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So I dug through my giant box of Minis Acquired In An Estate Sale and found a vintage Bones 2 bagged Narthrax. I didn't twist his pose, it came pre-twisted. I like it though, he's grabbing the rock with his widdle paw, which I've used as a third anchor point. With the wings more level he looks like he's about to jump off of his perch to harry some adventurers. Without further ado, the Desert Dragon: Despite rumors to the contrary, not all Desert Dragons are blue or shiny. Some are just brown. But brown doesn't mean boring. He has an extensive pattern of spots on his wings, both above and below. He even has the same spots on the pads of his widdle feets. Unfortunately, due to his new 'ready to eat Sir Forescale' pose, no photos of the underside of his wings came out. Also, they're more impressive in person; some of the subtler browns seem to have gotten lost in photography. Here's a better look at one wing: Rawr. Ready to launch off of his rock to eat a caravan, adventuring group, or bright primary blue pretender.

Hah! I finished a thing! Showoff thread is already posted.

By the time the Masters Of The Universe toys and TV series debuted in 1983, I was in college, and too old for them. This did not stop me; I recall a number of hungover Saturday mornings in which I would take a bowl of cereal down to the Day Room in the dormitory, wrapped in a blanket, and soothe my tortured body with mindless cartoons and Captain Crunch. And it seemed like Masters Of The Universe was being shown on some channel or other about every DAY throughout much of the eighties. I don't remember it WELL, but remember it I do. Back in the days of the eighties, when beer was one of the Seven Basic Food Groups, and it was all right to have twenty minute toy commercials masquerading as educational programming, I whiled away a number of pleasant half hours wondering why He-Man, a buff guy with sword, shield, and a giant green tiger for a mount, spent so much time seeking peaceful solutions to his problems. It sure didn't seem to go with his wardrobe. Fast forward to the year 2020, and there's this company making pewter MOTU figures. Not even knockoffs; they sell their stuff with the actual MOTU logo from the old TV show, which means they are either officially licensed, or a remarkably brassy pirate outfit. And I began to think of these figures, because if they are indeed a remarkably brassy pirate project, they could, suddenly, stop being made and sold at any time, pending their discovery by the Mattel Corporation and a flurry of legal paperwork. And so, I bought seven of them, thinking "This will be a fun little side project." I did not realize that there were lessons to be learned here, and that once you acquire a given set of rules for art? Breaking them feels WEIRD. This will be a continuing series as I complete each figure and natter pointlessly about whatever random thoughts crawled sluggishly through my head as I worked. 1. BEAST MAN Beast-Man, evil henchman of Skeletor, and dimwitted comic relief on the TV show, was one of the original seven figures released for the toy line, and one of the major regulars on the TV cartoon. I vaguely remembered him looking sort of like an orange werewolf, and upon checking Google Image, determined that I was right. Upon noting Beast-Man's color palette, though, I realized that I had apparently never noticed his fondness for blue eye shadow. Furthermore, the figurine apparently wore blue lipstick as well. I did remember that the dress code on the planet Eternia called for all males not of royal blood to wear fur briefs. This was apparently a LAW, because durn near everyone seemed to wear a sort of barbaric fur kilt, and given these figures' impossibly small pelvises, they looked for all the world like fur Fruit Of The Looms. And in painting the figure, I idly wondered what sort of Eternian mammal one had to hunt down to get one's fur briefs in ... blue. Blue fur. Blue fur briefs. Funny thing? The sculpt isn't bad at all. The molding process used to make the figures produced a LOT of flash on several of them; the figures needed considerable prep work. But Beast-Man, given what I would call a good paint job, could make a very passable sort of feral barbarian monster. But given the color palette of the toy, I found myself thinking, "Werewolf circus clown." The blue lips didn't help. But upon completion, I did concede that I had successfully matched the color palette of toy and cartoon. More on this as the figures are completed.

Hello there fine followers of the fine Reaper faith and Happy Fourth of July for those in Gringolandia! So here is my Shadowrun Dryad, made by Ral Partha, probably sculpted by Jim Johnson in 1996 if you choose to believe the bottom of the base, and I do. I did her the same time I did the Night Elf I also just recently posted, but one of the eyes on this green haired chicky poo, I just couldn't get it like I wanted to, so I went back and redid the eye, and I still didn't like it, so this is the third version, which I'm also not super duper satisfied with, but there comes a point when I just give up to move to the next small piece of metal. So here she is: and here is a close up of her eyes. Her left one hs that spoke that I just didn't get closed properly. From really close it's very noticeable, but only kind of noticeable from afar and I really couldn't tell with the actual figure, only with the zoom of modern technology. I never had these issues back in the eighties. Anyway, I like some of these Shadowrun figures, because besides being just generally cool, they kind of cross two genres. This one and the other night elf, could easily be fantasy figures, nothing really would orient them to actual science fiction. So back to the painting table! Enjoy your Independence Day, or in the rest of the world, Saturday!

