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I haven't painted a mini for a few years, got caught up moving interstate and starting a new job. (I am a tattoo artist, woo!) But finally sorting through my minis and paints and taking some time to tinker. I went with a colour scheme inspired by the old Hanna Barbera character, 'Wildfire.'

So, with a little bit of surgery and paint- a unicorn becomes a nightmare...

New batch of Reaper minis ready to torment (or help?) my players that I just finished this weekend :). Mastema is an old metal mini that I found at a local stare, it was on sale, the mini itself is from 2007 IIRC, one of the horns was broken but I think it adds to the character! Ogre Chieftain from a Bones Black monthly promo (part of Bones 5 Dungeon Dwellers): And finally the Silverhorn Unicorn. Not as pleased with this one as the others, I wish the detail on tail and mane was better and I didn't screw up airbrushing it with all the speckling :P. It is the original soft bones material so only so much you can do with it.

Trying to get back into painting and out of my comfort zone, here is Silverhorn: Nothing wild really, but it was a good exercise in painting up from gray to white. Not perfect but he turned out much better than anticipated, so I’m calling this one a win.

WIP This unicorn has a slightly lavender tone because my PC half-drow wild magic sorcerer, Grz'zilda, has already summoned a unicorn a few times through wild magic surges.

Last night's work. Really pleased with parts of this, but just okay with the hair. Also, you'll note that his horn is silver . . . because his name is Silverhorn . . . a travesty that I felt I needed to rectify. For shame, all you people painting this guy without a silver horn.

Found something hiding in my drawer-full-o-minis! How It's Painted...

From my drop in on London, I also bought a unicorn. Hell yeah. I decided to do a classical pretty unicorn paint, and I had all these grand ideas of soft blue hued whites and stuff... And it all went horribly wrong because I drybrush a lot and am less than amazing at blends. Partly white blends. I actually ended up just outright covering up all the Vallejo paint on here (on the mane, tail, and legs) and just going to town instead with my usual GW paints, and then tried out my new Soulstone blue over all that. I was pleasantly surprised. I ended up putting in loads of shade on him which I then tried to drybrush back out, but didn't get the gradual change I wanted overall. He's very tabletop, but... To be honest, girly stuff isn't my thing, haha. I like monsters way more. Perhaps I'll buy another and then try and paint that one as the evil twin =P So yeah... Unicorn! My photos are grossly inconsistent atm :S Paints used... Citadel: -Whie Scar -Fenrisian Grey -Drakenhof Nightshade -Ulthuan Grey -Soulstone Blue -Gehenna's Gold -Auric Armor Gold -Abaddon Black -Pink Terror -Seraphim Sepia -Temple Guard Blue And some Vallejo Sky Blue. Urk.

Hi, I'm Laoke and you may remember me from such threads as Bones! Do They Sink or Drown? and Reaperbryan, Like Unto A Tiny God?. I haven't been painting much of late: been planning fiendish evil plans (mainly around swapping jobs, cities, and marrying the twisted evil artist of my dreams). But a colleague of mine started a D&D campaign and asked if she could have a figure to represent her axe-wielding Paladin o'Shield Bashing Doomâ„¢. And, like the fool I am, I said yes! I took in my stash of human female fighters with shields, and she chose 77094: Trista, the White Wolf - I figured I could do a weapon swap easily enough, and I absolutely adore the figure. My colleague is a russian living in New Zealand, so I went with a Red + Yellow motif for the figure. First of all I put down the base coats: my apologies for the quality of the photos - my normal camera is in the shop. Then I spent some time pretty much screwing the figure up and swapping the weapon out because I forgot to do it before I put down the base coat. This is the finished result: it's not what I'd consider my best work, but it was a lot of fun to get to this point : ) Also, I finished off a project I started last year: 77029: Silverhorn, Unicorn painted up from purple.

