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Finished my first mini this year, and oddly enough it was a speedpaint, taking just over an hour... On the flipside, some of those colours work together really, REALLY well, like Sunrise Orange and Heart Throb Paint.

I painted this one as part of a duo with @Maledrakh for this month's RCL. Not my finest work, lot of frustration with it; most of the shading you see is being done by my lighting setup, which really needs refined. And the highlights look in the wrong spot in places. Eh, I myself am a constant work in progress. Still, it's one more mini done for this year, which puts me way ahead of what I finished last year. And the color scheme resemblance to Goku from DBZ is purely coincidental. Thanks for looking.

Finished but not 100% satisfied maybe about 90%. The sculpt's look is fine but following the instructions the shadows came out too dark and the highlights barely noticeable the actual light over my table is doing more to highlight. Don't think this guy is the best to learn on due to the staff really blocking areas and making them hard to paint. If the staff was sculpted separate and you then glued it on I think it would be better. However for table top quality I this is fine and as always i learned some stuff. I have another Anirion that I'll try again on at a later date.

Painted (mostly) by-the-numbers, Anirion: This was a departure from my normal style of painting, and I made a number of mistakes, but wanted to stick to the instructions and see how it all turned out. All things considered, I think it looks decent. I didn’t worry about trying to correct the bend in the staff or any mold lines. And I added a third highlight layer (more yellow) to the robes, to make them pop just a bit more. The camera washed these out, it seems. The little details probably deserved more attention, but the focus here was clearly on the robes. I think I did learn a few new things, hopefully for the better. More practice will help. Comments and critiques welcome.

This was my favorite project of 2017 due to how much I pushed my abilities in creating it. It was my first major conversion of this sort, first time doing texture, first major use of OSL, and first Sci Fi base built fully from scratch. So lots of firsts with this one. Those of you who followed my WIP thread know what I went through with this one; the OSL dilemma, redoing the base, and sculpting new hands at the last minute. In all I am proud that I stepped out of my comfort zone and I cannot give enough thanks to those who posted in the WIP thread, your encouragement gave me the push that I needed. So this conversion is the result of critique I received at ReaperCon 2016 regarding my Open entry, it was to up the difficulty of my conversions. When I got home I went through the Reaper web store and found minis that I call "blank slates", ones that I felt would be a good base for multiple conversions. I found a few that sparked an idea but the one that I got stuck on was Anirion and how he would make the perfect Jedi. So he was the project I choose for my ReaperCon 2017 Open entry but I made myself focus on having fun with it and not worrying about it being perfect. When I was finished, I was extremely happy with the results but I knew that there were somethings that could be better. Knowing that, I was extremely surprised to find that I got a gold medal in Open and blown away when it was announced that I got the Open Silver Sophie. So again thank you to everyone who gave me feedback in the WIP thread. WIP thread: Wizard of a Different Sort: Anirion Conversion Conversion breakdown: -Reshaped hood and sleeves -Smoothed out cloak to remove border -Removed staff and bag? -Repositioned arms -Added light saber out of styrene and metal piece -Added some strands of hair -Resculpted hands

Been working steadily on Anirion from the Layer up! LTPK over the past few days, and I can say with certainty I like how the two learn to paint kits approach things very differently. I'm also rather liking how things come out with layering techniques... Can't think of much else to add here for text other than I really REALLY need to get a proper lighting setup going to take pictures with >.>;;;;;;

Painted yesterday with LTPK: Layer Up bought with Xmas monies. Followed directions from booklet with the exception of the shirt sleeves. The guide has red sleeves. I went with Heather Blue, and shaded with a wash of 1p Dark Highlights/1p Ebony Flesh/5p water. Layering is a tough skill for me. Several adjustments of shade and base back and forth. I skipped the lining; too cartoony for me. Highlights came easier. (Also bought MSP Starter Set) Tried to shadow Anirion's face on the left more as it is deeper in his cowl. Not the effect I was looking for, but it's time to move on to another mini. Primer: None Paints: Reaper LTPK paints Finish: Testor's Dullcoat As per Reaper's suggestion: I did not primer the mini, but I will in the future. I did wash it thoroughly with a toothbrush in hot soapy water. If you look at the right bottom hem of the cloak on the pic of the back you can see a chip out of the paint. That was the fourth such chip I had to retouch. Mini was never dropped or scraped. The paints simple didn't bond well. (All Reaper paints)