These are some mini's i had yet to see assembled and painted, and i thought they were unique, so i picked a Trio from Ganesha games. They were also quite the PITA to assemble, Each Hyaendon ( Lion) and each rider were 6 pieces total. The Lions are quite nice but the riders could be better. They are really more Goblin-men than Hobgoblins, the detail on the Sowrsman's face leaves a little to be desired. So after pinning, gluing, and basing my little heart out (bases not supplied) they sat for a long time. They do not come pre-drilled, you should do this IMO if you want a solid model. The bigger Lion also has 2 legs up off the ground (will not stand up on it's own) so you have to pin it to a base too. I used my favorite Reaper Ovals. Well i finally dragged them out and finished them. I decided that since they were so similar i would paint them as a Praetorian Guard for some Evil Goblin Emperor. I used non-standard Colors for the first-time on the Furr like blue and Orange and I think it paid off since the Riders are so colorful. I also tried to do a subtle tiger stripe motif by layering it in, and for my skill level i was happy with the blending on those. cheers

Quiet emergency escape in the event of a zombie apocalypse? Painting inspiration for my imagi-nations bicycle troopers? Hipster wall art? We moved into this old house about a year and a half ago. Irene was thrilled to have a two car garage so that she could finally get her vehicles out of the weather, but...old house, old garage, two Model A’s...two modern cars doesn’t leave room to open the wall side doors, and therefore the bicycles had to share people space. We got a freestanding wall rack from REI, and placed it next to the most commonly used outside door: Mine is the orange one. In better times, I now live about 2.5 miles from the FLGS, so I would ordinarily bike over there rather than deal with the crowded and chancy parking. Bicycling is my favorite form of exercise, and I also like to be able to use my bike for transportation. That’s not too hard here in the relatively bike-friendly college town of Newark, Delaware.

Temperatures were in the low 90s (32+ for the civilized) here yesterday. At least the humidity was lower than it might have been. I took my casting gear outside and did some test work on the last block of old (small, “true”) 25mm Prince August fantasy molds. It looks like I could staff reasonable armies of humans (infantry-heavy, with the one human mounted figure being in an odd pose that would not make the best looking units), humanoids (goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs, supported by wolf riders), and undead (skeletons, ghouls/zombies, and wraiths, although the skeleton rider is finicky to cast, so they’ll also be foot-heavy). Phase I will be enough figures for skirmishes with Song of Blades and Heroes, say two dozen or so for some variety. With the casting out of the way, though, the rest of the weekend has to be devoted to tidying; the marriage license arrived in the mail on Thursday, so we will be making things official on the 25th, even if the party is now punted to the first anniversary. Besides, if I actually cleaned up, I’d probably get more painting done in the long run. As you can see, my hobby space has reached a pretty high level of entropy again: I don’t suppose anyone has an inspirational tale of how neat and organized their space always is?

We're getting friends over today. It has been a while since we've seen them ( well I've seen him because he's one of the other Warrants I've been working with for decades... But this time his wife comes along and that's has been months due to a certain stupid World thing... I'm going to stuff them with food...

Always nice to sit down, and get a decent amount of painting done, doubly so if it's blocking in colours on terrain in order to figure things out a touch better. Downsides include not paying attention nand holding the same pose for a while, and tensing up a shoulder, but I should live.. Half tempted to start a thread for the Infinity table I'm slowly building up...

Every good plan involves lube

Update: K-Y works fine. I guess. The first one stamped! The second I got a better pressing but miffed that right side. The third I got released better I think, didn't fudge up the side like I did #2, anyway. Hopefully learning as I go already. This is pretty fun. But slick. Still whittling down the amount of GS, learning how little I need to use. Need to dig out the round bases: the square ones make for a real PITA with the corners lol.

Thanks for reminding me -- I've been wanting to see that! :D I'm happy it's available online now. I absolutely LOVE those wings!!

So thinking about finally trying my hand at making bases, aaaaaaaand. Well. A water-based personal lubricant ought to be fine for keeping Green Stuff from sticking, right?

I might go up onto the roof to watch them tonight, but honestly, there have been so many for the past month+ that it hardly seems worth it. Bleaching the bathroom. Inevitably I end up smelling of bleach for the rest of the day.