Ok, so let's not even talk about how long ago I started on this mini and just focus on the fact that I completed it, yes? Yes. Highlights are getting drowned out, especially on the body. I redid these pics 4 times for that fact. I would go outside and take some daylight pics, but it is currently storming. Regrets: The super obvious mold lines on the chest and not doing a better job of unbending the horn Overall though, I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out. C&C always very, very welcome! ETA some natural light pics by the back door - you can see the water glossiness much better in these.

Alrighty, so last night I was looking around to paint something appropriate for October, you know, something Halloweenish. I thought I might even start on painting something for The Ghoul, The Bad and The Ugly contest since I'm almost positive that I have the ghost king in my drawer. So what do I end up choosing? A unicorn. Possibly the least Halloweenish mini I could pick, especially since I have no intention of turning it into a Night Mare like I've seen others do. Oh well, the heart wants what the heart wants and my heart wanted to paint a unicorn. So I went to shave off some mold lines and suddenly found myself chopping off the broccoli base....seriously, half way through I was like "What am I doing? " So apparently not only did my heart want to paint a unicorn, it also wanted to be forced to make a base for that unicorn. I've not done any basing before, so I was obviously overtaken by madness. (I also blame ub3r...he knows why this is his fault ) So his two legs will not hold him up just in the usual poster tack that I usually attach minis to the candle fancy mini holding apparatus that I use, so I had to hot glue him down....I don't recall if I saw that suggestion somewhere here or in a video....so hopefully that's going to work out when it comes time to remove him. Without further adieu, I give you the beginnings of my unicorn, who, I would just like to point out, is not going to have rainbow hair, despite what his body colour is suggesting to you at the moment. I started out with slopping Brown Liner all over him, as you do with Bones. Any parts of hair then got a beginning basecoat (still needs a couple of coats) of Ritterlich Blue, which just looks black in the pic. I then put down a few thin layers (and then a thicker layer because I was getting terrible coverage) of Surf Aqua. It still needs a few layers because under my Ottlite in person you can see a lot of patchiness. I'm trying not to make the paint too thick though. Then, we have the beginnings of the base for him. Question: Do I need more primer? This is my first time even using actual primer, as I've only painted Bones. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so thin. It is the Reaper Brush On Primer. I live in the southern US with 10 billion percent humidity, so I have no intention of attempting spray primers. Would love to hear your thoughts, as always.

