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So as I mentioned in my Mr. Bones show off, I painted up Garrick AKA ForScale to be a test run for Matte Varnishing (which didn't happen through airbrush, next time I guess), he did get a brush on varnish which went very well, so without further Ado, here is my take on Sir Forscale (overall he came out well, but his yellow shield IMHO sucks, maybe I just don't do well with yellow) C&C always welcome.

I'm a bit delayed on these photos, as I got distracted by various things but pictures are finally taken, even if there's apparently some dust on them now >.>;;;; Anyways! Back in February (Feb 18th to be precise, at least according to messages I'd posted on Discord) I decided I wanted to give speed painting a whirl, in order to try and develop a few techniques that I could then apply to my Skaven horde of doom. I also wanted to try out a few different mini holders (generic tylenol, as well as Motrin bottles) to see if I'd prefer something like the Mini Holder, or if I could just DIY something, as my current solutions tends to wind up causing my right paw to cramp up after a while, and maneuvering the miniature isn't always the easiest. Such was partially inspired by the awesome thread @ManvsMini did about custom holders and also a desire to see whether it would be worth splurging on a Hobby Holder with Handle Mod 1. Short version is that the Motrin bottles won out, although the generic tylenol bottle was handy because it has a lid that spins more easily... So technically the Hobby Holder would be able to do both, AND give me a brush rest. Anyways, I'm rambling in a show-off thread.... Originally I'd wanted to do just the one mini, but quickly wound up putting two up so I could directly compare the two bottle types I had on hand. I think I set my goal at "finish a single mini within two hours", and I'd say I pulled that off, since I managed to do two in 2h10min... So needless to say, rather happy about that! Oh, it also morphed into some sort of "less than twelve colours used" and "you can only use one 10-well palette, and once a colour is in one, it's committed" challenges too, both of which I was successful with (11 paints total used, including washes, and I sure wound up using all ten wells too). Not quite sure why I do such, but eh, it was for fun, and I had fun, which is the most important aspect of it all in my eyes! ^So first up, obvious is Sir Forscale, aka Garrick the Bold... In Bones. ^And then Juliette, Female Sorceress, also in Bones. And since I can't resist, yup, all done with size 0 brushes, because that's pretty much all I had on hand back then. So, I have to playfully ask myself, what did I learn, besides the obvious aspect of a fox loves orange and black? Uhm... Good question. I know I did a decent amount of drybrushing, but I also can't even remember if I used any metallic paints or not as it's been a while >.>;;;;

So here is my slightly converted Garrick the Bold, using Reaper's Breast Cancer Awareness Pink Paint. I have a few bottles to use up. I used Reaper MSP Filigree Silver for the armor and sword. I don't like this paint; it went on way too thick and thinning just made is worse. I know the ribbon is supposed to be pink, but I liked this color scheme better. Oh, and crest on the shield is made from plasticard. So many tiny pieces were lost and had to be re-cut.

I was inspired by how the paint combination on the Copper head of my Ma'al Drakar turned out, so I thought it would be fun to turn a mini into a bronze/copper statue! Given that I still didn't have a fully painted Sir Forscale (@Reaperbryan owns all 3 of the ones I've painted to date), I decided it was high time I had one of my own. Those two things resulted in this: I removed him from his broccoli base and glued him onto a 20mm Reaper base, so he'd have a pedestal sort of thing to stand on. He was very quick to paint up, just Green Liner, Copper Verdigris, a light Turquoise Ink wash, then careful drybrushing of Coppery Orange. I had fun thinking about what the wear patterns on a regular statue would be, hence why sections of his base and his right foot are so much shinier than the rest. Because given any flat surface, people are going to sit on it to rest or take pictures, and prominent areas are usually kept shined from people rubbing them. And here's a couple of pics just for fun, since Ma'al is still hanging out on my desk: Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Nothing fancy, just practicing/getting back into the swing of painting.

Just finished up Garrick the Bold. Painted with Army Painter matte black undercoat, dry brushed Necron Compund then finished off with Reaper HD paints. Basing done with the Army Painter basing kit. Pay no attention to my paint fingers. comments and critiques always welcome.

