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Okay, so now that multiple people are doing 7-day challenges, here's the present iteration of rules and guidelines. Please note that these challenges are fan-run and not officially endorsed by or affiliated with Reaper Miniatures. Reaper may, at their sole discretion, offer a prize when such challenges overlap with contests, but for the most part these are just for kicks and maybe some forum fame. The Basics: 1. You may use no brushes larger than Size 0. As Size 0 can vary by company and brand, the average bristle dimensions are 10mm long by 1mm wide. When selecting brushes, try to be as close to this guideline as possible. 2. You have 7 full days to complete from your posted start time (including a picture with a time stamp from a phone or computer screen is helpful to establish this) to complete the model. 3. All visible areas must be painted, and all paint must be applied with a regulation brush. 4. No drilling, filing, mold line removal or other prepwork is permitted before start time. The only preparation allowed is to dry fit your pieces to make sure the model is complete, and do any boiling and reshaping necessary to correct warpage and return the model to "factory spec". You may also clean the pieces with soap and water. 5. All pieces as included in the box set at retail must be painted. This includes, for example, the 5 adventurer figures included with Dragons Don't Share 2. (Note that this means you cannot remove any parts) 6. You must declare in your thread title that you are doing a 7-day challenge (ex: Kaladrax in 7 Days; Khanjira in 7 Days). This way your thread gets noticed as a challenge so I can watch the fun and make arrangements for the prize if you succeed. 7. Eligible models for the challenge are: Khanjira, Kaladrax Reborn, Dragons Don't Share 2, and (when available) Ma'aldrakkar. FAQ: What about inks and pigments? - Inks, washes, and pigments are treated as paint. So long as you apply them with a size 0, it's fine. Note that previously inks were not allowed, but it was easier to treat them all as paint than to codify a dozen special cases. What if I want to add custom terrain or other models as a diorama? - The challenge only covers the painting of the retail set model. In general, this is plenty of work as is. There is no prohibition against doing extra work during the 7 days, but if you can leave it until after you complete the challenge it would be best so as to ensure you finish in time. This is my strong recommendation, as any leftover time during painting can be used to help polish your paint job after completing the basic requirements. In a competition, when such is running, terrain and mods are neither penalized nor worth extra points, so serve as wasted time and are best left out until after. (Note: greenstuffing gaps counts as terrain for this purpose, you don't get any extra points for gap-filling. The challenge only covers the model as stock and the painting of it) Is it really that grueling? - Yes. The challenge is designed so that you will never have enough time to do all that you want to do and must make compromises. It is also unusually taxing physically and mentally. It is important to pace yourself and it is easy to set out too ambitiously. This is also why extraneous work is best left until afterward. It's a lot to do on a deadline and will almost certainly mess with your head a little. Do I get a prize for doing this crazy thing? - Yes. All who successfully complete the challenge will get a Not-Trophy from me. Not-Trophies may be subject to change based on availability but presently consist of a Certificate of Survival from the International Goblinhood of Painters, and a small faux-bronzed figure. There will also be a small digital title you may add to your signature to show off your feat to everyone (collect them all!) Do I have to use Reaper Liner Colours as a Basecoat? - No. Many people do in order to help mitigate wear and tear from handling because it works very well on Bones material. Unless you are sure of using a very robust paint, it's probably not a bad idea. But it is not required, only recommended. What if I find out I have missing or damaged pieces partway through? - Dry-fitting of parts is highly recommended before starting to check for errors or warping, but in the event you discover an issue while already underway you can contact Reaper for a replacement and then continue the challenge with all the bits you have. This will count as a completion. If you have duplicate parts, such as two front legs instead of a left and right, you must paint both duplicate parts (the duplicate thus standing in for the proper piece as a stunt double). This also applies to damaged parts. This prevents the need to stop the challenge to wait on a replacement. When said replacement arrives, you may complete and assemble the model for show-off purposes. This sort of scenario should be quite rare. Can I tape three 0 brushes together, or use one size 0 in each hand? - You may not modify your size 0 in any way unless said modification is subtractive. i.e. - you can cut the bristles and flatten the ferrule to make a more flat brush out of your regulation size 0. You cannot make any modification that is additive (taping multiple brushes together). You can, however, use one brush in each hand. This is not likely to work very well, however, and will probably waste time rather than save it. Can I use super glue accelerant if it is a spray? - Yes, but only if you do not otherwise use it to alter the paintable surfaces. You may only use it during assembly for its designed purpose. When assembling the model, the participant can use any sort of adhesive desired - or even none at all if it can hold together without it. This is to allow those who wish to do extra work to do so after entering their challenge, so that the model may be easily disassembled at that time. Can I modify the figures, remove parts, or give them new bases? - No, all parts included in the kit as stock must be painted. It's best to just paint it as is and do any modifications after the challenge. Done carefully, this should be achievable without major damage to painted pieces. I messed up on my paintjob and want to remove some paint. Can I? - Yes, but only if you intend to reapply paint over that area. You could not, for example, paint an area and then wipe it off with a cloth to remove paint and then use this as quick shading - the cloth would count as an outside and invalid tool used to alter the finish.