I packed up all my mini painting gear and took it with me to my sister's for the holidays. My Christmas gift to my niece and her three friends was for each of them to pick a mini out of my box of Bones and pick out something they'd like me to paint. Boy that sounds like something a BBEG would say, "Come here, children! Reach into my Box of Bones and draw forth a miniature monster!" They also picked the colors. So they decided they wanted a doggie, a unicorn, a wizard, and an Eye Beast. One of these things is not like the other. There's probably a future as an evil overlord for that particular child there. With the exception of the unicorn, all the minis were of the size to put on a base, and I managed to discover several things in the process. First, that the wooden disks I'd bought at the craft store when I grabbed my essential mini making kit last year with the intent of using them as bases don't work well with my super glue. The wood goes OH SO THIRSTY and slurps up the glue right into its innards. I put glue on the top, it came out the bottom. Fortunately said wood is so thirsty that it kept all the glue inside itself, rather than affixing a 1 inch round disk to my sister's kitchen table. I'd already gone through one of her walls, I didn't need to add yet more carnage and destruction to the bill. Slapped some Reaper primer on the top of the thing and on the bottom of my Sculpey adornments and that seemed to make the glue work. Tried out Scupley for bases for the first time, nothing complex. Mooshed it onto a wooden disk, texturized it with a bit of packing foam, cooked it in the oven, painted it Grass Green. So the doggie was done first, as there wasn't much of anything to do, with the color of grey being chosen by my niece. I think I used Honed Steel and attempted to drybrush on some lighter grey, but the black wash I used seems to have obscured that. So a simple, plain, common mutt type of doggie. The Unicorn was selected for the poor mite that unfortunately was at home sick. So as little girls are prone to chosing, the once proud beast was to be slathered in shades of purple and pink. Though my only purple is Sparkling Amethyst, which happens to be one of my favorite paint colors. I didn't want to futz with mixing, respecially since my only reds are on the darkish side. Something that will likely be remedied by the arrival of the HD paint sets from Bones II. Not much to see here, Amethyst on the body, the promotional cancer awareness pink for the mane, tail, and... floofy hoof things... I'm not sure if they're feathers or fetters. Used a lighter gray wash to bring out the detail to try and keep the pink from washing out. Did not work quite so well. Maybe a drop of pink in the wash next time might help. So Mr. Wizard here was to be painted blue with a black staff. I thought that looked a bit dull, so I painted the fringe on his robe in yellow. Originally he was Sparkling Blue, but that looked very dull visually, so I had to throw a few coats of HD Dragon Blue from my Bones Learn to Paint Kit over it to liven it up a bit, and used the HD Pale Saffron for the fringe. The staff is pure black, and the face and hands are Tanned Highlight. I didn't even try to paint the eyes, as I was running down to the wire finishing these things. There were bits where his dark blue wash wasn't quite dry when I put on the varnish, so it got a little bit smeared in places. So Mr. Eye Tyrant I think I did the best job on, though he was a pain in the butt. I painted him black first, then put on the Amethyst, and decided that looked too dark. So two coats of white, then the Amethyst again, which looked better. The future villainess decreed that the fearsome beastie was to have green eye stalks/tentacles, which was going well until I accidentally got a bit too much Pig Iron+Viper Green wash in my brush, and had significant spillage all the way down his backside, requiring yet another coat of Amethyst. Pure White toofs, Blood Red eye and tongue, some Pig Iron on his base, as it was rocky and not broccoli like the doggie. He wasn't varnished when pictures were taken, but I put a matte coat on him and then used gloss on his tongue to make it look all gross and drooly and such. And here's some group shots:

This is going to be a really quick WIP, mainly because I'm generally done. I've got another layer of color to put down on the base (the first is drying), and then a wash for the bases, assembly, then clear coat protection. So this entry will probably be wordy. Last Christmas I was visiting my brother, my two nieces and a nephew. One of things I like to do is go to his FLGS (although he doesn't know it), and it's a really really nice store. Anyway, the middle niece picked out a Bone's Fire Dragon. And my brother said NO! I could have killed him! So I decided then to buy one for her and paint it up. She's under 10, so I'm trying to encourage this sort of thing. Then I remembered that she's got a sister and a brother. Showing up with a gift for just one wouldn't be nice, so I've got to figure out two more. Thus, a unicorn for her and a spider centaur warrior for him. He's into Spider-Man, so I bought him a spider man. I'm so cute. However, I knew from the start that I wanted to use the airbrush on the dragon for sure. Probably the unicorn, too. So I might as well do all three, right? I've used my airbrush one time before, painting three model car bodies that the kids and I were doing. So my experience is practically nil. But I've owned a "how to use an airbrush" book for over a decade, so that's almost like staying in a Holiday Inn Express. So this'll be a piece of cake! So, pull the cars out of the garage, unbury the compressor, pull out the folding table to work from as the garage work bench is covered in other things, although I managed to clear it enough to do all my paint mixing here. That becomes important and fortuitous later. Let's start with the dragon. Ignore the white spot for now. That's comes later in the story. Using craft paints, did its underbelly and wing membranes in a light yellowish tan, then the body in red covering up most of the yellow in the process, and then black for the spines, covering up a lot of the red. As an aside, I had the compressor up too high in pressure. Figured that out near the end of this little adventure. All in all, at least a good start. Pretty simple to clean up the over-spray areas. On to the centaur. Black, how can one screw up black? *raises hand* Had the paint too thin to start with, so had to let it dry and what not. But that's no biggie as I've got the dragon spines to paint. I'm telling the individual figures here in a linear sense, but I did use whatever color I had in the brush on every mini that needed it. So I'm glad I found out the paint was too thin on the spider before I destroyed the unicorn or dragon. Solved the thin paint issue, and came back to give it a better coat. Was really having trouble with too much paint (that ol' over pressure issue). So the red spots became more of a red tint. But the spider-side body came out pretty well. Now, I've got the torso. And since I wanted to have Spider-Man's red and blue worked into him, gotta go with a Drow-ish torso. I contemplated trying to airbrush the hair black for about half a quantum of time. So he was just sprayed all in blue. The unicorn was much easier. By now, I've solved the pressure issue, and have had a bit more practice and managed to get the blue really well. Purple hoof area and black mane/tail and horn. I also managed to airbrush his little goatee, but then covered it up in blue. Writing this, it certainly seems like a Quentin Tarantino-esque like story. It's all out of order here. I'm very happy with the unicorn. One of the lovely things about airbrushes is the nice fades and transitions that are possible. For my minor skill, I was happy. Now here's Act Three. I'm cleaning the airbrush inside in the sink, and have it nice and clean. Back outside on the workbench, and I lay it on the side. (For those airbrush lovers, I'll have a little spoiler and tell you to fear not. It's fine.) Cleaning up the other things and I pick up the airbrush again. Inside the cup, the water has extracted more paint. This is frustrating because I've cleaned it several times already and this one color just seems to have found a place to hide. But that's not a big deal. I'll just take it apart and give it a really, really good cleaning. I've never taken it that far. I've taken the nozzle cap off, but never the nozzle much less the needle itself. But I get that off no problem. And then the trigger comes out. Uh oh. I've now got ever single piece of the airbrush separated save for the air hose fittings. But I needed to lubricate things anyway, so this is no big deal and an opportune time to do that. Everything goes well until I try putting the trigger back in. Hinged with a little stem plug that pushes on the air hose fitting valve. I struggle to get that done. I get it it, and reach for the other pieces. The trigger falls out and rolls under the workbench. Gigantic dust bunnies and sawdust cows (I dunno, what would you call them?) mingle with spider webs from creatures deceased for decades. I have to re-clean the trigger. This cycle repeats two more times, so my frustration level is pegging the meter right now. In the middle of this it starts to rain. Pretty hard. It's rather welcome, as things were quite toasty, and so I don't mind. My daughter comes out to relay a question from her mother. Are the windows of the car rolled up? Of course they are, I reply. How stupid do you think I am? This is in the middle of trigger-cleaning-cycle number three. Alone again with my thoughts, I start to have my doubts. Maybe her car windows are a little cracked? I get the airbrush put together, grab the keys and run out into the pouring rain to check. Yup. All up tight. Now I'm soaked, frustrated as I can be, and ready to clean better. But I want to put her car in the garage now. So I grab the corner of the folding table where all the figures have been drying and proceed to move it over to my car's side of the garage. The far leg collapses. I watch in horror as my entire afternoon's work slides down the table and onto the floor with the nice abrasive epoxy coating I myself put down. Sailors blushed. Luckily, the damage was not as much as it could have been. Another Bones benefit, I suppose. You can see the white spot on the dragon's back leg where it scraped off. There was also another point up on his head that doesn't even show in the picture. The wings showed a few dirty streaks where they played in the tire and brake dust. The spider body had zero damage, while the torso remarkable stayed in the clamp and surfed gracefully to a stop, never touching the floor. The unicorn was like-wise safe, other than a few dirty scuffs on the body which were easily covered with a thin layer of paint. All in all, a very adventurous day of painting. Got all the damage repaired and as I mentioned in the first of this entry, nearly done.

