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So. I decided to try and make some ponds... Maybe with other water features. I have 2 silicone mats and several hot glue guns. I used both and used a fondant roller to flatten things out. I'm going to try a few things. This is about 1-1.5in x 2+in

The problem at hand lay in a wealth of excess: too many dragons and too much paint. I have no idea where the extra Bones fire dragon came from; I'm assuming a Kickstarter, since I don't remember buying an extra. And every time I order something from the factory, one of the lovely people in Shipping throws in a bottle of pink paint. It's not always the SAME pink... but I now have several bottles each of bubblegum pink, Breast Cancer Awareness Pink... this is not normally a bad thing, but I don't USE a lot of pink except in flowers, mouseling tails and ears, and occasionally clothing. Admittedly, I do a lot of mouselings, but still... And then Berni hit it yesterday: "Why not do a Bubblegum Dragon?" ...and so the experiment began. This dragon sits now on my workbench, scrubbed clean and wearing a fine coat of brown liner. I didn't bother posting a picture of the dragon in question, because he's boring, and still not dry. But I will keep you informed. After I work the cricks out of my neck, that is...

This is Reaper's 60138: Sheila Heidmarch, Venture Captain, sculpted by Patrick Keith. It's a magnificent sculpt. My GM needed vampires for a game, and as I said in my WIP thread, "not all female vampires hang around graveyards in unlikely and suspicious states of undress." So Sheila Heidmarch has been adapted. Jokes about Ventrue Captains may have been made. I got an idea for how to paint velvet as well, so she is something of an experiment in that line. WIP thread here.

My birthday is imminent (precioussss), and my husband gave me this resin ship model from German manufacturer Gelaendestuecke. I've never done anything like this before: Never worked with resin, never made a ship model, never tried to figure out rigging and sails (they aren't included in the model and even the masts are just dowels at the moment). So ... Woohoo, I have no idea what I'm doing. But I figure it'll be fun figuring it out. Here's the box And the instructions in their entirety The hull and the deck The wooden bits, the mast, bowsprit, and railings The cabin has a few issues. Note the little spot the arrow points to. That becomes relevant later. It also has a big missing spot from a bubble in the back And a crack and missing piece on one side Okay, so here's how I've begun it. First I scrubbed the resin pieces with a toothbrush in very hot water and dish liquid. There was a nasty waxy substance under the hull which I assume is mold release. Once cleaned, the bottoms of the pieces were really shiny, which seemed like it would cause a problem with the epoxy adhering. But sanding resin is problematic. Its dust is very fine and lightweight and highly toxic. Bad stuff to breathe. So I sanded them underwater, with a few drops of dish liquid add to break the surface tension so the dust wouldn't float on the water. Resin really wants to float. Sanding on the cabin exposed a greasy, waxy white substance where that little splodge was, something like a white oil pastel, and kind of gross. Scraping it out exposed more of it within the resin and lost a few flakes of the surface. It can be seen, rather big in this picture of the ship as it is at present. And here's a side view.

It's me again! After my semi-successful bout with the DDM Baaz Draconian, I decided to pick out another victim subject to experiment some more techniques and paints on. Aaaand let's see what's behind Door Number Two!: What we have here are two DDM Harbinger set Skeletons. The one on the left is for reference, while the one on the right has already been primed. Not a bad lot for what it was used for, but they completely missed the paint on the face of the latter one. Though they're interesting figures, for skeletons they look a bit too.......shiny. Sure, they could be newly stripped corpses, but what's the likelihood of that? And why would you keep perfectly good armour on such easily destroyed mooks? Let's see if we can make him look as neglected as those miniatures on your Shelf of Shame!

