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I've been working on him off and on for a few months now. My goal was to get him as close as possible to the promotional art of him, (which Chrome is fighting me on posting, as my ref pics aren't on google drive...) which was an intimitating mix of red, brown and grey that reads as black. The browns are Ebony Skin mixed with Stormy Gray in varying amounts, the lighter spots are a light drybrush of Buckskin Pale to represent dust.

Once upon a time there was the first Bones Kickstarter, and one of the figures, Ellen Stone, came out of the mold somewhat lacking in the nose department, and people said, "What can you do with a noseless cowgirl?" and someone (It may even have been me) said, "Paint her up as an alien." Somewhat later I was musing over the Githyanki (who seem to keep cropping up in games I'm involved in) while sorting through my Bones minis looking for inspiration (as you do). In my bag of cowboys (Yes, I sort my Bones minis by theme), I ran across the old Ellen Stone figure, as well as a man's figure which, I realized upon close inspection, seemed to have a skull-like face, almost zombie-like, certainly lacking a nose. And something clicked and I thought "Oooh, yuss." Now, I don't absolutely know for certain that I ever will have a use for a couple of Githyanki desperadoes, and yet, here they are. First is the Bones Ellen Stone, SKU 80003. WIP thread here.

So, I started these a while ago as a kind of a giggle. This is kind of a catch-up thread, as I am pretty far along with them. I had been feeling the need for more Githyanki / Githzerai figures. Anyhow, I had the abortive Ellen Stone, Cowgirl figure (link is to the metal version) from the first Bones Kickstarter, the one that never made it to retail because she hasn't got a nose. Someone (it may have been me, if anyone feels like digging through the old posts) suggested painting the bodged Bones version up as an alien. Then I noticed this guy from, I think, Bones II, 91001: Stone from the "Savage Worlds" line, who looks like a sort of zombie-ish revenant cowboy with a gaunt build and a skull-like, noseless face. And it all clicked together. My normal prep for Bones figures these days is mild flash removal and a wash of dilute Reaper Brown Liner. I don't have any pix of the figures at that early stage, but here they are with a thin layer of pale banana yellow on their skin (the male figure appears to have gloves, but I'm going with bare hands anyway to emphasize his alienness). I mixed it from my favorite Golden matte fluid acrylics in Yellow Oxide and Titanium White. The point of this pale layer is to give an undertone to the skin so that one is not dealing with a single flat color. After the initial layer I rinsed over the skin with a very fine wash of a more orange tone mixed from Hansa Yellow Opaque (a very bright lemon yellow) and Golden heavy body Pyrrole Orange. Then I started building up the shapes and contours of the skin with various subtle golden browns, mostly mixed from Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Oxide, and Titanium White, and add more bright yellows based on Hansa Yellow Opaque. This is where you can start to see the shapes of their faces and they start looking a little less awful.

While my house was empty of family I actually finished two minis in a week, which for me is a record breaking effort because I'm REALLY slow. Neither of this is really quite this shiny in person, I have poor photography skills and my cell phone is the "best" camera in the house. Stone - 91001 was painted for a teenage boy who at first wanted every piece of clothing, including the hat and boots, done in black. I convinced him to let me use some browns so it wouldn't look like a blob, and a tiny bit of red. I'm fairly happy with it, given in my opinion brown/black/brown/black is a challenge. Male Thunderknight - 77304 was painted with a very specifically requested color scheme from my 6 year old Godson. I could have gotten more contrast in the red, and the eyes are so-so, but again, I'm fairly pleased with my progress.