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I started working on Kitty about 2 years ago. I decided to bring her along to ReaperCon where I got in the zone with her and finished her off. Lots of greens and yellows, but it's all centered around P3 Wurm Green, which is mixed into nearly everything. (I think I had just bought a pot of it right when I first started the mini). Helpful suggestions from other attendees and teachers (Cathy Wappel and Rhonda Bender in particular) definitely improved the quality. The base material is from a tub of stuff I received from Frontline Games in my swag bag.

This is a fairly small Bones wolf from the Reaper set 77176: Familiars. I'm not sure who sculpted the wolf, but it is tiny. Here is an unpainted size comparison. The Bones wolf is second from the left, between a pewter Reaper wolf from the set 02830: Wolf Pack (3) and 03682: Willow Greenivy. A couple of wargs, one from Thunderbolt Mountain and one from RAFM, complete the size comparisons. Anyhow, here is the little critter. It is so small it hasn't got separate legs; I painted black between them. WIP thread here, with full details on all color mixes and techniques.

Howdy, For my fourth day of International Mini Painting Month I present Vorvorlaka... Blood sucking freak, Kev!

“Well, there’s no such thing as cowboys,” the child said. “They’re imaginary, they’re in movies and TV and stuff. They’re not real. Like Santa Claus and dinosaurs.” The conversation between the sixth graders had been about Halloween costumes, and whether or not Li’l Shannon could reasonably go as a cowboy. Not a cowgirl; a cowboy. Jeans, boots, and so on. She seemed to feel that cowboys were cool, whereas cowgirls were lame, and where does one find pink jeans and pink Stetson, anyway? And Josh blew it all out of the water with “I don’t believe in cowboys. They aren’t real.” And it was at this point where I had to ask, “Josh, what makes you think cowboys aren’t real? I grew up in deep south Texas. I knew lots of cowboys. Who do you think raises the cattle that go to make your hamburgers?” “Well,” said Josh, a little taken aback, “There USED to be cowboys, sure. But now all that is automated, and stuff.” I had a bizarre vision, out of nowhere, of robot cowboys riding motorcyles, herding cattle, and squealing ‘yee haw’ in electronic voices. “So... you’re honestly telling me to my face that you believe that cowboys are extinct?” He looked troubled. Contradicting one’s teachers isn’t normally standard procedure for sixth graders, but he felt like he needed to stand up for his belief system. “Well, I said there USED to be cowboys,” he said. “I mean, someone had to fight the Indians*, and fight at the Alamo**, like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, and all that. But now, there’s just people who dress UP like cowboys. They don’t carry six shooters, they don’t ride horses, and they don’t have anything to do with cows. Nowadays, it’s all about being in movies about old timey days, back in cowboy times. There aren’t any cowboys NOW. It’s like dinosaurs, you know? We know there USED to be tyrannosaurs, but now they’re only in MOVIES. Y’know? Like private detectives.” I may have stood there with my mouth open. Admittedly, I can’t say I knew any private detectives in high school, but... “Um... Josh,” I began, as gently as I could. “Cowboys exist. So do private investigators. Look up PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR in the Yellow Pages, and--” “Yellow what?” he said, confused. Errrgh. Okay, I stepped into that one. Sigh. “Josh, you live in Colorado. Colorado has mountains at one end, and plains on the other. Those plains are full of farms and ranches. The ranches are infested with cattle. You’ve seen them, every road trip you ever took. Who do you think looks after those cattle? And you can hire a private investigator any time.” “Well, that’s just silly,” said Josh, indignant. “Why would you HIRE a detective when you can just call the cops for FREE? Private detectives aren’t REAL, they’re just in TV shows and movies. Like cowboys. Or dragons. It’s all PRETEND. You dress UP as one, you can’t really BE one. And cattle are domesticated, these days. You just CALL them, right?” I had yet another unbidden vision of a rancher blowing a whistle, and the cattle queuing up neatly to jump into a meat grinder. He was so durn sure of himself. Howthehell do you explain the truth to a child who’s quite sure you’re wrong? I know that insurance companies employ hordes of private investigators to check insurance fraud, even if they don’t look like Tom Selleck or Humphrey Bogart, I know you can hire a PI to see if your spouse is cheating on you and get photos for the divorce lawyer, and I went to HIGH SCHOOL with cowboys, fa potato’s sake, but how do you explain all this to a SIXTH GRADER-- He smiled at me. “Look,” he said. “I appreciate you want to help preserve my sense of childish wonder. My parents felt the same way about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But it’s okay. I’m grown up***, now. And you have to let go of your childish dreams sometime.” And that was how I witnessed the Twilight Of The Cowboys, right there in the sixth grade... *Actually, cowboys did not often fight Indians. Usually only on long trail drives, and even then, they’d rather negotiate than try to fight anyone while trying to keep a herd of skittish cattle from stampeding. **I do not know how many cowboys fought at the Battle of the Alamo. I do know that neither Sam Houston nor Davy Crockett were cowboys. Sam Houston, in fact, grew up among the Cherokee Indians, and was not at the actual battle... and Crockett was a woodsman and bear hunter who later held a seat in Congress. And while cowboys and Congressmen do have some things in common, they are far from the same thing. ***Don’t talk to ME about grown up, ya little broccoli, with half your education still in front of you, and just WAIT till puberty gets involved... ****Did I mention that this child plays Dungeons and Dragons? But still doesn't believe in cowboys?