Alright, ReaperCon is just around the corner and I really need to get cracking on my entires. I already have a thread up for my planned Painter's entries and I will be doing separate ones for my Open and Diorama entries. So first off here is my Open entry, the Bones version of Anirion: Oh, wait that's not right ... Much better This conversion came to be due to one of the critiques I received last year and that was to up the difficulty of my conversions. So first thing I did was scan Reaper's site and pick out minis that would be a good base for conversions. I got a pretty good list but I really got stuck on Anirion and turning him into a Jedi. This is the result. Here is the conversion break down: -Reshaped hood and sleeves -Smoothed out cloak to remove border -Removed staff and bag? -Repositioned arms -Added light saber out of styrene and metal piece Now on to paint and basing. Here are some side by side comparisons.

My Reaper Learn to Paint kit just finally arrived after one set getting lost in the mail and the other taking its time. Last night I decided to end a stressful day by painting. Very pleased with how Anirion came out, would still like to refine my photo taking. The light tent I threw together is helping, but the natural highlights and shadows are still obscuring some detail. I think part of my problem is that I need to reconfigure the backdrop so that I can place the mini deeper into the tent.

I bought the Learn to Paint Kit 2 some months back and I finally got to paint the 3 minis. I learned a lot from the techniques in the kit and overall I am happy with the results. Group Shot Anirion Ingrid Hajad C&C welcome!

Hello there all, New member first post.....thought I would share some cultists I recently completed.

I don't have a whole lot of pictures of the WiP for this guy, as I was working on him to the side while working on Ingrid and Hajad. Finishing him up at not my normal workstation. This is my current setup. And the "elf" himself, looking remarkably like a certain red wizard of Krynn... I went darker than the LTPK's instructions, and nowhere near as smooth... And this is also a terrible picture. I really need to invest in a better photo setup.

After a recent attempt at a one-shot with premade characters, I realized I didn't have any painted Elf Wizards. Such an iconic combo to not have! So I fixed that:

This is the Anirion that I painted up as a quick (for me) tabletop mini for my husband's character for tomorrow's game. He has been using a stand in character while I got my rear in gear and was finally motivated to paint out the mini he chose. His character is for Earthdawn and is a Nethermancer who also has the mundane every day job as a private detective. So he doesn't want to be too flashy! I had considered making the top part of cloak and hood with the herringbone pattern like Sherlock Holmes but decided against it as I liked it and didn't want to ruin it with inadequate freehand attempt! This is Torothel the Nethermancer detective!

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.

While playing C&C last night I started working on Anirion. Originally I was thinking of painting him up like a Rastlin clone, but I'm tired of painting reds... So I decided to harken back to my default Halloween colors, this time going for a green robe, trimmed in purple, and probably an orange gem on the staff. Getting started with a bit of cider. Peacock Green as the base coat, just slapping it on. Switching to an amber lager. And now with some brown and purple. Still very sloppy, but since it's only base colors, there's a lot of time to clean him up. Trying to decide how elaborate I want to go with the trim. Thoughts?

When the King's Inquisitors arrive shutters are latched, children kept indoors, and marketplace chatter silenced. Answering to no one but the King himself they wear the royal color, purple, as a symbol of their authority. Their robes are white, signifying Truth, and grey, sybolizing impartiality. Hoods cover their faces so that they may hear, but not be lead astray by appearances. The leader of this band carries the Book of Law and the Hammer of Justice. He will use either as needed. These are based for tabletop play. Not that they'll ever see it.

Here is my mort recent completed Bones model 77068 Anirion Wood Elf Wizard. I kept the paint scheme nice and simple. As always comments welcome.

To break up painting just CAV models I have decided to do a few of my original Bones 1 models. First up is Anirion Wood Elf Wizard. I have just given him a first coat of light blue and painted a base coat on his skin. I need to remove the excess sand from the bottom of his gown. I have yet to decide what colour to paint the edging of his clothing. I am opting for a wiser old elf with grey to white hair. As always comments welcome.

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:

So here are four Bones minis my D&D group picked out for PCs. I have to say I agree that the soft details make Bones less than ideal for PCs and important NPCs. Good for mooks and big monsters, though. Anyways, here they are. I need to get some Testors Dullcoat; my current matte spray is too shiney on Bones. Too bad this figure was discontinued; maybe we'll see it in metal. The details were quite soft on this figure, but it came out OK. I started out painting the cloth on this dwarf in blue, but then saw that was what every version in the gallery had. So purple. This one looks more indigo in person. I think my camera must have some setting to shift away from violet. Need to fix the staff, too.