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I quite enjoyed painting this guy. Not everything went quite as I had hoped, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

It's been quite a while since I did any fantasy monster painting, so I pulled this guy out of my endless mountain of unpainted Bones miniatures. It's 77267: Kallaguk, Troll King by Jason Wiebe, and costs about four and a half yankeedolla. Here he is with the trusty Sergeant Measureby, who tells us that sans-base, our troll king is about 50mm tall from toes to hump. He seems bigger compared to normal human figures though, being so massive. So far I've just glued him to a big steel washer, done some zenithal shading/highlights with the airbrush, and slapped on a rough brown wash to show me where the detail is. I haven't decided yet what sort of colour scheme to use; I was originally considering crocodilian colours, but that might be a bit drab. I shall ponder some more before I get started properly.

This guy with the stripy pole is an old Essex Miniatures figure I've had since the mid '80s. At that time, they were being sold as 25mm figures, but they were HUGE compared with other manufacturers' 25mm ranges, such as Minifigs or Hinchliffe. I don't know if they were actually responsible for the scale-creep that has resulted in 28mm being the default mid-size ancients/fantasy wargaming scale, but they were certainly an early adopter. (I suspect Games Workshop were more to blame.) I never did get around to finishing the 25 (or 28) mm medieval army I was planning on: partly due to cost, partly because I found 15mm a more convenient and congenial figure scale. I've painted his spear in 5mm bands, so that I can make use of him as a scale marker. It's about another 5mm from the base of the spear to the ground (i.e. the figure base is about 5mm high), so I can count that if I want to know the height of a figure from ground up.

I think this came with the first Kickstarter, or maybe I bought them separately; in any case, I've had it sitting around unpainted for quite some time. It's 77136: Well of Chaos ($3.29) by Bob Ridolfi. On the red one I've tried painting on a bit of light reflection to give the impression that the pool is glowing. It's pretty much my first go at this technique, and it actually doesn't look too terrible I think. Here's a view looking more down into the pool (though it doesn't add much).

I don't know what Reaper call it, but it looks a bit like the old D&D Intellect Devourer to me, so that's what it shall be.

This is a quickie paint-up of the Basilisk from the Bones Kickstarter II. (Whining complaint follows, ignore if you so choose...) I don't know what the product number is because it's yet another mini from that collection that isn't yet available in the online store, and I can no longer be bothered trying to find it in the preview gallery because its 'search' functionality is, frankly, garbage. They are really stretching out the general release of the KS-II minis; in my opinion, too far. Much too far. Starting a whole new KS before the old one's minis are even available is a bit on the nose, I think.

Here's the last mini painted for the day, a Rust Monster (or Oxidation Beast, as it's called in Reaper's catalogue).

This is yet another Bones plastic figure, 77191 Hydra by Sandra Garrity. I like Garrity's work, and this is no exception, though I feel that it would be more useful as a gaming miniature if its pose were more compact, more curled around on itself. That would probably require that it be moulded with one or two more pieces, but it's already a multi-piece model so that wouldn't be a big problem — at least, not from the end-user's point of view.

Another burrowing beastie, this time an Ankheg (Reaper Bones 77230, not in the online store yet). It's a bit of an uninspiring paint-job, though the mini itself is OK.

Next up on the painting table from Reaper's Kickstarter II is this critter, which they call 77372: Burrowing Horror and I will go out on a limb to call a Bulette.

This is 77256: Brass Bull, from the Bones II Kickstarter. It's not in the store as yet, apparently it's due for release in June. I wanted a Gorgon, not a Brass Bull, so I painted it in rusty iron colours. Note, that's a D&D Gorgon, not a mythological Gorgon. It was a very quick and easy paint job, but the gunmetal dry-brushing didn't photograph very well at all.

I finally finished painting old maggot-breath, Bones 77375: Mashaaf. It's a big figure, which made it a bit tricky to handle while painting. In the first photo, I've included a figure of your friendly neighbourhood psycho-killer and vivisectionist for scale. Just in case you haven't already seen it, I kept a work-in-progress blog here.

I've made a start on Mashaaf, a gigantic maggot-like abomination that came with the Bones II Kickstarter. It's a big lump of plastic, roughly 90 x 100 x 150 mm, and quite difficult to handle; I'm not really looking forward to trying to paint it. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to manage something like this in pewter. It needs quite a bit of filling between the sections, but no more than would normally be expected with a miniature of this size. I haven't (yet) filled around its arm-sockets; that may not be necessary (I hope). It's supposed to have a sort of panel-mandible on either side of its maw, but I was sent two of the same side and so one of them doesn't fit the moulded socket. I've filled both sockets, and I'll decide later on whether or not I want to try to mount the panels with pins. I may just leave them off entirely. Also, there are a couple of smaller sockets moulded at the sides of the tentacly mouth section; I have no idea what they're supposed to be for and I certainly didn't get anything in the package that could go there. I've filled those sockets as well.

Here's another model from Reaper's Bones II Kickstarter. I can't tell you what its product code is, because they haven't yet been added to the online store — the sooner that happens, the better, because right now finding any information on the Bones II models is an exercise in tedium, and sometimes futility. Anyway, it's a wereshark, or possibly some kind of Moreau-esque shark-man. The mottling of its upper body isn't quite as I would like it, but it will have to do. As is my habit, I've mounted it on a great big steel washer to give it some heft and make it more stable. Now I shall have to figure out some way of using it in a game.

