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Finally finished with my first 'original' diorama. I backed a terrain kickstarter last year when my kids were playing Frostgrave with me and by the time it all arrived, their attention spans had wandered - and so, the terrain pieces went back into the box they came with and were (mostly) forgotten.. Meet Sir Felshire, paladin of Sune. One evening, as he was on 3rd watch, he was presented with a vision of a beautiful maiden, locked in enchanted sleep deep within a forest. Waking his companions, he excitedly told them of his vision. Dobbin, the halfling dismissed the tale, stating that there are so many stories of maidens imprisoned by evil that he has made entire fortunes off them ( err.. could have, that is).. Sir Felshire wondered, not for the first time, at the slip of language that hinted that his companion might not be as honest as he presented himself to be. The other two members of the group, Erryn and Anirion, were more easily swayed by his drive to rescue this maiden. After many months of searching, here we have the brave band at the pinnacle of their quest.. Our fearless band's mounts! Isn't she cold? Dobbin, thrilled as usual, keeping an eye out while the others are occupied.. Anirion, the androgynous wizard.. Erryn and Sir Felshire.. Now how does one awaken a princess in enchanted sleep? Perhaps our merry band of adventurers is not done yet! Dobbin will be thrilled... I had a lot of fun painting these folks, even if I did wimp out and skip on the original idea of attempting translucent sheets.. The WIP is here

I have been kicking around an idea of combining #50188 Sleeping Beauty and #03600 Praying Paladin in a mini diorama.. I have even gotten so far as to open their blisters and prime the paladin.. Then, tonight, I had an Idea! See, last year when my kids and I were playing Frostgrave, I backed a kickstarter for some resin scenery . As per usual, however, by the time the scenery arrived, they had lost interest in Frostgrave. Combined with some iffy casts, I had put the box off to the side under my desk and forgotten about it.. until tonight, that is.. What we now see here was billed as a watchtower hill, but looks like a potential mausoleum.. Add a saddled horse, maybe a couple of other party members, and "Bob's your uncle!" I'm going to need to invest in some green stuff to clean up the cast for the 'table' top where the pillars connect as they're way off at the moment.. Alternatively, I have a 'ruined palace' that might work as well.. The second won't need as much cleanup or modification to work, also leaving the watchtower for a dragon or something to perch on at some point as well.. decisions, decisions..

The title says it all I decided to try sheer cloth. I have wanted to try some since I took Rhonda's class for Painting Sheer cloth at Gen Con two years ago, but haven't felt brave enough to actually do it. Well if I want to get better I have to try more things, so here we go. Since this is new to me I figured I would post a WIP for advice and encouragement. Not to mention if I completely mess it up (which I likely will) maybe someone can learn from my mistakes. I already had Sleeping Beauty primed and ready to go I managed to prep her back in January. So last night I painted up her flesh. While my flesh tones were still in the palette I blocked in her sheet with flesh. Here are the photos which since it isn't actually showing any naughty bits I hope they are ok to post. So tonight I grabbed her and glass of wine, and took a photo in true Dontfear fashion. Then onto painting some cloth color. Since I used Burgundy Wine for her skin shadow I felt it would work for her cloth as well and Auberon's Dark Sword Sorceress inspired me to use purple. I mixed in a touch of pale violet and a tiny bit of linen white for the base coat and then took to blocking it in. At this point I googled purple sheer lingerie to get a feel for how purple looks against the skin and took my basecoat and mixed it with fair skin. With a fairly thinned down paint I used this to cover the skin parts to make it look as if a layer of fabric was over it. After this step it figured I better try to blend my mess so I mixed a few steps in between and also a higher step with linen white added to try to bring out the flesh parts a bit more. Here is as far as I got with her tonight. She needs more blending around the flesh parts then I am hoping working shadows and highlights onto the purple will help convey the look of sheer as I am worried now the cloth just looks highlighted rather than sheer. Thanks all for reading and hopefully helping me on this journey of sheer cloth.