Hi, I'm WhiteWulfe, some say I'm an "insane" fox that can't pass the entrance exam, and others say I'm just nuts. Ever since finding out about the 7-Day challenges I've wanted to give them a whirl. Today, this happens. Originally I wanted to start last night, but my desk was a mess, paints were everywhere, and so I listened to rational..... goblins...? o_O who suggested that maybe I should tidy things up first, get some sleep, and THEN actually start. Good thing, because tiredness hit a lot earlier last night than I was expecting! First and foremost, for those not familiar with the rules for such challenges, the official post for them can be found over here, but it basically boils down to "paint absurdly large miniature (or set of minis), in full, in seven days.... WITH A SIZE ZERO BRUSH." Many thanks to @buglips*the*goblin for starting such delightful insanity, and several others for providing inspiration through their challenges, and awesome to follow threads. I hope mine is just as fun to read as it goes on.... ^_^;;;;;;;;;;;;; Oh, well, the terrain in Dragons Don't Share 2014 Edition (affectionately referred to as DDS2) doesn't look that big in the photos, riiiiight....? Yeaaaaah, guess again. it's a decent size. Okay, my camera isn't the biggest of them all since it is a Panasonic Lumix G85 (G80/G81 in some parts of the world) and that's "only" the Lumix 12-60mm kit lens, but still. It's BIGGER THAN THE CAMERA in pretty much all dimensions. 12 oz / 355 mL can of cola (Coca-Cola), 20 Oz mason jar, dropper bottle, and Citadel paint pot for size reference. Same thing with the Kcups - and now you know what a fox likes to drink for his coffee! Also, that's still a real 8.5" of height on the dragon's wing. Please note these photos were all dry fitting when I first got the mini, and I wanted to take a few silly pics of this and that, as well as some scale ones, since I hadn't really found any out there other than people saying it's a big mini. A quick FAQ for those who might be curious.... Are you nuts?!?!?! ...Uhm, quite possibly? Why the challenge? Because it seemed fun at the time, and hubby said it sounded like fun. Your spouse said yes?!?!?!!? Yup, he even encouraged it. Why this week in particular? Because I take Samhain / Hallowe'en off pretty much every year, and wanted something to do other than murder all the things in some random game. Why DDS2? Truth be told... At it's price point, it was the main one that appealed to me. Khanjira is tempting, sure, but it's more of a kaiju than a dragon, and dragons are awesome. Ma'al is, uhm, well.... If this goes well, and I get permission to do another, and then a third... Third ~MIGHT~ be Ma'al. We shall see. Kaladrax was an instant no due to not really being available at retail. Your spouse is seriously okay with this? See a few points back - it was partially his idea! Do you have an actual game plan? Uhm... Truthfully? Other than my theme of "LARPing Gone Wrong - Friday Night at New City"... NOPE. I do have basic colour schemes, and a plan of attack for day one though, if that counts for much. What's New City? New City Suburbs was an old hangout I used to frequent on a regular basis... When it was still downtown. Been to a few good shows there, had a lot of good times, and sadly, the old theater it was in was demolished and turned into some fancy store or restaurant or something. Suburbs became Armoury, and it died a terrible death, and sadly we no longer have a goth/punk/EpicAwesomeness bar in town. I can't say what Friday's event was actually called, so we'll call it "Triple B", and it was always full of awesomeness. Plus they had a JägerMeister tap machine, which meant I could actually get some of that delicious brown-grey gunk of amazingness. Why the playful jab at LARPing? ....In all honesty, because a co-worker has been trying for years to get me to come to various LARP events in the area (even as an NPC!), but mainly because of the simple fact that said coworker has been somewhat of a sounding board for various ideas. Oh, and of course it'll help sort of explain the whole goth raver thing going on. Do you think you'll succeed? I'm aiming for completion. Will it happen? Time shall tell if I succeed or fail, but I intend on having fun when going into this, and that's my main goal! What do you hope to learn by doing this? In all honesty? More speed painting techniques, more tabletop techniques, and arguably most importantly in my eyes the ability to go back to painting a mini and just being happy with it, instead of constantly fiddling with this and that, and taking downright forever to actually get one done. That and I want an epic dragon of doom to put on our shelves to display! ^How things looked Friday night, with the ominous wording of "SOONTM". For the record, that's an 18x12" cutting mat that the box is mostly covering... And that's just the INSERT box that you can see sticking out of the retail box... ...And so, now, that leaves us here, on Saturday morning... More or less having gotten enough sleep, or so I hope..... As a semi-old, not really all that old, but still saying would say... Pain begins... NOW. Or, in my case, let doomsday (aka the 7 day challenge) commence!