Awright. With a little gloss on his pepper and a touch here and there on his armor. The peppers on the shield were HD Garnet Red, Gilded Yellow and Core fresh Blood, in no particular order. The big pepper is mostly Garnet Red and Fresh Blood. That little blush of dark is ... I think Nightshade Purple with a little Peacock Green over it. Armor and shield border is all metallic; I'm liking Scorched Metal as a bronze (greaves, pauldrons, guantlets and helm), and I'm really quite thrilled with the way it came out. I had fun with the painting and modifications on this; the pepper was particularly fun to build. However simple, it was just challenging enough that I feel like I really did something. I got it SHINY. I am pleased. ^^;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF5C04CB-VQ I did it! Finally, my first Show Off thread ever for something that wasn't just for my personal enjoyment! And did I ever pick a big project to do it with. This one had stretched my meager skills to the limit, but I managed to finally complete it. WIP here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/70091-77008-sir-hue-forscale-first-knight-of-polychromus-wippic-heavy/ From deep with the arcane workgrounds of Castle Polychromatic was forged Sir Hue ForScale, First Knight of Polychromus, Guardian of the Halls of Spectra, Measurer of Magniftints, Watcher of the Seen and Unseen. A construct specially created to protect the Papal Realms from eldritch horrors, he is the shepherd of Colours Out of Space. You could say that he's their................designated drover. To you, my friends, I unveil my creation!: His shield is adorned with the Grinning Lizard, crest of Pezler the Polychromatic, representing him no matter where he goes ( and to advertise the Grinning Lizard Tavern; Tuesdays are half off Polychromatic Fizzys!). Below that to represent the SpacePope he serves is the Sacred Hat, whose very presence has the power to make people intone the mystical words, "Hey, Bryan's here!" Protected by the Tabard of the Tumbling Cosmos, he goes out in search of threats to the integrity of the spectrum, without which all paint would have no colour, making our hobby pretty darn dull. He smites foes with a sword created from the carapace of the Giant Iridescent Killer Rainbow Beetle (Arcus pluvius popsiclus), bringing new colour to the villains of the realms ( the colour he usually makes them is 'dead'). His eyes watch over the spectra both seen and unseen, keeping you all safe from those who would rob your paints of all colour( or just rob your paints; I'm looking at you, Buglips). To enhance his powers, he has been suffused with the essences of several forumites to give him their strengths: the purple boots of OneBoot, for her stompy powers against the tiny eldritch horrors (but how can they be two boots when her name is Oneboot, you ask? OneBoot2=OneBoot. Simple polychromathemagics.); Guindyloo Blurple among the speckles for her face-huggy abilities; tangerine for Buglips, Emperor of Mooning, he who actually bleeds paint; Blood for the Blood God paint on the sword gems for ub3r_n3rd, he who helps bring the smackdown; And the Grinning Lizard, who was created long ago from modifying a sketch of a frog, which seems appropriate for Froggy the Great. I had a blast creating this figure for the contest, and it certainly put my meager skills to the test. I have enjoyed a year on the forums, and I want to thank everyone who encouraged me to keep doing this. I'm afraid I couldn't get the last updates for my WIP, since I wanted to make sure that I finished in time. There's a lot of different paints added since the last update, but I don't think it's worth mentioning them unless someone asks. I did, however, add eyes for him using a touch of interference blue in each socket. I think that Sir Hue is the only Forscale that actually has eyes. PM and email has been sent to ReaperBryan, so it's all good now. Will do some touching up here and there before he gets shipped out, but he will join his brethren soon enough. The Sir Hue will remain vigilant over you all, to keep your tones, tints and shades safe. He is always watching.............