"En Loki hafði þá ferð haft til Svaðilfara, at nökkuru síðar bar hann fyl. Þat var grátt ok hafði átta fætr, ok er sá hestr beztr með goðum ok mönnum." "But Loki's relations with Svaðilfara [the horse of a giant] were such that a while later he gave birth to a colt. It was grey and had eight feet, and this is the best horse among gods and men." -Snorri Sturlason, Edda (written around 1220 CE, the latter line a translation by Jesse Byock) This is a conversion of two Unicorn figures into Sleipnir, the horse of the Chieftain of the Norse Gods, Odin. I used the extra legs from the second figure to give Sleipnir the eight legs as indicated by Snorri's Edda, one of our major sources for Norse Myth. I have the whole conversion and painting thread here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/53558-scandinavian-contest-entry-sleipnir-and-odin/ Since the gods and Jotun (Giants) conflict is often seen as Spring versus winter, I depicted Sleipnir as bringing the spring where he steps. The runestone on the base was made entirely by me. It uses runes from the Elder Futhark and reads the second sentence of the quotation above, save the words "ok monnum" (and men.) I didn't have quite enough room to fit it, and I felt it was expendable. Pity, though. Questions and comments welcome! Feel free to peruse the whole process....

"Hverir eru þeir tveir, er tíu hafa fætr, augu þrjú ok einn hala?" "Who are the two that on ten feet run Three eyes they have but only one tail." -Heithreksgatur ("The Riddling of Heithrek") Okay, if you haven't guessed by now I am a huge Old Norse geek. Point of fact, in the SCA (a medieval recreation group,) I have adapted a number of Norse poems and stories to fireside tales, and written my own things in Norse poetic styles. So when I saw there was a painting contest with a theme of Scandinavian, I really got to thinking. I don't really have any good Norse minis at the moment. I have "Fafnir of Kjord" from years ago - I'll get around to painting him eventually - but I don't have a burning desire to paint him right now and, honestly, he's more like "Fafhrd" from Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series" than a true Viking - I'm sure this was intentional, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. So I kind of conceived this idea to convert two horse minis to Odin's eight legged horse - Sleipnir. I will probably do Odin also - adapting a wizard miniature to become Odin is not terribly hard... Tolkein based Gandalf on Odin, but I'm concentrating on the horse right now. My idea was to buy two Bones horses, carve them up, and make an eight legged horse. So one trip to my FLGS later, I had two "Silverhorn the Unicorns" in Bones. It will need some customization, but this will be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper in Bones. Here's a picture: From the side, I think there's plenty of room for an extra set of forelegs. Rear legs, though, may be problematic. I think I'll have to extend the body: First thing I did was some clean up on the mold lines and removed the horn and beard, like so: Next I did some feet repositioning. If I just remove the legs and paste them on as is, Sleipnir will have two sets of legs that match exactly. Fortunately, this is Bones - I cut one of the rear legs free, then I immersed it in hot water, held the legs in position, then immersed it in cold water. This is what will be the main body: The rear leg is repositioned only slightly, then glued back down. Let's call this figure A for simplicity's sake. This will be my source of extra legs, I decided to have one of the rear legs going back, otherwise the other legs are the same as standard: So this is Figure B. My next step will be cutting the front legs off of Figure B - I'm going to go all the way up through the muscle and will probably glue them right behind the existing forelegs. For the rear legs I think I'm going to trim the tail and some of the rear off of Figure A, and have Figure B extend that portion of the body out. I should be able to use GS to smooth out any harsh transitions. Comments, questions, and advice all welcome. This is definitely the biggest conversion I've done yet. Wish me luck!

I couldn't think of a better start for adding my posts to these forums. As my 5 year old daughter has recently started showing an interest in my miniature painting, I decided to get a couple of unicorns to paint with and for her. This is the result of about 1 hours worth of painting, followed by 5 minutes of Quickshade on my effort, then a quick matte coat the next day to get rid of the gloss. I'm really proud of her effort. It was originally all pink, which in her words was "so we don't have to use all the paints", but when I got out the rest of the colors for my rainbow bits, she decided she wanted to do more, and did. The grass was added because "unicorns love grass". For my effort, I actually really like the patchy shading that resulted from the Quickshade, it makes it look more gritty. And she really likes both of them, so I couldn't ask for more.