I say attempted because of two reasons... First is this is the show off thread, and secondly, no official confirmation yet on the dates since @buglips*the*goblin has been occupied with other things, although a part of me suspects that @OneBoot might vouch. At least on the times WIP Thread: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/83285-whitewulfe-attemps-the-seven-day-goblin-challenge-dragons-dont-share-2014-edition/ This post may or may not be wordy, I haven't decided yet. I'm tired, I'm sore, my eyes burn, but... It. Is. DONE! At least in my eyes. A lot of things aren't as well done as I'd like, but that's what happens when you lose the equivalent of almost two full days to surprise contractors. Thankfully I had terrain to work on while they took up most of that time! Rules thread: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69639-7-day-goblin-challenge-official-rules/ Just what is the 7-Day Goblin Challenge? Well, I summarize it as follows: Stupidly large mini, comically small brush. Right now, it's four different minis you can choose from, you can only use up to a size 0 brush, aaaaand you have all of seven days to finish it. That's it. No airbrushes, no fancy paper towel tricks, no smearing paint with your fingers (as that's a "brush" that's bigger than size 0!), no direct application of paint, no aerosol cans... You get the idea. ^_^;;; Start time: October 27th, at 09:05 MST/MDT (aka -07:00 GMT) End time: Nov 3rd, at 02:02 MST/MDT Getting all of this to fit in my mock lighting setup was an absolute pain, doubly so since I had to steal hubby's painting light to try and get even lighting across things. o_O ^Starting setup, with time displayed ^Ending setup, with time displayed. At this point, I technically had 7 hours and 3 minutes left in my seven days, and by the time I'm done writing this it'll probably be a full hour later (something about editing down over forty pictures, and that's AFTER I filtered redundant pics out of the equation o_O) In order to not make this an absolute pain to scroll through, I'll showcase key pictures, with additional detail pics being hidden behind spoiler tags. ^Obviously the main attraction is first. Additional dragon pictures: Terrain details: First hero is apparently the dwarf cleric... At least with the order I took pics! Additional pics: ^The sorceress~ Additional pics: ^The thief/rogue/sneaky one! Additional pics: The... Ranger/archer guy! Additional pics: ^And last, but not least... Sir Purple of Shiny, as more or less named by OneBoot... Well, inspired by due to purple and how shiny his armour was for quite some time... Additional pics! Now, comes the slightly... I dunno, philisophical part of it all. Would I do things differently next time? Most definitely. I'd prefer to give my heroes more time, and also make sure I have brushes that I trust well enough to do eyes. I had to pull out my 000 Reaper brush to try the eyes.... I also wouldn't wait until after 1am in the final hours of the challenge to do said eyes either. I'd also not recommend losing a good chunk of time to surprise contractors either, or at least keep painting as best one can - although that first day of surprise contractors, uhm.... Yeah, anything other than priming would have been impossible while they were doing work, the entire building was vibrating. Would I recommend this kind of thing to others? Sure, why not... If you're willing to do a reasonable amount of planning ahead of time. I'd also strongly recommend having time off while you do this, AND not being the person who cooks. Assigning cooking duties to someone else (or, y'know, having a freezer/fridge full of ready to make meals) would probably also be rather handy. If you're in a relationship, or living with others (be they roommates, or parents, or whatever), DEFINITELY make sure to talk it over with them. I'm lucky, I'm married to an enabler, and by that he's the main reason I was able to do the challenge. That and he was quite happy to work on relic quests in FF XIV:ARR while I painted Oh, and make sure you've actually GOT groceries to cook with if you are going to be the cook! Don't have to run out a few times during said challenge, DOUBLY SO if you happen to have to WALK everywhere when you do said errands. No, not even to go and get your package of big stompy robots, you silly fox! I went into this with a rather basic plan... Colours picked out for the heroes (but apparently only their capes/cloaks), and a basic colour pattern idea on the dragon. I'd recommend not winging it like I did, because it brings up some rather interesting (and annoying!) problems as you go, like how on earth you're going to make it work, and blend it all together. Will I give another one a shot? We shall see. Obviously there's recovering from this one, but most importantly is this - hubby would have to say yes again ...I'm going to go get sleep now!