This was part of ReaperBryan's Sir Forscale Painting Competition... Froggy had mentioned a raygun in the thread, and I decided to do a retro-future conversion with a rocketpack, raygun and energy shield. I also decided after a bit of thought that I'd loosely base the design on the classic depiction of DC Comics' Adam Strange... The raygun is actually just the slightly modified stub of his sword's guard and handle with a pin in the end. For the shield, I sculpted a rectangular mount (the "shield generator") on his bracer, intending to have a clear blue-tinted shield so it would show through. But after glueing three layers of blister plastic together and cutting out the shield, an attempt to hit it with some sealer as a primer coat ended up frosting the damn thing... So I painted an opaque "glass" pattern on the shield instead. The gold boss in the middle of the shield is meant to be the thing that generates it, and is the pin that holds the shield onto the arm. The rocketpack is a tiny brass tube, and the cone on the tank, the cones on the rockets and the frame are all hand-sculpted. The two rockets themselves are a pair of plastic model pieces from a 1:700 USS Mount Whitney LLC-20 that I had lying around... I had planned on adding a white stripe and design on the helmet like the picture of Adam Strange, but then concluded that with all the trouble I'd had highlighting the red that it wouldn't be worth it to try that level of freehand because I'd never get the highlighting right on the red after having to go back and forth making the line straight and even... EDIT TO ADD: There's a post further down the thread where I show some WIP pics of how much of the figure was reconstructed or built from scratch...

Garrick the Bold: 77008 Sculpted by Bobby Jackson For the Sir Forscale Contest I decided to take a try at this with two miniatures. Hope you like them. 1. Green and White Striped. Standard Metal Plate Armor _________________________________________________________________________ 2. Purple and Black: Black armor with Silver and white highlights. *These are both done with Metallic paints for the metals. Sir Forscale Contest entry page Accepted

I've finally decided to get my boot in gear and paint up my submission to Reaperbryan's Sir Forscale competition: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69934-sir-forscale-painting-competition/ I'll be painting him up in the traditional Papal Guard colors of dark green and gold, using mostly metallics because SHINY. First set of pictures! EDIT: I can't get my pictures to work; apparently, Google Photos killed Picasa web albums for good sometime earlier this week. Have this picture of a cat instead while I try to get it figured out. EDIT EDIT: I've found a truly grotesque workaround for now, which I've used for these first two pics. Further pictures in this thread will have to wait until I work out something better. His tabard and glove are all Reaper paints, starting with Rich Green and highlighting through various combinations of Rich Green, Christmas Wreath, Grass Green and Clear Green, in that order. Before the final Clear Green highlight, I did a Grass Green wash to tie it all together. I may do one final highlight to really make it look nice, but it's decent as-is. The gold edging is P3 Solid Gold, and it is SO SHINY YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA. I mean, uh, hey look at that awesome NMM I totally did. Yeah. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

ReaperBryan is a meanie. Here I was with a Garrick the Bold Figure that I was going to paint up as Sir Forscale, all safely tucked away until I thought I had the talent to replicate such a feat. And then He comes around with a painting competition for that exact figure, forcing my hand. Forced, I say! I have never done so much planning for a colour scheme in my life, I hope to do it justice and I've been taking notes from those who have gone before me. And so begins the creation of Sir Hue Forscale, First Knight of Polychromus, Sentinel of Spectra, Measurer of Magnifitints. Here goes nothing! All pictures taken will be from my new phone, I hope it does a better job than from my iPad mini: Alright, looking crisp, though the whites are a little too bright. I used Reaper Brown Liner to coat the entire thing, then put on Reaper Pure black to cover it. I though I had diluted the black too much, but then I realized that it's a really concentrated paint, so it all turned out pretty good. ..............and now I found some mould lines. Alright, work on those first, and then some speckling is in order.

Sir Forscale of House Procrastius, knight the fourth, shielding himself with a for scale, armed with a ruler for scale. I've never actually used greenstuff before (and yes I know he's on his base, the sealer wasn't completely dry at this point, so base-less pics after) From bottom of his foot to top of the ruler is actually the height of the sword tip (maybe off by a fraction of a mm)

I started this little guy on a Saturday. At a paint day. At a certain factory... This is where he got to in about 4 hours worth of work. Need to finish the sword. The lad at the factory store went in the back and dug through bins to find one with a nice, straight, unbent sword. So, I figured this one ought to be left stock and unconverted.

For once I think this mini looks better on camera. It is more blue in person. Still I am pretty happy with it. All the "black" bits are nmm. It gets better each try

I'm pretty happy with the white, less so with his emblem on his chest. I don't know if it's my eyes or the bones but I couldn't get clean lines on it no matter how I tried sigh. Anyway, it was fun to do bright metals for once, instead of rusty (as per my usual worn armour/Skaven stolen goods type!) So he looks like he's a shiny new adventurer!