Alright, during the winter I was in a deep blue funk and had halted my painting completely, and tried to get out of the rut to no avail. One day I was bored, so I had started looking through some of my old D&D prepainted minis. Then I found one of these duplicate Baaz draconians from the Dragoneye expansion: As you can see, their paint jobs are absolute crap. But I did notice that they have a good amount of detail for the kind of minis that they are. So I thought, why not try using them as cheap minis for testing things? I took these pics on Jan.24, and then tried a soak in good ol' Simple Green. The results were.........not great. Not only does it appear that the "paint" is pretty much baked on, the reaction of the plastic with the SG made it smell pretty bad for a couple of days, and didn't do a darn thing. That was was the end of that for awhile. And so April 9th rolls around, and things warm once more. At this point I was able to pare away the mould lines and prime the figure, and I used Duplicolor Sandable Grey Primer. It comes out as a mist rather than a spray, and I found that a great amount of detail popped out of the draconian, which I was pleased by the results. I did a touch of painting on it by using Citadel Warplock Bronze for a base for skin and Daemonette Hide for the cloak. I decided that he would look better as a Bozak than a Baaz, but my enthusiasm began to wane......... ......until June 18, when I joined the Google Hangouts group! Thanks to all the crazies that hang out here, I was able to do more painting in a week than I have in the last 6 months. I found that being able to be around people who love this as much as I do. It gave me the push I needed to focus on it once more, and special love to those of you who supported me. So i decided to use my lesser-known paints this time, just to see how they work. I used P3 Cold Steel for the armour, and then hit it with P3 Armour Wash. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, it's exactly the way I wanted it. Used Reaper Black Wash on the cloak( almost used Reaper Pure Black!), just to get the folds to show. P3 Brass Balls (hee hee) on the hilt and pommel, and the P3 Pig Iron on the sword edged with P3 Cold Steel. Of course, I couldn't let the experiment end at that. I tried a bit of Citadel Retributor Armour for the cloak clasp, and it's like a little sun. I love that colour. Everyone on the forums knows how much I adore Tri-Art Liquid Mirror, but I never got the opportunity to try it out on miniatures. As you can see, the bracer got some love, and I may have blinded some of the Hangouts members. When I used Reaper Black Was on it, it dulled it down slightly, but it's still far bright than GW Mithril Silver. It's heavy body, but when it dries it conforms around the details underneath, so there's no loss at all. Also, I placed unwashed Liquid Mirror on his claws, because he has to look faaaaaaabulous. I did find that it can be watered down too much, at which point it slides away a bit. Tried P3 Jack Bone on his horns, but I didn't like the colour it had, so a coat of Reaper Mouldy Skin made things look right. Put a bit of Citadel Stirland Mud for texture, and I pretty much called it done. And this is my foray into the wonderful world of basing! I tried making my own static grass tufts with both white glue and hot glue; I found that the latter tends to work better, especially when you need to trim it with your X-Acto. Just a simple bit of playground sand for the base; didn't want anything to complicated, just wanted to test how it would look so I put it on quick and dirty. A final comparison shot of original figure vs. new awesomeness. Keep in mind that this is all just an experiment. I know that the painting is rough and that the basing could be cleaned up, but this was more of a test of several techniques and paints. I finally made my foray into basing and am beginning to understand what works and what doesn't. I found that D&D prepainted minis are perfect if you want cheap subjects to practice on, and Buglips isn't handy.

Here's a mild-mannered experiment I slapped together tonight. I feel I'm pretty timid when it comes to pushing skin highlights, but go too far with shadows, so I spent some time just *playing* at roughing in colors on this Bones Black Orc. Objective: don't think too much, don't worry about doing a "good" job, and push the limits of what you're comfortable with in terms of highlights. Worked straight from the palette, mixed as I went, and didn't fuss around with layering, glazing or washing. This is where I ended up. Enjoyed myself immensely, even if it's not very pretty. Comments and constructive criticism are very welcome -- color choices, shadow and light placement, etc. are what I'm working on here.

Couple experiments were done on this one this morning, one ongoing on the paint's durability. Just dropping it off here because Grumpy Cave Bear seemed interested in the WIP thread.

The LEAD SOLDIER served honorably in Her Majesty's Royal Guard in his former life, and fought honorably in many battles... before being laid low by the sad fate of toys everywhere: he got lost. He had resigned himself to a sad fate of obscurity, and even risked being melted down, until he was rescued by a craftsman and restored to his former glory. His greatest fear is that someone will find out that he is not in fact a Lead Soldier... but that he is actually lead-free pewter, a shameful thing, as lead is dangerous, and a soldier wants to be as dangerous as possible. The WOODEN PIRATE sailed the seven seas in search of plunder, and given that his boy was a rather bloodthirsty sort, participated in many atrocities, which rather disturbed the Wooden Pirate; personally, he was a rather tenderhearted sort, and could be talked out of plundering your ship if it came out that you lacked insurance, a thing which made the other pirates laugh at him at the annual pirate conventions. After striking up an acquaintance with the Lead Soldier, he was convinced to take up heroism as a career, and is known throughout the land of Zo as the slayer of Shaykosch, the Deathless Wolf. The Wooden Pirate has found happiness in his new career field, and can often be found with his friend the Lead Soldier as they undertake new adventures daily. The Lead Soldier was rescued from the adoption table at Reapercon recently, and given a new paint job. His existence inspired the construction of a character found in the backstory of the RPG, "The Zantabulous Zorceror Of Zo," the famous and heroic Wooden Pirate, scratchbuilt from wooden doweling, beads, and some scraps. And yes, I know, his arms are visually disturbing for being a bit too long. This is a thing that will be corrected on the next wooden figure. Y'know what? Cyanoacrylate doesn't hold for beans on wood. Go with epoxy. And Alison wants you all to know she is NOT a puppet!