So I'm looking at doing one of @buglips*the*goblin's seven day challenges (Dragons Don't Share - 2014 to be precise), and one of the main topics that keeps coming up is brushes, specifically ones I won't mind putting some wear and tear on, or even destroying. For those unfamiliar with such a challenge, here's some more info... Official 7-Day Goblin Challenge Rules Thread Awww, it doesn't automatically do the thing anymore, where it does the nice and neat and tidy box of doom. Anyways. The biggest thing I'm looking for is some brushes that will be legal (size 0 max, with a guideline of 1mm diameter, and no more than 10mm in length for the brush), since my main "scratch" and "priming" brushes are probably too big (Citadel starter brushes I happened to have lying around. One is clearly way too big, and the other is probably too shot to be reliable for a challenge).... And are hopefully relatively inexpensive as well as last a decent time through the rough behaviour that will more than likely be happening while I am painting such a large miniature, in such a short amount of time. Additionally, I do live in Canada, but have no problems purchasing internationally, it's just a case of us having a not as good Amazon (and the US Amazon doesn't always ship up to Canada). Thanks in advance for any suggestions or tips on durable, yet inexpensive brushes!

We all knew this day would come eventually. The day where OneBoot tosses the very few marbles she has left into the ocean and throws herself in after them. The blank 4th spot in my lovely Goblin Challenge signature badge has been glaring at me for several months now, and my personal circumstances have now aligned to allow me to attempt this, my final Challenge. For those of you unfamiliar with Goblin Painting Challenges, started by our very own @buglips*the*goblin, here is a link to his Kaladrax thread that started it all: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/51269-kaladrax-in-seven-days-buglips-is-crazy-wip/& The short version of the rules is that I will be painting up Dragons Don't Share - 2014 edition in 7 days, using no brushes larger than a size 0. Here's the long version of the rules: You are all invited to join me in my descent into further madness! But only if you bring chocolate and gummy worms. On a personal note, out of all 4 Goblin Challenges, this is actually the one I've been the most nervous about all along (yes, even more so than Ma'al Drakar). Those adventurers are likely to prove to be 5 lovely little time sinks for me, and I'll have to concentrate very hard not to get caught up in all those beautiful details on them! But who knows, maybe it'll end up being the terrain that eats all my time and sanity; we get to find out together! My general plan is as follows: The first couple of days will focus on brown linering and basecoating ALL THE THINGS, while also putting on faces and eyes while my hands are still fairly steady. I will work primarily on the adventurers the first few days, but will take 'breaks' to work on the terrain and the dragon in between to let my eyes and hands relax a bit from the tiny work. My aim is to finish the adventurers by the end of Day 4, or at least get them to "good enough" status; fun fiddly detail bits can be added after this point if I have time, but even without those the figures could be declared done. My final day will likely be focused on finishing up the terrain, and possibly the dragon's wings. Not sure about that yet, but that's what I anticipate. Started: April 3rd 2018, 4:00pm PDT Finished: April 10th 2018, 8:17am PDT Show-off thread: Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

In today's episode, we find Navatharr, the mighty Golden Dragon, beset by a host of unsavory sorts.. The antagonists! The Sorceress : I'm thinking that I need to paint the ball on the top of her staff - it looks a bit plain done in just gold. The Thief : She's the lightest looking of the bunch - but don't let that fool you.. behind that blonde hair and blue eyes lurks the soul of a murderess! I mean, just look at how callously she's standing on the bones of the other poor fellow! The Ranger : I thought that it'd be fun to do this guy up as a drow The fighter : the leader of this motley crue, he's a stone cold killer who's not afraid to face down Dragon fire in the pursuit of his evil ... uhh.. pursuits! I wanted a scorched look on his shield, and thanks to a few folks over in the Painting Tips & Advice section, think it came out pretty decently. The Cleric : As the ranger was going the drow route, this fellow was just screaming to be a duergar. He'll heal you, but only because doing so furthers his dark plans! I added tiny little magnets to the ruins where the adventurers were going to be placed, although you can't really see these two very well (they're the only ones that I didn't cover over) Also, I had a bit of a mishap with the 5yo attempting to add blood to things - while I applaud her bloodthirsty enthusiasm (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!), pools of blood aren't really my painting style :) So all of those areas were successfully painted over. Finally, she tried her hand at pink/purple/brown in the sealed doorway at the base of the temple. I first thought about covering it over, but with @Pochi's advice (and her own amazing DDS2 murals), I decided to try for a faded mural look. My oldest spawn and I were looking at it and thought that the 5yo's artwork already vaguely resembled a dragon with arched wings, so instead of doing my own freehand, I simply covered it with several washes to fade it out. Unfortunately, I think the shadow of the dragon got lost in the washes, and these pictures really don't do it any justice either.. Will good win the day, or will the powers of darkness dampen her golden light forever? Tune in next time for the thrilling finale! More of the ruins and dragon can be found in their respective show off threads..

