but my on-time performance has been nothing to write home about.

Punctuality is not one of my virtues it seems (at least within the realm of miniature painting).

Pictured above are some minis intended for May & June (hoping to get a jump on next month). From left to right they are: a cleric/monk from Gamezone, a gnome from Center Stage, A medusa from OW, a demon from OW, and a cyclops from Heresy. The cleric/monk & demon will be paired up for May while the medusa and cyclops are meant for June. 

The gnome is the odd-man-out. (or is that odd-gnome-out?)

A great little Patrick Keith sculpt from the recently concluded Torn World Kickstarter. I removed his integral base and sculpted a replacement. A lot of detail in a confined space on this one. Should be fun.

Center Stage's current Tome of Horrors Complete campaign is picking up steam as it nears its end. The work of sculptor Drew Williams has been especially impressive. Check out these WIPs.

Nice. They may call them tsathars but they look like bullywugs to me. Hopefully CSM gives Mr Williams as much work as he can handle.

Fiend Folio On Kickstarter... Almost

Ah, Kickstarter. The perfect outlet for me to rid myself of unwanted cash.

I'm backing Center Stage Miniatures' current Tome of Horrors Complete Kickstarter campaign. I'm unfamiliar with the ToH series of books that serve as the source material, but seemingly the first volume is chock-full of refugees from the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II. The prospect of some new minis of old Fiend Folio favorites (flumph included) is too good to pass up.

Some of the artwork appears to be re-interpretations of the originals, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The before-and-after of the jaculi serves as an example: a fair difference between the two but I like them both.

I'm keeping a close eye on which sculptors will be involved on which minis and am mindful of the fact that I already have conversion projects in mind for some of the subjects involved (and I do like conversion projects).

This campaign has real potential. Definitely worth a look.

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:

Opposites Attract

Otherworld's hook horror, the latest addition to the FF project, is complete. The mini served as a testbed for some experiments with the color purple and its opposite, the notoriously tricky beast known as yellow.

A couple factors influenced the color scheme seen here. Laszlo Jakusovszky's Hot Lead: Painting Difficult Colors, where the use of purple to shade yellow is aptly demonstrated, was an eye opener. I needed to try it out.

Secondly, James Wappel's excellent purplish-grey gnolls caught my eye. 

Also, I have had good results adding green to red and vice-verse (opposite colors again) and wanted to see if purple and yellow behaved similarly.

 

The skin was basecoated with Reaper's Rainy Grey (which has a decidedly purplish cast) and the carapace with Reaper's Olive Skin Shadow. The photos above show the other colors used to shade and highlight each area.

 

 

The feathers (or is that fur?) around the neck an wrists were basecoated with a mix of purple and yellow (specifically the two colors pictured at the top of the post), given a diluted wash of Secret Weapon's Sewer Water, and highlighted with more purple/yellow (less purple this time) (first photo). The highlights were dialed up with P3 Heartfire, Sulfuric Yellow, and Sulfuric Yellow mixed with Reaper's Linen White. This was washed with GW Casadora Yellow Shade (second photo). The result was good but a bit intense for my tastes. In the end I applied a dilute wash of the purple/yellow mix to calm things down (third photo).

The spots on the head and shoulders were first applied using purple mixed with a little yellow. Some of the original skin color (rainy grey) was then added to the mix and this was used to highlight the spots.