Here are my two entries for the Sir Forscale competition. I wasn't going to make a show off post for them, but since we're trying to cut out chatter in that thread, I thought if people wanted to give any feedback (C&C is always very welcome!) that this would be the best place for people to do that. This was my first time painting the dreaded colour black...I think I was relatively successful, at least in the back. I found the front part of the cloth on him a bit difficult to pick out where highlights should be. My first one is, naturally xenomorph inspired.... Sir Xenoscale? And the second one is Blurple and has a flower crown because, why not? Sir ForBlurple? The flowers are made out of Sculpey. Let me know if you want to know any paints that I used. C&C always very welcome!

Alright. So, I decided I was going to play too. Why not? It's fun, and Mr. Bold is not large. Very relaxing, after Khanjira. >.> Anyway. We all know what the original looks like, so... on to the modification! My GS-fu is still pretty weak, but I pulled some out and mushed it about and began sculpting a credible pepper over Mr. Bold's sword. Because, really, why cut it off if it provides a functional armature?! After some wrapping and squishing and delicate tool use (I suspect one of said tools is visible there in the background), I had the start of a functional sort of pepper. And not even too long. Although I realized that I was going to have to add some more to the base... So, I did. And then I glued Mr. Bold to a handle (I use soda bottle lids, myself), and tweaked his pepper a little bit. Thickened the end, trimmed some bits off his sword so that it better approximates a stem, that sort of thing. Ready to paint! Just need to get some primer on the green stuff, because I sort of had it in my head that to be properly seasoned, the pepper has to be red. >.>

I've taken Reaper's 77373: Cuth Wolfson, Barbarian and merged his arms and helm with the body of 77008: Garrick the Bold along with a metal axe from one of Reaper's weapons packs to create this monstrous warrior of Great Renown! This is now Sir Garrick Wolfson the Mighty-Thewed! WiP here - http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/70094-sir-garrick-wolfson-an-ub3r-wip/ This is going to be in Bryan's hands in a few days! C&C are welcomed and appreciated

I've taken Reaper's 77373: Cuth Wolfson, Barbarian and merged his arms and helm with the body of 77008: Garrick the Bold along with a metal axe from one of Reaper's weapons packs to create this monstrous warrior of Great Renown! This is now Sir Garrick Wolfson the Mighty-Thewed! So far after attaching everything I added some greenstuff to the bottom to make a 1 inch base for him to steady him out as he's a little front heavy now. Hopefully Bryan like it and won't mind, it can easily be sliced off if not. Doing this as Bryan is running the contest for Sir Forscale, but I need to be original and true to myself as a lover of all things barbaric! The primer is actually Reaper Grey Primer mixed with Reaper Grey Liner. I find this to be a good mix for bones and metal.

I painted this fella up over the course of PaizoCon while hanging out at Reaper's Paint n' Take table! I've meant to paint Sir Forscale up for a long time now, and I also wanted to paint something in the official Space Pope colors of purple and teal, so this seemed like the opportune moment. These are the best pictures I could manage under the circumstances; I would take better ones, except that he is now in ReaperBryan's possession! It's going to bug me to the end of forever that his sword is just sliiiiightly crooked, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. :P Colors used were: Twilight Purple, Tropical Aqua, Oiled Leather, Solid White, Solid Black, Blade Steel (a new Bones paint), Clockwork Brass, the Moss triad, a lovely deep bronze from Citadel that a fellow painter loaned me, and ReaperBryan Sky Steel. The pictures are doing a poor job of picking it up, but the armor is done entirely in Sky Steel, and it's a lovely light blue silvery color. I wish I'd done at least a quick wash into the crevices I covered up to redefine them, but I ran out of time. The highlighting on his tabard is a bit of a mess because there weren't many sculpted folds in it, and I'm hopeless at figuring out where highlights should go without some guidance from the sculpt. I eventually had to call it good enough because my fiddling with it was starting to make it worse rather than better. I'm overall fairly pleased with how he came out, especially given that the lighting, while good, wasn't optimal. Also that I was limited to what paints were at the table, plus a double handful of what was on my desk already from working on Kally. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

I've been hitting a slump in my painting that's been keeping me from these forums for quite a while. I'm trying to regain my rythm and getting some pieces done. This is one of them: This is my very own Sir Forscale. I figured I had to have one. Somewhat of a quick fix.