So one of my November goals was to work on (or even finish) the DDS 2014 tower ruins .. If you look at the WIP thread, you'll see that it took me a LOOONG time to get this done finally.. I'm not completely satisfied with the way the treasure came out, and learned a lot from applying the sand without painting the base Bonesium first, but over all, I'm fairly happy with it...

I haven't been painting as much as I would like due to some health issues. I have painted a few things and will be posting them on show off as soon as I can get them based. Most stuff I have been painting has been for my campaign based in ancient Egypt. I was getting a little burnt out and have had DDS2 sitting for about a year so I decided I wanted to work on the ruins. I knew I wanted them to fit together but I also wanted to be able to use the individual pieces separately. I made a cork "puzzle" and glued the pieces down. My painting friend suggested making several layers so it wasn't just flat and that sounded like a good idea so I made 3 layers to the "puzzle". All of the pieces fit together as you can see in the photos. Now, I want to use something to make it look like a hill when it is all pushed together. I don't want plaster because it would make it very heavy and not sure how durable that would be. Green stuff is far too expensive to cover the whole thing in. I am thinking maybe FIMO. Not sure yet. Need to make a trip to the art store. I am going to use pieces of cork and try and find a few columns that I can partially bury in the hill. My plan is to paint them up like Roman ruins. Think Pompeii. In the little niches, I am going to paint little murals. I am considering to try a mosaic pattern on some of the floor. So anyway, these are just my puzzle pieces so far.

Finished this girl up today. My first stab at NMM using the NMM Gold triad - it didn't come out quite like I imagined, but then, it was a LOT of surface area to attempt it on .. Regardless, she was a lot of fun to paint up and even with the botched NMM, she's still a beauty. Also, the camera (the wife's Canon Powershot) made these pictures look sort of greenish - I don't know why.. I don't get this look with the phone camera.. /shrug :) Also, her claws are done in Antique Gold because I thought she should be a flashy lady. Because she's fighting for her life (or will be once I finish the evil adventuring party), I added fresh scorch marks for the holes in her wings. This was accomplished by blobbing on a bit of Pure Black and rubbing it around with my finger while it was still wet. Finger Painting a dragon.. who knew? I found what looks like a scar across her eye, but decided that since she's in the fight of her life right now, she might as well have a fresh wound. Coated the scar line with Gory Red. Then I dabbed a blob of Clotted Red at the bottom of the cut-line and blew it around to mimic the effects of moving her head while the fresh blood was flowing. (also thanks to @Pingo for the suggestion to use @Guindyloo's tutorial for eyes - I love how they came out ) Critique, comments and suggestions welcome as always.. WIP Here.

Now that I've finally finished up the ruins for DDS2, the next step is to tackle Her Majesty, Nathavarr. Glued and Green-stuffed all but the head and wings, then based in NMM Gold Base. For now, she looks like she fell in a vat of Golden's Mustard, but really, in our story, she's a poor, set-upon Gold Dragon defending her lair (and life) from evil adventurers (who have yet to be made properly Evil-looking).

Hi, here are thje photos of my "Dragons don't share", realized in december 2016. Hope you like it.

Colors are a little off from my lighting, he's more red than orange and not as shiny in person. My light box isn't quite big enough to fit him.

I started painting up DDS2 while I decide on what I want to do with Khanjira. I'm trying to decide which color I want to go with on the wings in the last picture, I like them both.

So, at ReaperCon '16 there were some individual pieces of DDS 2 terrain available for purchase. I didn't hear about it until toward the end of the con, so picking were slim. I picked up this piece of the tower. My plan was to paint it up as more terrain for Frostgrave and any other game I could shoehorn it into. I also used it to test out color schemes for my DDS 2 set as I haven't painted it yet; mostly because I've been too lazy to boil the pieces. I also decided to use this piece to practice airbrushing. I've owned a Badger Krome for a couple of years now, but never did much with it. So this entire piece is air brushed. I may go back in and give it a wash for some more depth, but the picture make it look flatter than it really is.