77035: Deladrin, Female Assassin I've finally got around to painting the figure Annette is using for her current character in my D&D5e campaign. She's a two-sword-wielding leather girl, an ex-sergeant in the forces of the Little Sisters of Carnage — hence the red cloak. Admittedly, at this very instant in the campaign, she, like pretty much everyone else, is pretty much nekkid and have lost nearly all their gear. However, I'm low on character figures that are mostly nekkid and have lost nearly all their gear, so this will continue doing the job until she eventually either gets more clothes and gear, or dies (permanently). It's another Bones plastic figure; don't know the product code it's 77035: Deladrin, Female Assassin by Werner Klocke. For some reason my matte varnish refused to go properly matte on this figure, and I'm not really sure why. It was working last time I used it.

Here's another monster from the Bones II Kickstarter — 91008: Desert Thing, along with an old Grenadier figure for scale. It didn't sit flat on the table once assembled, so I mounted it on a washer, extended its nest of rocks, and gave it a gullet (and uvula, though it can't be seen in these pics.) It will do for any of the ground-burrowing ambush critters, like trappers and what-not.

77227 Stone Lurker. (Bones II) Whatever Reaper choose to call it, it's clearly a roper. It doesn't look precisely like any of the ropers described in various D&D Monster Manuals, but it's a stony pillar with six long tentacular arms, so really, what else could it be? I've based it on a big, heavy washer and extended the base stonework with greenstuff.

Here's an old miniature of a giant bat I've had hanging around for decades, along with a 25mm Ral Partha wizard for scale. I don't know the manufacturer of the bat; I suspect it was GW, but I can't be sure. The wings were monstrously thick, and I had to carve them down substantially just to get a thin edge. Its original base was missing, so I've mounted it on a piece of wire soldered to a steel washer. I wanted to get its wings looking translucent and skin-like, but that proved to be beyond my powers in the time I felt the miniature warranted, and I got "leathery" instead. That's OK, I guess.

I've finally got around to painting the Bones Mimic figurine I got in the last Kickstarter. I don't believe this is a monster I have ever used in any of my games. I'm not sure why, because I'm not at all averse to making my players just as paranoid as can be.

D&D is no stranger to stupid monsters, and this is one of them — the Owlbear. Mechanically, it's not terribly interesting; it's just a big biting, clawing monster, more dangerous than some, less dangerous than others, but with no real distinction about it. It might as well just be a bear. A rabid bear, but just a bear. Its existence in the D&D canon does have implications for the standard milieu, implications that are borne out repeatedly: in the D&D universe, anything can be interbred with anything else. It's a concept that really doesn't hold water in the real world, though it appears to be central to the world view of those peculiar people who think that two men getting married is going to lead to general mayhem and apocalypse. But that's a bit beside the point. This figure does have something going for it that I haven't really seen in others. The owlbear is supposed to be fundamentally bonkers insane to its very core, and this figure does look a tad doolally.

This is a re-paint of a pre-paint of a Deep Dragon. I had two WotC plastic Deep Dragons, but no Green Dragon, so I figured I might as well give one of them a make-over. As well as painting it, I ripped it off its original plastic base and re-based it on a large panel-washer with some epoxy putty and a bit of flocking — the flock does tend to gather dust, but it covers a host of evils when it comes to basing. This, incidentally, is the original factory paint-job. It's pretty underwhelming. I very seldom use dragons in my game. I was traumatized by a session in which the dragon was supposed to be a massive boss-fight, but which turned into complete farce when the dragon was taken out by a single lucky hit from aSword of Sharpness before the fight had even really got started. We were using a pretty vicious critical-hits system back then, so it was really my own fault.

This isn't a new figure. In fact I painted it about twenty-five years ago (bloody hell!), but I've left it since then gloss varnished and sans-base. I've finally got around to giving it something of a scenic base, and squirting it with matte varnish. Never let it be said that I rush things. It's a Grenadier figure, I believe, and stands about 70mm tall from foot to crown. I've never actually used it in a game, and I really should remedy that.

The Pathfinder artistic style is pretty cartoonish, and that doesn't always work, but I quite like their version of goblins — they're like little bipedal piranha with an attention deficit disorder. Not stupid, exactly, but definitely with poor impulse control. This little guy is about 18mm to the top of his little flat head, not counting the thickness of the base. I have a few more ( another seven, I think). I got them from Reaper's first BonesKickstarter; it's one of the 89002: Pathfinder Goblin Pyros set

This guy is an experiment in speed-painting using Vallejo Game Inks over a sprayed, graduated undercoat. Everything except the metallics, the torch flame and the base is painted in the inks, without any additional shading or highlighting. They're very useful for getting instant shading, and because they're both transparent and fairly intensely coloured, they don't fill in detail as thinned paints do. The range of colours is fairly limited, but all the basics are covered. The figure is Bones 77140: Townsfolk: Village Rioter, who will, no doubt, do sterling service as a lowly-paid torch-bearer. Because I wanted to see just how quickly I could knock him out to a decent tabletop gaming-piece standard, I haven't done anything about the mould-lines, nor the way he's toppling over backwards. For dungeoneering service, he could probably do with having the top half of his pitchfork replaced with a ten foot pole.

Here's another version of 77084:Townsfolk: Innkeeper. This time there's less dirt, but a lot more blood. He could be the town butcher, or doctor, or torturer — the possibilities aren't endless!