As in this discussion on small space hobbying? Similarly, I often am getting nearly as much painting done at work at lunch as I am at home. I have to clear the work space again as soon as I’m done, so painting clutter never builds up. It doesn’t take all that much equipment to do casting. My melting pot is a heated ladle, so I pour directly from it. You need the molds, clamps to hold them closed, some talc, and PPE (gloves and goggles usually). I use some old/cheap baking sheets to contain any spills, and then tools to deal with the molds and figures, which you should have anyway (pliers, metal clippers, and a Stanley knife). My mold library, though, has grown out of proportion to my needs... However, if your medical condition would make a burn an issue, best not. I’m sure I don’t want to know how my bleeding disorder would interact with a serious burn, but I do tend towards caution in working with molten metal. I don’t know that I put out an announcement here, although we’ve been officially engaged for, hmmm, two years? We put things off for a year when my son was getting married last year, figuring that one wedding in a year was about all the relatives could handle. The pandemic put a crimp in this year’s plans. As for entropy, energy has been expended to begin to reverse it:

And that is what happened here too. The black clouds and rumbling left without a drop. From the looks of it people east of us probably got a good rain.

30 C today and I'm feeling baked because I was outside all day. Storm and tornado warnings for the evening. Can already hear the thunder in the distance.

Though the season for that chore is done, I have one that every Canadian knows well and hates. Clearing the snow and ice off of your vehicle. Your fingers are never warm enough when you do it; snow gets in your pockets; scraping the windows takes for ever. Oh, and it's very likely that it's *still* snowing and blowing wind! You can get other people to shovel a driveway around the car, but the car itself is your job. I've had days where I had to clear the car multiple times as I was shopping and doing groceries at multiple locations while it was still snowing.

Well since MMF had this sale I bought this Scarab/Sand Swarm

Love the casting. something i always wanted to try but never wound up with the equipment and time to try. (and now with my current wound issues its not a good idea to play with things that can cause serious damage... when it comes to molten metals, i am unfortunately more enthusiastic than cautious. I look forward to seeing more of your results! congratulations.on your nuptials, sorry if i missed any initial announcement. You are making it official on my younger son's birthday! The only inspiration is that entropy always wins. no much, i know. Had friends over yesterday for dinner and board games and just socializing. had a great time and stuffed everyone on huge quantities of pulled pork, german potato salad and snacks. Today will be much quieter

I don't know how inspirational it is, but having seriously limited space helps. I actually don't know if "helps" is the right word, or conveys the full meaning. It's necessary. It also, sort of, keeps me focused on whatever project fits on my tray. At the moment, I have 3 sets of projects on my tray, and I really need to pick 1 to work on. None of them use the same colors, so... it's just a mess. I'll work on that today I think. I spent a lot of yesterday playing Civ6. Playing England this time, and using my religion to try to take over the world. So far I've got 3/8 civs following The Great Turtle, and and another about to switch over. I seriously need to worry about Peter and the Catholic Church. He seems to have Inquisitors to spare. COFFEE!! And soon WAFFLES! (with BACON!!)

Ah, someone else with a wall hanging barometer thermometer. The old version of weather.com. We've been getting clouds and thunder, but no rain for about 36 hours now.

If there are any within walking distance, maybe. Otherwise, no. While the show itself is usually pretty cool, I hate having to deal with all the traffic. Mowing the lawn. When I finally have my own place, I'm ripping up the grass and putting in rock/flower/vegetable gardens. They do make Roomba style lawn mowers. They're kinda stupidly expensive, though.

That space looks tidier than any of my spaces... Why is there a 1:1 scale bicycle? (I see it hiding just out of frame on the right.)

Some standing stones this week. Foam textured with a rock and some rolled up tin foil. Hope you like.

My friend sent me video of the storm in Regina. I'm hoping to get something like that here. We still have a few puddles from the last rainfall, but we could always use more.

Weather is taunting us. All around us thunderstorms pop up, but they never actually come over us so we can get rain.

We already had Canada Day fireworks (not the city, random people were shooting them off in the city). Plus some yahoo decided that shooting them at 3:46 in the morning was a good idea (alcohol and/or stupidity was probably involved). Wearing pants.

Patreon Day for me too

We were really dry through May and a lot of June but have had enough rain lately and more in the forecast. Almost time for me to start cutting hay and I'm hoping it'll dry up a little for that. So far just dark clouds and lots of rumbling here tonight. At least the temp's dropped about 10 degrees.

Here's hoping we still get our forecasted rain. Was supposed to be here at 4pm, then 6pm, and now... I don't feel like checking forecast again because weather will choose to rain if it chooses to.

New-to-us car yesterday, 2015 Hyundai Tuscon to replace this (insurance decided that there was too much damage...and being a VW the parts are too expensive here): Also a bit of music because bandcamp was/is giving their royalties to the artists for 24 hours.