As those of you who read the acquisitions thread surely recall, I picked up some craft paints a short while back. Plaid has several product lines but I didn't bother with applebarrel. I've heard nothing good about it and it is their cheap paint. The next step up is folk art, which is available off the shelf locally, so I decided to experiment with them.. The idea was to try them out on terrain and see how well they performed. If they work well enough, it's a pretty substantial cost savings over hobby paint (8oz folk art = 0.5oz hobby in $$) . Now I don't actually have a lot of unpainted terrain just lying around, but I do have a boxed set still bare bones from the last KS. One look at the adventurers revealed they were everything I dislike about Bones so they stayed encased in plastic. The dragon did too, but he may at least get painted someday. That leaves us with this: Yup, a pile of terrain. I took the worst of the mold lines off and tried to flatten them, but a couple of them are going to need a second go in the hot water. I picked the smallest two and coated them with some gray liner. I've tried the gray liner on humanoid figures, but didn't like the way skin tones went over it. I think the brown liner looks better, but grey liner for grey stones should be fine. The first coat was slightly diluted (4:1) but didn't pass the fingernail test so it got a straight coat of liner for a second pass. That made it fairly dark but not black. I slightly diluted the "licorice" and gave it a once over. Next I gave it a pretty heavy drybrush of "medium gray." It was at this point I learned why the bottle says to allow for an hour drying time between coats. This stuff has a lot of retarder in it. Even with low humidity and a dry well pallet the large drop in the well just dried slightly around the edges during the whole time I was painting. For the way I'm doing this it wasn't much of an issue, but if you were only painting one small mini you'd have a decision to make. Wait, speed up the drying, or wet-blend. After this both pieces got a coat of "steel gray" over most of their area. I was thinking of it as something of a mid tone for the light areas and a highlight for the shadows. These paints are slightly translucent when thin so the areas in light were given a second pass of the steel gray to see if that would lighten them further. Now we run into the first hiccup of the experiment, "wicker white." While it obviously has some retarder in it, the paint was overall not very well behaved. With just a little bit on the brush it dried so quickly that it looked like a snowstorm, but any more and it started to smear. It took my awhile to figure out how best to handle it, but by then my steps were a little too white. You can see the difference beside the larger piece that has no white. I decided to knock it back down and tried to make a wash using licorice. In the end the wash was still a little too heavily pigmented and covered better than I wanted. You can see how the steps are all the way back to medium grey in darkness but with a slightly different hue. Next I reapplied some steel grey, though not quite enough I think, before reapplying the wicker white in a more controlled manner. I found mixing the white 1:1 with water thinned it to a consistency similar to hobby paint and I could apply it with a synthetic #1 brush. With less of the gray I think it will look darker than the other pieces but I won't know for sure until it's all side-by-side. Finally I've moved on to the larger piece and made it about halfway tonight. The half with the white highlights looks way lighter than the half without but in fact there's not a lot of white used. Something about white edging and spot highlighting really makes a difference. Details show up from 6ft away, which is good for terrain. And that concludes today's experiments with craft paint. Given that I will just be repeating what I've learned on the other pieces I don't believe there is a need for me to take quite so many pictures. Maybe I'll take some more when I get to painting the ground and such. The main takeaway here is that craft paints seem to work just fine for terrain and I can save a bit of money if I ever have a lot to paint.

Well, I not only finished my dragon, I got her entered into the ReaperCon painting contest, and earned a bronze. I then went and got her professionally photographed cause I knew I'd never be able to do her justice. She's currently displayed, along with the medal, in the place of honor on my mantle above the fireplace. "Good night, Nathavarr. Good work. I'll most likely dump you in simple green in the morning." I am thinking about repainting the treasure on her base in bronze...

So I recently completed 77381: Dragons Don't Share as a goblin challenge. You can see the process I went through over in my WIP thread (http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72361-dragons-dont-share-challenge/). You can see the results here. First up, the Dragon! It's hard to get good pictures of him; the paint I used for his scales is actually fairly high gloss. He isn't quite as monochrome as he looks here, but he is pretty monochrome. You can't see it well here, but he has a bit of a tendency to lean forward. I may need to come up with a more elaborate mounting method to prevent that. You can also see the hoard he's refusing to share under the scenery which makes his base. That makes a nice segue into scenery (which will be next post).