I was running behind on figures for this months Resolutionary Painting Challenge so I decided to paint an easy one. I tried a homemade sepia ink wash at first but that didn't really show up too well so I went over it again with MSP Brown wash. The left shoulder came out a little weird. The base is one of the 25mm round bases from the Bones II kickstarter with some woodland scenics ballast on it. Any C&C is appreciated.

...bet you weren't expecting that, were you? I was in a game store yesterday, and since I believe in supporting little brick and mortar stores, I had to buy SOMETHING. So I picked up some Bones. I did not need these Bones. I already had these and more from the Kickstarter. Still, like I said, if you want a local game shop, you should support it. So... what was I going to do with these extra troopers that I had no use for? Well, that's what art is all about. The B.A.C.O.N. trooper did not come out as well as I would have liked; the toy pig I used for parts was less detailed than the toy buffalo. Still, I persevere...

I've never tried NMM before and after finishing the Ogre chieftain I wanted to give it a go. I had a box of GW's Chaos Warriors lying around so that seemed like a perfect start as that gave me a batch of near identical armoured figures to begin on. First attempt it below. The figure in metallic, which I'm using as a comparison point, has just had it's base coat and wash so far so at the moment it's much darker than it's going to be. This first one was just a quick test. I still need to go over with some black ink lining to help define some areas but otherwise I'm relatively happy except for the shield, It just looks flat to me. I don't know if finishing the symbol off would help settle that or if it just looks like a two tone shield, either way the light side needs a more gradual blend than is currently there. Any comments or advice would be appreciated. This was just a quick snap with my phone so apologies for the quality, I'll do proper ones as I go along.

This is almost my first mini in 20 years. I painted one batch in a burst of renewed enthusiasm last month, then decided I wished to hunker down and really try to improve (yeah, they weren't that great). This mini was one of the most notable failures last month, so I stripped off its paint and am trying again. I don't know much about painting minis beyond what I knew twenty years ago, using artists' acrylics mixed myself, with some washes. But I am an artist, so I know a lot of the technicalities of paint and painting on the macro scale. Maybe I can help or get help translating it to the micro. To begin with, I only have artists' acrylics and various mediums to mix them with. For now, please assume I can't easily get my hands on paint formulated especially for miniatures. (There is no actual orange or yellow on the mini; that's a side effect of the lighting which I plan to fix in later photos). The priming is several coats of Golden brand titanium white thinned with its matte medium (which I am finding insufficiently matte). I did not go for an opaque white coat, just complete coverage. I brushed, of course, instead of sprayed. I started with the lining of her cape. I'm planning to do her in muted earth tones, but I wanted a bit of purple. The cape is going to be white lined with a muted purple (I've seen one like that in real life; it was gorgeous). The color is a mix of Winsor & Newton ultramarine violet, a beautiful color but very transparent and rather weak (i.e. it gets subsumed easily in color mixes), mixed with Golden burnt sienna and titanium white. I used the transparency to shade the folds, but I'm not sure I like the effect. Also, in the photo I notice I've missed a bit in the hood by her left cheek, which I'll have to fix. Any comments would be appreciated.

I'm curious to hear other folks' experiences with repositioning Bones models with heat. Tonight I took the Ghost and submerged in 150 degree water for 60 seconds, repositioned the now very flexible model into a much more 3D/dynamic pose outside of the linear plane it was cast in, and then submerged in ice water for 60 seconds. The model looked great, and even exhibited the same 'memory' like behavior to this new repositioned shape. But, after 8 hours, it has returned almost completely to the original positioning. The reversion was imperceptibly slow. So... not enough heat? not long enough? too ambitious a reposition?