I'll take a page out of hammer570's book and post a little introduction thread here and show off a few of my preliminary efforts. The very first mini I ever painted was about a year ago, at the very first PAX South. Reaper was there, and I had so much fun I kept going back. I had been wanting to paint a mini ever since Reaper started going to the various PAX shows and had some friends who did it, but it never really seemed to work out with so much else to see and do at PAX. On the last two days of PAX South 2015, I felt like I finally had some time to try it out and pretty much got hooked right away. Since then, I've painted at PAX Prime 2015 and PAX South 2016 which ended just last week. I am really looking forward to Reaper being at PAX East 2016 in a couple months, because I will finally buy some paints and start doing this hobby at home instead of just at PAX. In the meantime I've been getting paintbrushes and other supplies, and planning what sorts of paints I want to start my home collection with. For those not familiar with Reaper's set-up at PAX, basically you get an hour to paint something with a sampling of their paints, and like any good addiction your first mini is free. Understandably, they are very popular, especially later on at the convention when people's feet are tired and they're overstimulated from all the crowds and video games. Sitting down to paint a mini in a fairly quiet area for an hour is very relaxing, and the communal atmosphere is very fun. The time restraint is at times stressful, and the paintbrushes they give you are pretty messed up by the third day, but it's a great challenge and I always enjoy chatting with people around me at the tables and picking up ideas or tips. Honestly, I hope Reaper goes to every PAX forever, because it's become a major part of my PAX experience I look forward to a lot. Anyway, I'm a D&D/Pathfinder kind of guy. I got into this hobby because I want to amass a collection of minis for tabletop RPG, since I'm very often a DM. I don't currently have a group and the last few games I ran were done online using a software table and Skype, but I've recently moved and think I might be able to get a group together again in person. All of these are 60 minute paint jobs. I might've snuck in a little extra time here and there (shhh, don't tell Reaper), but I don't think any of them took more than 80 minutes from sitting down with a blank mini to standing up and walking away, as done as they'll ever be. Would I have liked extra time? Heck yeah, for most of them anyway, especially in the beginning when I was pretty new to all of this. One of the reasons I'm really looking forward to painting at home is that I'll be able to spend more time thinking and working on details. Most of all it'd be great to really let the mini completely dry between painting stuff. I'm not really complaining, though, the 1 hour time limit is really just part of the fun painting at PAX. That said, you can pretty much consider all of these unfinished, and I may revisit most of them in a few months when I've got my own paints. The images are all thumbnails. Click on them and they'll take you to a larger picture. Photographing these was an experience in its own right, but hopefully these pictures turned out alright. So, my very first mini was this guy: 89010 Damiel, Iconic Alchemist He was one of the free minis they were offering at PAX South 2015. I really didn't know what I was doing, and the whole thing ended up pretty paint-by-numbers, as I'd describe it. No blending, just paint colors straight from the bottle. No real technique or anything. I was pleased at the level of detail I was able to do, like the silver buttons, but obviously this is super amateur and mostly the experience was just trying to figure out the mechanics of putting paint on such a tiny little figure. But hey, every journey has to start somewhere, and I was quickly back to paint two more minis I paid for. I'm sure I don't need to tell any of you how addictive this is. This was my next mini: 77059 Orc Berserker (Greatsword) Oh man. This one was a learning experience. The end result I'm actually quite happy with, even if I spent the whole time super stressed out with no idea what colors to use for most of it. If I remember right, I started out with a green skinned orc, but I wasn't really happy with the color, plus I knew the guy was a berserker and berserkers make me think of the color red, or at least reddish. So I switched to making him a sort of reddish brown. You'll note there's no real shading or highlighting on the skin, it's just a mess of painting and re-painting, layer after layer until I got something I could live with, a bit of a nice splotchy effect maybe, but definitely not an advanced technique. The armor plates were also a bit difficult to get right. I didn't want a real shiny pristine armor, that doesn't look right for orcs, but color selections were really quite limited. The only shinies were true silver and gold. I needed to blend. What I settled on, was a sort of shiny purple, a kind of