Sooooo.... I did this little thing last week... no big deal, just painted DDS2 in 7 days with nothing larger than a size 0 brush. WIP is here if you missed it: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72422-guindyloo-vs-dds2-in-7-days/ I pulled it out of the pantry to take a few extra pictures......so it's a lot of pictures. And because it's me, the pictures are terrible. I try, I really do, but I'm just extremely incompetent when it comes to taking pictures. First of all, group shots: Then here are some natural daylight shots that I took between my patio door and curtains. It's frustratingly hard to get true to colour pictures of any kind of green-ish blue and for some reason, I can only get the left side of the dragon's face to show properly in regular daylight. I don't know why I can't get the right side of the face to show properly. Treasure piles, which were one of the last things that I painted and shockingly, my hands stayed pretty steady for it. And finally some unfortunately terrible pictures of the adventurers: C&C always very, very welcome!

I assume you're all already familiar with the Goblin Challenges, especially since there are 2 other contenders taking on their own challenges right now! Time off from work for me always means it's paint slopping time... I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of challenges to do. In case you've forgotten the roolz: 1) Thou shalt not use any brush larger than a standard size 0. 0 shall be the number on the brush, and the number on the brush shall be 0. 1 shalt thou not use, neither use thou 2, excepting that thou ensures that it is actually 0/2 on the brush. 5 is right out. Once the size 0, being the correct number, be reached, then lobbest thy size 0 brush towards thy foe, who being made of Bones, shall be painted. 2) 7 full days (168 consecutive hours) from when the timer starts are all the time that is allowed in this challenge; whether that time is spent working, sleeping, painting or sobbing uncontrollably is up to the participant. 3) Boiling and scrubbing the model to remove casting residue are the only prep tasks allowed prior to the timer being started. Removing mold lines, greenstuffing or otherwise altering the original sculpt in any way beyond factory spec is prohibited. 4) The timer starts with the posting of a picture of DDS2 and my intended brush(es) to be used and a device bearing my local time. The challenge will therefore end at the same time 7 days (168 consecutive hours) later or whenever I complete the task prior to time running out. This is going to hurt a lot and I'm not absolutely certain that I'm going to be able to finish in time since I am not in any way, shape or form a speed painter, despite my past challenge victories. I've got the full 7 days at my disposal though and a giant case of energy drinks so I'm going to give it my best and try very hard not to get caught up in spending a billion hours on the adventurers like I would normally do. I'll be starting somewhere around 12-ish hours from now... so I should probably go and unbox DDS2 now.

...will be starting this weekend. But first, I had to do a little cleanup. Here's a before/after of mildly tidying up my workspace. I was tempted to post this in Show Off (cleaning is a project!), but that was just a little too cute. Either way, I'll be diving into an ill-advised project soon enough. Probably starting Friday evening. Edit: This challenge was done under Goblin Challenge Roolz, described here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69639-7-day-goblin-challenge-official-rules/?p=1396173 Final result is up at http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72501-77381-dragons-dont-share/

Here it is, done for ReaperCon! I'm calling it "A Mother's Wrath" "Sir Aberforth the Argumentive thought this would be easy. He had heard of the terrible dragon that lived in the jungle near the natives' village, and he felt he could rid them of the threat. Imagine his laughter when he found but a baby dragon, and cornered the thing, aiming to slay it. He'll drag its corpse back to the village and show the silly natives, who obviously had never seen a adult dragon, the silliness of their fear. As he lined up for the final blow, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye as a patch of seeming jungle suddenly rose..." WIP: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/59897-77381-dragons-dont-share-2/

This is continued from my summer thread here. These are my old threads if you want them. there are a few tutorials linked on the last one. Jan-April 2013-14 So, I'm bound and determined to finish this cursedly large dragon! Right, working on the sides from a few different angle: The goal here is to make sure I get enough contrast and also have a gradient from light to dark. The leg: Still in progress... every time I get a few layers down there are a thousand more waiting! The tail: ...and here is the in progress: Still have lots to do but making progress! I did get the torch glued in and I'll up the highlights on it a bit to make it brighter. More soon! Thanks everyone!!

