Search the Community

A combination of vacation, busy, and depressed has kept me quiet for a while, but I'm back! These were actually painted up during the winter, but after I took pictures I realized they had no haloes and that WOULDN'T do. Pro-tip: gold-colored jump rings are great. And then I got a nice piece of paper for a background and took new photos last week. Had a lot of fun with the wings on these, and the Enochian glyphs on the robes. Here are some Nolzur's Aasimar magic-users: and an Aasimar Paladin and 77364, the Angel of Shadows. Click for more: And here's 77363, the Deva. What a magnificent wingspan. And the Solar, 77594. The leonine features of this one make it look like one of the angels of eschatological vision, with beast features and skin of glowing bronze (I love using metallic complexions for Celestial beings). More of these greater beings: These, like the Genies, are powerfully weird to be around, an intrusion of a higher and more solid reality. Machen's "The Great Return" weird at the very least. From more prolonged exposure, expect stigmata, bleeding myrrh or rosewater, spontaneous lily growth, Saves vs. Enlightenment (as Stun, but you gain a piece of cosmic truth), "merciful" weapons that do damage with no pain, and of course the loose teeth, hair-shedding, and skin problems that come from excessive radiation dosage (for what else is radiant damage)? If you get Holy Cancer from the ultra-high-frequency GLORY, in three to five months the tumor detaches and flies off as a newborn putto. (I'd say cherub, but the cherubim look more like shoggoth orreries than fat winged babies. These Beings shown here are at the very normal end of the spectrum of Angel Weirdness. The farther end requires higher-dimensional topology to portray.)

I like to speed-paint. This past year, I spent a lot more time on other projects and didn't do much painting, but I got in a few rounds of speed-painting at KublaCon (in May) and at Origins (in June). I don't know why I didn't post these photos months ago, but here they are now. At KublaCon, the speed-painters get to use sets of about 30 little plastic pots of craft paint, like you might find in a paint-by numbers kit -- joined in rows of sprue with flip-off lids, and all set into a routed piece of plywood. I don't know who makes the paints. The range of colors is pretty good, but some colors just don't cover well. KublaCon first qualifying round: big medieval zombie. 45 minutes. Man, was I rusty. I didn't have a strong idea about the colors, other than green skin, for whatever reason. David Diamondstone was in this heat with me, and he won. He pointed out that my paint-job was too clean for a zombie, and he was right. His version had more dirt and blood. I stole that for my next figure. (David has won the KublaCon painting contest, and gold medals and Sophie Trophies at ReaperCon. Check out his work in the ReaperCon galleries if you haven't already.) I painted a second coat of black around the edge of the base. KublaCon second qualifying round: modern zombie. 45 minutes. Win! It had less surface area than the first zombie, which meant more time per square millimeter and a more deliberate paint job. I had a better plan for the skin -- deep purple shadows, then green-and-pale highlights, plus zombie-riffic blood and bone -- then thought about the rest of the colors while my hand was putting on that paint. I also painted a second coat of black around the edge of the base. I couldn't attend the final round of speed-painting because I was running a game at that time. Three weeks later, at Origins, Reaper's own LadyStorm was running the speed-painting tournament. The paints were a 12 Reaper paints (black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, Tanned Skin, silver, gold, and ... I don't remember the 12th color). Origins qualifying round: a Bones sci-fi trooper. Small and simple. 45 minutes. Win! Three lines of freehand on the chest make for a basic rank insignia. I haven't done any more painting on him beyond those 45 minutes. Origins semi-final round: Bones deva (#77363). 45 minutes, maybe 50. We all thought it was a cruel joke to give us such a big figure. Cruel yes, but no joke. Still... win! I got at least one coat of paint on almost every surface. (Those few feathers behind the shield eluded me. Because this was the flexible Bones plastic, I could pull the wings back to paint their inner surfaces.) I started with the wings: brown at the base and wet-blended to Tanned Skin. If you squint hard enough, they actually look OK. I chose the aqua-green skin and yellow-gold sword to fit the image of a planetar angel from D&D. I haven't done any extra painting on this one, either, but I'm wondering how much better it would look after another 45 minutes! Final Round: we had our choice of 2 figures -- a bigger hippo-man or a smaller rhino-man. Both will be part of the Bones 3 release. 60 minutes. I chose the hippo because I had a vision of the gray and brown-pink skin gradations, but I couldn't do them as smoothly as I imagined. Not a win, but still fun. I think his big mouth and teeth turned out well, and his bright tropical fruits look yummy. No further painting on him. Thanks for looking. Derek

So for the get to know you thread I said I was going to try painting the deva with interference paint. I started with adamantium black as a base coat. Then I used red interference over the top for the skirt. Blue for the armor and wing tips And purple on the wings. When it dried I washed adamantium over the top because the interference likes to settle too thickly in the crevasses even why dry brushed on. I also played with using a little silver to highlight the skin, and to make stars. I still am trying to figure out how I can edge highlight brighter with the interference.

For the January/February RPChallenge, one of the bonus challenges was: I immediately knew what figure I was going to use but unfortunately she caused me quite a lot of trouble, especially her wings. Fortunately, Jessica Rich very kindly helped me out with some great advice and thus released me from my downward spiral. The base is by Scibor miniatures and was a lot of fun to paint. I've been very pleased with every resin piece I've ever gotten from Scibor and this was no exception. There weren't even any mold lines to clean up. Anyway, I hope y'all like her! (Pics are a little washed out...I probably should've used a darker background. Oh well. .....and I just realized that the jar she's sitting on looks like it's part of the base....it's not, I just should've put the jar under the background fabric. I just paint things, man, I'm not a professional photographer. )

I painted up some angels, this is the first time I've painted feathers that I can recall. This is also my first attempt at painting marble. My eyes are slowly getting better. Edit: There are some better pics of the second and third angels a few posts down. Deva: Angel of Shadow: Angel of Protection:

So I'm painting this lady up for the January/February Resolutionary Painting Challenge - bonus challenge #1 which says to paint up a figure as a classic horror creature. I've been working on her off and on for the past couple of weeks so I'll spare you every single picture I've taken during the process, but basically she started out here: Then I painted in her eyes and started working on her skin. So fast forward to last night where I decided to start working on highlighting the red and.... well I knew at the time that I'd gone way orange, I just hadn't realized that I'd gone THIS orange. So tonight I worked on glazing everything back to red. I'm happier with the wings, but I really regret how much I obliterated the highlighting on the skirt. But, this is how it goes sometimes, right? Push and pull, make mistakes and work on fixing them. Here's where she's at now:

I present my attempt at the Bones Avatar of Thoth - 77339 mounted on a base from the bones 77363: Deva (Identified by Xhermans1964) with a fallen marble column. Please feel free to respond with likes/critiques or generally any comment you feel like making.

77030: Danar, Male Assassin 77134: Hajad, Pirate 77132: Barnabus Frost Pirate Captain 77363: Deva 77056: Orc Sniper 77133: Gruff Grimecleaver, Dwarf Pirate