evil-looking fel-forged steel. I accomplished this after I'd already painted it with true silver, by basically layering on every watered-down color I could think of until I thought it looked okay. Every mini I've painted has been a learning experience in some way or another, and the big lesson I learned with this guy was that if you're painting chainmail, true silver is going to look really bad. However, if you water down some black paint and slop it around all over, it'll darken the holes and the chain mail will actually look like chain mail! Go figure. This was also the first mini where I actually tried blending some paints before applying it, to make the dark gray-brown leather gloves and skirt. I also really enjoyed thinking about how this orc might've used his leg spikes and arm spikes to smash in people's faces, and how blood might splash all over his armor on the front and back if he was just wailing on people with that greatsword in an all-out melee. I wanted him to be an orc that even other orcs were afraid of. It was just fun imagining this guy as a living being in a fantasy setting and how he'd fight. I'm really a storyteller at heart (in fact, that's my profession), and the idea that I could paint minis and tell a story with how I painted them was just really cool to experience. If I wasn't hooked before, I was definitely hooked with this guy. Last mini painted of PAX South 2015: 77021 Elf Archer Lindir I was really excited to paint this elf archer. Kudos to Werner Klocke. This thing has tons of little details that really inspired me. As a storyteller, I immediately jumped on the Tolkein-esque idea that elves spend a great deal of time and effort on everything they craft since they live such long lives and are very meditative, from their cities in the trees to the clothing they wear, and even the scabbards for their swords, it's an expression of their cultural values and their way of life to have all these great little details the model provided. So, I immediately thought in terms of layers. On every item this elf is wearing or using, there's a sort of base layer, and then there's this embossed detailed outer pattern. I didn't see anything to make me think this guy was elf nobility, or particularly a hero, he was just a typical elf living in the woods, but elves just do everything nicer than humans so he looks upscale by comparison. This was really a mini about blending paints, and I feel I learned a lot in doing so. In fact I think only his skin, his hair, and the red of his arrow fletching were straight out of the paint bottle. Every brown or green on the guy was a conscious choice I made to create my own blend of paint in just the right shade or tint. I wanted him to look like he'd blend in quite naturally in a forest, either to hunt dinner or hunt invaders in his land. The other thing I wanted to do was make him seem a bit magical. He's an elf, after all. The best way I know to create the impression of magic is to make something shiny. Immediately, I knew I had to make his bow be a blend of gold paint and brown to make it an enchanted bow conferring exceptional aim. The resulting paint was a revelation to me, the idea that I could add shininess to things other than metal was a big deal. If you look closely at the bow I actually did the an extra layer of gold on top for the detail work, so the wood is golden brown and the tips and—I don't know all that much about bows—rope thingies are even shinier. I added the same gold over-coat to the details on his scabbard and quiver after painting them their own shades of brown. For the cloak and boots (though it's hard to see on the boots) I blended green and dark brown respectively with gold to provide additional highlight to the pattern and take his clothes up a notch, making them fancier than your typical human fantasy wear. There are things I'm not happy with, mostly the face and hair, and had I more time I'd have corrected more of my mistakes and spills, but of the three different figures of my first weekend painting minis, I was definitely the proudest of Lindir. It was the first one I felt, when I was done, that I had fully expressed my vision, at least as well as I could with only an hour to paint. He was a challenge, but it felt awesome when my time was up. PAX Prime 2015 Minis: I spent a lot of time in the Reaper Room at PAX Prime this past year. A lot of time. I don't remember the order in which I did them, but PAX Prime is 4 days long, and I painted minis every single day. I'll just kind of list them in somewhat random order. 89026 Eando Kline This guy immediately struck me as regal in some way. Perhaps the confident way he stood, perhaps the amulet around his neck, perhaps the great deal of plate armor he wore making me think he's at the very least quite wealthy. I decided pretty quickly that I was going to add gold accents to his armor and give him gold buckles on his back pack. I tried to vary the color of his leathers. The biggest problem I have with this guy is the head, obviously it's a mess. I really need to learn how to do hair and faces. Looking at it now under good light, I see a lot of little details I messed up or simply didn't see at the time. I'd paint him pretty much the same color scheme if I was doing him again, I have no regrets on that score, but I'd want to take more time, use better paint brushes, and make sure I got all the details right. 