I owe an extra-special thanks to all the Reaper Forumites who helped win this beastie and allowed me to paint her! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I loved this project. I wanted to paint this resin master sculpt all in blue with an ice and snow theme. Also, I wanted to create what seems like the perfect camouflage for an icy dragon hunting after dark. So the dragon from below is blue-black like the night sky, invisible when she soars overhead, while she is icy and pale on her back to hide in the snow by day. But I couldn't resist carrying the aurora pattern on to the back of the wings. I tried to match it up as carefully as I could to seem like a translucent wing. I have a fairly (hah!) extensive WIP encompassing several different threads: May-Aug '15 Sept-Dec '15 most recent She took...sigh... FOREVER. But she's worth it. She's also kind of hard to photo. I had to use the icky white background, but it at least worked. C&C always welcome! Let me know if I can fix anything in terms of the snow. I'm still exploring the whole icy creating aspect of mini painting...

So, I need to finish the dragon and get it off my desk and onto a shelf somewhere where it will not taunt me. A bit of history- I decided to do a super in-depth WIP since so many nice forumites at Reapercon helped me win it two years ago in the auction. With this post I have officially surpassed 100 in-progress photos!! Yay!!! Here are the old threads if anyone wants them where I did the early step-by-step. May-Aug Sept-Dec This weekend I tackled the last aurora effect on the underside of the wing. No pics, sorry, but it looks just like the other one. I still need to do some blending to make the color transition more seamless. I'll do that with about a thousand (kidding, but it feels like it) glaze layers until I 1) get tired of it or 2) it looks the way I want. usually the former! I also worked on attaching my more finished wing to the body. I did this because it will push me to finish the dragon even though all the blending isn't where I want it yet. if I don't push, it will continue to stare at me from the desk. There is a larger gap on the top here than the underside. I’m a bit of a weirdo and I like to do most of my painting before assembling the major parts of the mini. It’s easier for me to reach some areas that way. And in the case of this mini- I wanted to treat the wings almost like a flat canvas. It just means I have to be careful handling the mini and in how much glue I use. But, if I have an accident I can always touch up (after the glue is dry!!! Save the brushes!) I use superglue. In the case of this resin mini the wings come with a double tab joint so I opted not to pin. The joint extends all the way through the body, so it seems very stable. Materials: I use the metal tools to place and mold the greenstuff and the clay shapers to smooth it out afterwards. It doesn’t have to be perfect! As long as the transition between the two limbs looks neater, that’s what I aim for. I use the Vaseline to keep the tools from sticking. Just a bit, don’t goop it on or it will be harder to clean it up afterwards. I keep a bit on the back of my off- hand (learned that from the pro sculptors- it’s an awesome trick) to keep it handy. Use just enough to coat the tool in a thin layer and not more. First I place some greenstuff- err on the side of a lesser amount. It’s always easy to add more, harder to take it away when the surface is painted. Then I sculpt a few scales. Just a rough pattern that I can touch up. The clay shapers are great for smoothing the area between the new scale and the body. If it isn't perfectly smooth I can always take some sealer and smooth it out after it's dry. Add more greenstuff. I roll out little coils with my fingers and then squash it where I need it. More scales and in the area where the wing membrane abuts the body, I just smooth it in and will paint it like more membrane. It will eventually blend in nicely and no one will notice! I do the same on the underside. This mini had a cracked scale near the body up at the top of the pic, so I just sculpted overtop of it. Sometimes I cover a whole scale, sometimes just blend into it, sometimes create a new one. It depends on what looks right or at least blended. remember, these just have to look like they fit. they don't have to be perfect and you can fix lines in the sculpting with sealer or sometimes even paint. The reason to make them smooth and nice to begin with is that it is easier to continue with the rest of the process and not work harder to fix them later. But don't sweat the details. It'll work out! After letting the scales dry, I’ll base coat them. This is usually where I find out the areas I need to work of smoothing out the color transitions. It’s hard to judge them when the parts are separate so that's one reason to pre-assemble. As you can see, the wing and the body colors don’t match up perfectly. Easy to fix, though, so no worries! Now, all I have to do is finish painting them and making it look smooth. I'm torn- Julie was nice enough to sign the bottom of it so I don't want to cover that with a base... but I want to base it. I may end up cutting into a wooden base to leave the signature visible versus just asking Julie to sign it again. more soonish...

I recently picked up the Dragons Don't Share boxed set, and was really taken with the terrain pieces. So I decided to undertake a hefty terrain project. The Bones pieces and slate were glued to a cork sheet, which was then glued to the back of a metal pizza pie plate. The ground was covered with small tallus pebbled, and then with a sand mix. Many different grades of static grass, flock, tufts, wildflowers, climbing ivy and moss covering were used to finish off the base and rubble. Hope you like it. Kevin in Edmonton http://www.mageknightkevin.blogspot.ca