Not too much to show off here but figured since the weekends are usually pretty quite that it wouldn't be a big deal if I threw this up here. Was just looking for something easy to work on that I could do at the coffee table while my wife watches her show (Vampire Diaries) so I could be with her but not have to watch it. Threw this together in a couple hours. I used a cut up egg carton for the bricks and just sponged on some craft paint for the brick color. The spackle that I used for grout is a little whiter than what I would like but its ok for now. Maybe a thinned wash of Agrax Earth? Let me know what you think.

Well, I may not find Gravidium in my hobby room (since I don't often take food in), but I'm fairly certain there's a few whole dinosaur skeletons buried in there, and I wouldn't be surprised if Bigfoot had set up residence sometime in the last 3 years. It also seems to be prime breeding ground for the Common Brown Box, which is native to this area, and appears to find the hobby room a most comfortable habitat. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Bombshell stuff acquired!

Just finished these up this afternoon. The one with the yellow eyes is the Bones version & the other 2 are the metal versions.

It's amazing the pile of plastic you finally acquire after three uninhibited Kickstarters. And so little that fits in the tiny foam squares of the cases. I had hopes of emptying three cardboard boxes of Bones into the cases, but the unfittable still fill up a lot. Contemplating buying a nine drawer Alex cabinet from Ikea. Can't decide if I should fill it with painted or unpainted. My apprentice continues to want to paint. She finished three figures today, so should exceed my skills by Thursday. Guess I should wear out some bristles.

Was looking through a box that @Aryanun sent me back in July, and found a bag marked 'Ral Partha Adventuring Party (Lead)' Inside the bag was this!!!! For those that don't know, that is a Runequest Duck! He is part of 18-014 Runequest non human adventurers Here are 3 of the 4 that she sent... and so you can see how big he is... Also included were 18-012, Mage and familiars (2 of 5, and the mages staff is broken) and a complete set of 18-013 Heroes 3rd guy from the left needs the spear fixed.... and then this unknown guy (Ral Partha 199X (?) on the bottom of the base... anyone know what it is??? @Mad Jack G

Having a needle and thread out reminded that I need to also stitch up the hole in the pocket of my fuzzy robe, which has been there for... *counts on fingers* ...many moons. I am currently wearing my fuzzy robe, though, and don't want to take it off to work on it since the apartment is a bit chilly. So, I did what any intelligent, well-educated person would do, and sewed up the pocket while still wearing the piece of clothing it is attached to. No, I did not sew myself into my robe. I think. ...I guess I'll find out for sure when I get ready for bed! Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Year's ago I worked for a pizza delivery establishment while in college. I was great friends with both the manager and the assistant manager and we had all sorts of fun games we played at work to pass the time. For one whole semester the Assistant Manager and I, who we will call Richard (that being his name), would decide at the beginning of the week some insane question that we would get every employee to work into conversation with the manager, who we will call John, at some point during the week. For example: "Hey John, are you aware we are out of wombat nuggets?" or "Hey John, the police came by and were asking something about you and a goat?" More on that second one in a moment. So. At some point this was getting a bit stale and we decided we needed to up the ante. John had to go out of town for a few days and Richard and I were scheduled to close the night before he returned and opened up the store the following morning. We needed to change the sign over the door to advertise for delivery drivers anyway so we figured this was an ideal opportunity. After we did everything for close, we staged a full on crime scene right inside the door with a tape outline of a goat silhouette, a gun, several shell casings, and crime scene photo numbers. We also changed the sign on the building to read: 'Goats needed, $5.25 an hour + tips, Apply inside" and went home to drink beer and play 'Smash TV' for the rest of the night. The next morning, I poured myself into bed and Richard, probably violating all sorts of public intoxication laws, went up to the store to hide in the bushes and videotape John's reaction. John pulled up in the parking lot, got out and made his way to the front door without ever noticing what the 5 foot by 6 foot sign on the wall above the door said, went to put his keys in the lock while simultaneously looking through the glass, and promptly started laughing so hard he dropped his keys. Richard made his way over to share in the hilarity with him and was promptly drafted into having to clean everything up. Which is why I wisely poured myself into bed rather than go to witness the payoff.

