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I've finished another project that was on my to-do list for years. First the pics, then some more words: This was a special resin figure from ReaperCon 2014 (April 24-27 that year) -- sculpted by Bobby Jackson, given to attendees who paid extra for the Artist Banquet on Saturday night. I was supposed to paint him for Reaper's studio collection after the con, but I got distracted with other stuff and he fell off my list. He had the SKU 01529 for a while, and although he is out of production now, his clone will be back soon in Bones 5 as part of the "Dreadmere Personas" Core Set extra. I'll try to remember to revise the tags of this post when he has a new 77xxx or 78xxx number. Ian Markon (Kuro Cleanbrush) painted a spectacular rendition in 2015 as "Knight of the Blood Moon", with red armor and wings. You can find it here on the Forum by searching for "01529". So far in 2021, I've been finishing some figures left over from years past ... and getting points in the Reaper Challenge League for it. This guy earned 3 points for the April theme of "No More Sunrises" (vampires and other nocturnal or subterranean monsters). I couldn't decide on a color scheme so I started painting a cool grey monochrome as if he were in moonlight. I was going to add a warm light from behind, too, but I just kept going with the cool monochrome all around. I concentrated on the differences in contrast and texture among the materials: armor plates and trim, cloak exterior and interior, sword (blade, crossguard, pommel, hilt), gems, skin, hair, teeth, stone steps, skull, etc. I spent extra time on the face, as always, such as getting the blends very smooth. The eyes are sculpted very large, which gave me freedom to manipulate the expression. I painted the upper lids a fraction of a millimeter lower, to get just the right half-lidded look. And in order to make him seem more feral, I painted his scleras darker and irises lighter. I did this a few years ago on a half-orc Pathfinder figure I painted (Skreed Gorewillow). The specific colors were Blue Liner ("black"), the cold grey triad (9172 Stormcover Grey, 9173 Coldstone Grey, and 9174 Icy Grey, now out of production), Misty Grey, and Pure White. The blending was somewhat challenging, because the greys changed value from wet to dry! Stormcover Grey dries a little lighter, and Icy Grey and Misty Grey dry a little darker. On the back of the cloak, for example, I would see a spot where I wanted to deepen the shadow, and Stormcover Grey looked perfect while wet, but then it would dry lighter and the "shadow" disappeared! So I had to add Blue Liner to the Stormcover Grey, and trusted that what looked too dark at first would look right when dry. This phenomenon made it fun to paint little streaks of Stormcover Grey on the interior of the cloak or the sword blade, because the streak would go on invisible over the black, but then appear grey as it dried a few seconds later. Enjoy! Derek