77068 Anirion, Wood Elf Wizard This ended up being one of my favorites. Kudos to Bobby Jackson for such a wonderful design. It's relatively simple, but in a very elegant sort of way. I'm sure I could have shaded it better (or at all) but the folds in the cloak shade the figure for real under normal light. I mainly focused on making the lower half of the cloak look well-traveled-in. I added splotches of mud matching what little of the base there is, giving it almost a camouflage pattern, and kept the color scheme pretty simple from top to bottom. He's named a wizard, but I really thought of him more as a druid of some sort, very in touch with nature, sort of a Radagast type. He's still an elf, so I wanted that flowing blonde hair, and a green color scheme, but this is a guy who's used to trudging through the forest talking with animals and defending it from intruders. I gave him just the barest hint of golden green around the trimmings of the upper part of his cloak, and some gold around the top of his staff, but otherwise he'd be easy to mistake for a simple traveler using a walking stick. This is one I'd love to paint again, several times, in various different color schemes. Perhaps a blue, perhaps a red, perhaps even a gray or silver. This mini seems like it'd be really versatile for a D&D campaign with different paint jobs and I plan on picking up a couple more of these at least. Since the ears are tucked away in that hood, he could easily be a human, too. 77210 Sarah the Seeress Of all the ones I did at PAX Prime 2015, this is probably the one I'm most disappointed in. Between the ridiculous color scheme, and the paint-by-numbers, complete lack of blending or any technique, it's kind of embarrassing to even show this one off. The problem really was time. When I sat down and pulled her out of the blister pack and looked at her, I had no idea what to do with her. Then my mind sort of went to Wonder Woman, and then suddenly I'm painting her red white and blue. I might have pulled this off if I knew how to do hair, and shadowing, but I really don't know how to do that yet. She was also so wet the whole time, it was hard to hold her and find places I could paint without making a mess, and I ended up layering a lot more paint on her than I ever wanted to, just correcting bleed. The only good things I have to say about this one is that I managed to get some of the tiny tiny beads painted red, and I'm happy with how her eyes turned out (I made then pure white, as if some kind of magic is going on and she's seeing the future or something like that). Looking at her now, though, I missed a ton of details and even misinterpreted some of her dress. I would like another go at her someday, with an actual plan and some more experience behind me. 77033 Callie, Female Rogue This one may not photograph too well, but I think it's really cool how she turned out in person. I thought of her as a sort of assassin, attacking in the dead of night, using her very dark cloak and dark leather to sneak up on people and take them out from a rooftop with her signature blue-fletched arrows before vanishing again in the night. Really cool mini, I have to give Gene Van Horne credit here. 77022 Human Ranger, Michelle This is a really awesome mini by Jeff Grace. It's so dynamic and expressive. I immediately thought of a bull fighter dodging a bull, which necessitated me using the bright red cloak lining. Rangers are hunters, and as I painted I told myself a story of this very competent, very experienced female ranger who hunted exotic beasts in far-off lands, as a means of testing herself. Naturally I had to make her hair gray, she's been at this for a very long time, which is why she feels so comfortable on any continent in any environment up against any sort of animal or monster. I also imagined her spending long periods of time studying her prey, developing a strategy, and so for the outside of her cloak I wanted to paint it almost the same as the ground and mottled it subtly. I imagined she would sneak up on a wild beast, using her cloak as camouflage, and then only when she was ready she'd spring up, using the red liner to taunt the beast into charging. At that point she'd expertly strike just the right spot and earn herself another trophy. I didn't want the colors to be too boring, though, so I mixed up the shades of brown used in her leather armor. I thought about how real-world snipers will paint their faces, with lighter colors in the shadows around the eyes, and darker colors on the cheeks and nose, which makes their faces less recognizable as a face, thus making them harder to spot. If you can tell, I made the outer parts of her armor darker and the inner parts lighter, the