My D&D group's cleric is a follower of Chauntea, a plant goddess. He wields a scythe. He's also incredibly short for a human. He's absurdly chipper. He's the city's marijuana grower and distributor. For some reason, the player picked this figure, one of the townsfolk, to represent his character. I don't like this figure. Player stated that I could do low detail on him. I'm not sure there is a sufficient paint job to give him a cheerful face. C&C as I go is welcome. He isn't going to be one I super nitpick but I'd like him to be generally tidy. Might attempt OSL for practice. Oh bother. I thought I was in the WIP forums. Serves me right for doing this on the phone. Mod help pretty please?

So of course I painted some mouslings for them: (Sorry for the blurry photos. I didn't notice until after I gave them away) @Inarah got me some of the latest "Color Shifting" paint and I wasn't quite sure what I would do with it. I looked at this mousling and just knew this was the right figure for it.

Yeah ok, you got me. ETA: OK, which one of you wiseguy mods added the last two tags and made me have to clean the monitor?

Everyone else ready for Thanksgiving?

The hat I wore for Halloween weekend. Death to this thread!!

I taught my 2-hour class on Monochrome Painting again at ReaperCon this year. In my class, I discuss how to compose a figure using differences in value instead of differences in color, and how to simulate materials (such as cloth, leather, metal, and skin) through the contrast of values (highlights and shadows), and then I paint a figure (or at least part of one) to demonstrate the principles. I painted the lower-front and right sleeve of the robe, the mace, bottle, and right hand during the class. I finished painting her back at home last weekend. The painting time was about an hour in class and another hour or 2 at home. Colors were black, white, and Reaper Master Series paints Imperial Purple and Amethyst Purple. And here's the shot from my camera, with my color-swatch card in the frame: You can also check out my other threads that have the "monochrome" tag. Enjoy! Derek

So yesterday our DM (Wise Kraken) tortured us by having the classic "two prisoners in cells, which one is telling the truth" bit. Except the paladin quickly figured out that they were both evil and were both lying to us. So, um, yeah. I (paladin) had been trying to intimidate one of them by threatening to smite them. Then the rogue decided to mess with my paladin by unlocking one of the cells unexpectedly. "You made this man a promise," he says. Naturally the prisoner was so intimidated that he ran like a rabbit. With my paladin being dedicated to Thor and the rogue acting like Loki, you can imagine what the party dynamic is turning into lately... (Oh, plus the cleric and wizard are busy making puppy dog eyes at each other, which is driving us crazy.) I think we need to play D&D more often.

*loads up meme cannon* Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I have chubby caterpillars! Yes, this is a good thing! I plant Dutchman’s pipe for the Pipevine Swallowtails and this morning there were at least a half a dozen of the caterpillars nomming away. Hopefully they’ll stop the vine before it reaches my front door!

I woke up exactly an hour earlier than my alarm. Shocking. Oh well, back to painting.

I've sculpted 3 tengu figures for Reaper -- a rogue, samurai (warrior), and wizard -- but until recently I had painted only the tengu rogue, and that was 2 years ago (July 2015). I had an idea to paint the warrior and enter both the rogue and warrior as a combined entry into the Open category of the painting contest at ReaperCon. They would have been "Tengu Twins", because the samurai uses the exact same head and feet as the rogue, but with a new body. I started painting him on the Thursday of the con, but managed to finish only the head and set him onto a base. On Friday, I GM'd a game of Pathfinder Society and taught a class in the afternoon, and had only an hour to paint in between. I blocked in some jade green on the armor, and purple-brown for the cloth -- dark colors like I had used on the rogue -- but they weren't working well. So I set the warrior aside and put the rogue into the contest by himself. One night in the hotel after ReaperCon, I watched 3 episodes of the blade-forging reality show "Forged in Fire". In one episode, the smiths had to put a hamon (wavy line) on the knife they were forging, so I knew should add a hamon to the tengu's sword. Back at home, I was walking around my neighborhood when I noticed the tiles on a nearby apartment building, in ultramarine blue and turquoise. Inspiration for the armor! I painted for several hours last Sunday and Monday and was nearly finished but wasn't sure of the last few moves: freehand on the cloth, and maybe some color shifts. I paused and took photos: And I sketched over it in Photoshop: So I went back to the painting table for a couple of hours.... Derek