Quiet little town with decent school system. And It's 30 minutes away from everything. Of course, the downside is that it's 30 minutes away from everything. But on the whole, it's more positive than negative.

Always go with the Corgi! Also I printed a thing! (6 sided die for scale )

I can't think of any chore that I actually dread. I'm not fond of doing any of them (they are chores after all), but it's just a general "I'd rather be painting minis" kind of feeling. I can't speak for Canadians, but for my fellow Americans I have solved this problem by parking in my garage. It is quite nice to just get in my car and head out while I laugh at my neighbors that park outdoors. Also, remote start. Giving the car a five minute head start while I'm getting ready to leave work does wonders for loosening up whatever is frozen to it.

A friend told me that the thunderstorm has already hit the Big CityTM , with a bit of wind.

Go go cherries!

I hear you on that one... I had totally forgotten about such, and our new work trucks have insanely HUGE windshields for some reason Ford decided was necessary. But yeah, slushy snow is the worst for such, because you go in to deliver to one customer, get back out and have to spend two minutes scraping your windshield off again!

Nothing really although there's some I seem to put off if I can. Mostly things the wife feels are super important. Having to do some of the vet related stuff I have done with cattle puts a different perspective on normal chores. My wife has a fireworks fetish so we try to seem them when we can. On Canada Day I was lucky that the next town over does a nice show most years so we didn't travel far. Before she had her PR (like US green card) and couldn't travel stateside we even drove to the border and watched the fireworks at the nearest town from there. With the current virus situation and having just seen some we won't be crossing the border this year. I've got a clogged drain on our that I can't get cleaned out. Need to pull it apart but it's hard to get a ladder to stand straight at that corner and I keep putting it off. Doesn't help that we've been getting a fair bit of rain every few days lately. The other side of the house had big wads of sprouting tree seeds clogging the downspout but it was easy to scoop out.

I am exhausted. I stayed up late last night and it is not helping things. We found out this morning that our debit card was compromised LAST MONTH and no one from credit union contacted Husband. So we are waiting for a new card. We haven't been using that account, except when we bought my computer, for a while, it's mostly for savings so glad they caught it. It just would have been nice to be told that they shut off the card. In other news, I'm getting so close to finishing Ma'al. Right now I'm screwing around with the terrain. Have a really cool idea in my head but have to wait for things I ordered to get here. After I finish the terrain I just need to do a few things on the dragon itself. And then seal everything really, really, really well.

My picks are now finalized and this is certainly my biggest pull out of the three circuits I've been in. Even after all of that, the box is still stuffed with a ton of miniatures. Cramming everything back into the box with my own contributions added too will certainly be a challenge. If I had to chose a few highlights it would have to be: The Clockwork stamp from Happy Seppuku, much thanks to @buckyball The Reaper Pulp spacewoman, that'll be painted as the Nuka Cola girl for a gift The Jetson's car too

I had a similar situation at my friend's house when we were playing. For some reason, they had three cats and kept the litter box in the dining room, about 3-4 feet away from the table where we played (it was a small house, but I still don't understand the logic of having the box in the dining room, but whatever). Bomb was dropped... but damnit we kept playing!

@Corsair: Thanks for the cover; I didn't even notice as I was on my phone. I got late today helping my kids.

Exactly! Okay, that was a satisfying conclusion to Avatar.

The subway, the food, the everything being right there...

got a reaper order, 3 bottles of wash medium, bronze flesh, bronze flash shadow, dark shadow, dark highlight, robot kobolds, poppy cloverlocks, mwangi brown, hanei the freebie warrior. really wish wash medium was available in much bigger bottles.

Painted a little guy that made me happy today.

Just wanted to say, thanks again to everyone's suggestions. Even thou the mini I used to scale this batch was like 8 feet tall according to the ruler, it matches up pretty well with a prepainted mini. I then printed out a batch of 3 figures, the "cursed" halfling thug, Doc Frank & one of five bandits. Everything came out exactly how I wanted, especially the halfling (more or less cut it 50% & then dropped it a few more. On to the next batch!!

Many, many years ago I used to do some editing for amateur writers... (Furry fiction) I always warned them that I would NOT be gentle. When I came across 'common' issues such as we're/where and similar, punctuation/capitalisation errors I would mark the first few issues of each and write a note explaining the correct usage. The few that got angry at the level of 'hacking' I did were all native English speakers. The same with the common issues. Non-native speakers would take my notes to heart and remember them for the next chaper or story. The rest might correct the issues in that chapter/story, but then be back to doing the same errors in their next submission. Some just fixed the couple of issues I had marked and ignore the rest. One had just submitted the edited chapter without reading it... So he posted it with all my comments... I no longer do any editing for anyone.