opposite of what you'd expect, using that same sort of philosophy to trick the viewer and add another subtle bit of camouflage to her outfit. It adds I think just enough texture, while looking plausible for an experienced hunter to wear. 77205 Alistrilee Again kudos to Werner Klocke for another great elf archer. I don't normally think of elves decked out in plate mail, or much armor at all, really. So it was a matter of thinking about the sort of situation in which elves would really gear up and go to war. There'd have to be something pretty serious going on for an army of elf archers in full armor to go off and fight. That made me think about The Lord of the Rings, and the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring, when the elves were still in the spring of their society in Middle Earth. I did not want to paint this elf in silver or bronze armor while I was thinking of spring, so I went and used a light green that reminded me of new leaves and then washed it with gold to make it shine. I think it's a pretty surprising choice that stands out, since we don't normally think of armor as being green. For elves, and their magic forges, in some kind of fantasy setting, it does sort of make sense though, right? And with that bold, new-leaf green and gold armor, it needed contrast. Again, I had Lord of the Rings on my mind, specifically the cloaks the Fellowship receives from the elves that make them very stealthy. I made Alistrilee's cloak darker, for more contrast, but I did add some shine to it with some silver paint mixed in to make it seem a bit magical and no doubt they would serve an elf army well in any environment. Lastly, I used orange for the fletching to add a bit more color. I felt it went with the green well and contrasted against the dark gray. 77008 Garrick The Bold I think it looks alright, now, but I really messed this guy up a lot to get to this point. The paint is layered on so thick, quite a bit of detail is lost (look at the helmet), because I just couldn't get it right. Garrick really seemed to me like a paladin. With the tabard and the symbol on his shield, I felt like these were symbols of his deity, and decided his boldness comes from the absolute certainty of his faith. I decided that his armor should reflect the purity of his spirit, and so I set out to achieve a lighter silver. At the same time, and I had a lot of drying issues in the limited time I had to paint him, I needed to darken up the chain mail in various places, and also paint a bold tabard. I ended up changing my mind several times about the tabard, I ended up screwing up the plate every time I tried to get the chain mail right. It was just a disaster at every step of the way. In the end I managed to get the tabard kind of okay, and after the fifth or sixth coat I got the plate silver but a lighter silver, but it's also kind of dulled from the white I added. In the end I had to scramble to get the gold details done but this guy was just a mess. One of these days I'm going to have to redo him with a new mini with a good plan from the start. Okay, well, this post is already crazy long. I'll come back later and show off the last few I did at PAX South 2016. I would like to get feedback on what I've already posted though, and especially advice. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I really do want you to be merciless so I can learn something here. So far I just have done a bunch of trial-and-error, and while I'm for the most part happy, I know I have a long way to go. I also hope these photographs aren't too bad. I had a little bit of trouble lighting them and I'm not really sure the auto white balance worked especially well. In particular, I'd really like advice on hair and faces. Any tutorials you can point me to would be much appreciated.

I decided I need a Sir Forscale. The Bones version of Bobby Jackson's Garrick the Bold, AKA a dozen other things. I kept it as simple as I could with him, which, for me, is quite simple. He's retroactively become a candidate for my "first mini to cut off bases after painting to stick to another base" project, though. Don't know if that'll actually happen, in any case. Thanks for looking! Any input you have is welcome.

I'm great at procrastination. It's one of my best skills. But I finally finished all these minis which have been on my desk for a while. Mostly trying to get them out of the way so I can work on my diorama. First off, and proudest, The Jester! He's a conversion of the stonehaven gnome skeleton into a skeletal jester. It's a living doll that attached itself to one of the characters in our current campaign. Next we have a little crystal dragon. I took the spiretop drake and ice imp from the plastic WotC minis, and put them together to make it. The dragon is supposed to look like the Skylander Flashwing. And here's my Lysette, from the beauty pageant in October. Pretty pleased with her Gus the Innkeeper! Finally, Sir Forscale, the Green Knight! I painted him green and silver for Hubby. Those are his favorite colours Hope you enjoy them all