My rouge lived! In fact, I think I won! So, last week Hubby ran us through a Bloodborne like campaign, but we didn't get to finish. We picked it up this week. We did a little side quest, where I successfully backstabbed for the first time (this character can't hit most of the time, but she sure can dodge) and we got some nice items. Then we trudged through a swamp (well, I was sitting on top of the dwarf) and fought a snake-flower boss monster. After critically making my hide in shadows, I rolled a 20 on backstabbing the boss! It was awesome. Anyway, we got to the end of the campaign (the cathedral) where I went to rescue the kid tied to the cross above the altar, while the other two got their tushies beat on. Tightrope walking ftw! Getting the kid down ended the campaign. Sorta. Each of us was transported back to the hunter's haven separately, where we had to solve the riddle, which was how to wake up the kid, whose bad dream this all was. I had no problem with it (he needed a teddy bear his mom gave him). Neither did the goblin. But the kid who was playing the dwarf didn't pay attention to details, or Hubby's instructions. Instead of looking around the room he left the haven and got stuck in nightmare land forever. His first dead character he handled it well though. And hopefully he learned from it.

***Sigh*** It still lives!!!! Hi doggies!!!! Greetings from Brutus

Well, I wasn't cleaning under the sink or in the hobby room, so there's still chances for a discovery in the future! Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

That sounds wonderful, but food comes first, and then tomorrow I have a 2 hour drive on icy highways. The things I do for Marvel movies. Going with my friend to see it, sad that it's the only one that doesn't have D-Box seats. I told her that tomorrow I'm going to Ragnarok her world, and afterwards she's going to be so Thor.

My poor, overworked better angel (note they are singular) is doing everything in its power to stop me from going into literally every thread and post an @OneBoot in an attempt to cause a localized aurora bootealis in your vicinity.

Can't help you, I'm afraid; I'm far too distracted by the blinky lights on my boot. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Picked up some cheap Enigma stuff. 54mm lady is missing an arm. =(

One of my players had to be difficult and create a bizarro character. An Oread Cleric who uses a dire flail. I finally got sick of using a prepaint earth elemental for him and converted this guy with bits I picked up in the Boneyard. Zenithal priming plus some glazes took care of most of the cloth. Metals, leathers and stone base got a base coat, wash and highlight. All in all, 2-3 hours.

Bowl turned out of magnolia wood. Gave it to my Mom a few years ago for her birthday

Being a puppy pillow is totally a productive thing. You wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings by moving, after all.

For those who may not know, Gravidium is a new element I discovered when cleaning before ReaperCon - perhaps better known in its molten form: gravy. I'm not sure what the half-life of gravy is, but I do know the gravy on the plate I found was last fresh around the time John Kerry ran for president.

Some words... Scutes got washed with full strength Agrax Earthshade... Manes with My Tomwise Sauce... Mouth with SC F&G Mayhem Red... Eyes with SC 75 Deep Red Kilt with SC 75 Violet Then an over all wash with SC WF SS Camo Shade cut 20 to one with Frontline Games Acrylic Paint Capillarity Agent I was hoping that the wash would help build my shadows on the skin tone.... Comments and critiques welcome! PM if you would rather, but I want to improve, and my skin is pretty thick! G

Oh, I almost forgot, I once sewed a patch on my uniform and stuck the needle momentarily in the mattress I was sitting on while I did someting else. The waterbed mattress. Which I figured out pretty quickly as it happens.

Do you make Om-nom-nom noises when you defeat a hero? ... Not that I ever do that. ... much.

Mmm, food. I think I'm gonna pig out on pizza tomorrow and then dive hardcore into a diet Monday. Either that or die of fatness. Maybe both!

Traded a WWII tank mini that I had for unknown reasons for three of these. They are adorably nerdy.

So I'm paintin' Elfquest miniatures this weekend. Julie Guthrie sculpted the things clear back in '83, '84, for Ral Partha, who released them in '84. Now, back in 1984, minis were, as a rule, True 25mm; the Elfquest minis are just that. And the elves are tiny; Elfquest elves run shorter than humans, no taller than chest high to a human. The Personalities box contains most of the humans who appeared in the first ten issues of Elfquest, and they're pretty slight compared to today's Heroic Scale minis. Weirdly? The Priest of Gotara stands about chest high to Sir Forscale. Which means, if the Elfquest minis were resculpted in Heroic 28mm by today's standards, they'd be ... roughly 25mm. My head hurts.

Yeah, but did you find any deposits of Gravidium?

I’m not ignoring this, I’m just thinking about it. I’ll get back to you. In no particular order: My kids - the fuzzy variety and the extra-terrestrial variety, Halloween and Halloween related things, feeling loved, art, painting, music, days off of work, and a certain goblin.