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... The larch? Heh. No, but I want to try something very different from my preferred style in order to branch out and try new things. I recently watched Coco (um... several times) and took a liking to the alebrijes, especially Pepita. I really want Reaper to make a Pepita. So this is my way of showing how fun it could be! The plan: A chibi lion with patterns like the traditional Oaxacan Alebrijes. This means fun bright colors and an attempt at making a piece look like wooden folk art. It can be done! First step, research. ...and my personal favorite: Perfect! I wanted to practice red anyway. I ended up choosing red shadow, dragon red, big top red, seoni scarlet, volcanic orange, marigold yellow and sun yellow as my colors. Second step is to pick a mini. I supported Impact's kickstarter quite awhile ago and almost forgot I had this fellow. It's the Venetian Lion. I set forth in an effort to prep the mini. Um... it took a lot of prep. I decided to go ahead and attach one wing at the risk of making the body harder to paint. I sanded for about half a day then filled in all the bubbles and sculpted one set of claws. Er, I'm hoping their QC has improved since the kickstarter, because this piece took almost a day to prep. Oddly, I think the 3D print went into the mold un-sanded and with texture, because the large surfaces had a texturing I associate with those prints. It took several layers of sealer to smooth. But, I finally got him primed. Isn't he cute! Next, I basecoated with red shadow. why red shadow, you ask? Because red is awful at coverage because of its translucency. So, basecoat with a red brown. This will save you frustration down the road. Next, layer with dragon red. Leave a few areas of the red shadow as deepest shadows. Here's where I had to decided to commit to the wooden/statue route, because a real lion would have a darker back and a pale belly, whereas a figure in top-down light would be the opposite. Still not red? Never fear! Also, put a lot of layers of each step. Lots and lots of layers. Next step big top red. Next, seoni scarlet. I like this color. It's super intense. Very shiny. Except it's matte, but you know what I mean. Boom! Now we're in the red zone. Now, I need eyes. A miniature is lifeless until we add eyes. I like doing them early because they often help guide the rest of the project. I basecoated the eyes with marigold yellow. Then shaded the edges with volcanic orange. Then I added some sun yellow to the center. Even a chibi eye can afford some shading, otherwise the socket looks too flat. After that, I drew in the iris shape. I used red shadow and added a pupil of nightshade purple. When I was happy with the shape and balance, I filled in the eye with some terra nova tundra and more of the yellows. Excellent! I also mixed a bit of linen white into the yellow just at the edge of the iris ring. Here's a front view: Last step in eyes if adding the white reflection. I used pure white for contrast. So he's sort of a demonic cute lion. It could work, right? Then I wanted to try out wing patterns. For the last 3 days I've been wanting to get to the fun part, so I forged ahead and rushed to this step. As it turns out, that was an error, but it worked out in the end. I think. Ok, the key to freehand is breaking down a pattern into something simple. I started with circles. Filled in the circles and added some teardrop lines. added some more lines. and on and on... Until I felt like I was getting closer to pattern. It was then I realized the wing looked way to flat and dull. I needed more shading. What I should have done was make the feather lighter near the origin to add more contrast. So I glazed over the pattern. I'll just have to pick it back up again after I'm done with the shading. Here's the wing with the shading. I'll touch it up a bunch, then rework the pattern. But I think I like it better with the change in contrast. We'll see. I can always paint over it. Sigh. That will teach me to skip to the fun stuff. More later! As always, feel free to ask questions!

I finished a number of random miniatures up this past week or so and thought I'd throw them on here as a batch of bad guys. First up is this killer rabbit from Skull and Crown. This is from their recent kickstarter for bunnies from the margins of medieval manuscripts. This is the 3rd one of these I've painted and I'm still trying to find a scheme I like. But that's ok because I went in for a rather large group of these guys so I'm sure I'll come up with something good before I run out of them. Next up are an Oldhammer goblin from Impact and a barrel mimic from Wizkids. Don't know why, but they seemed like they'd enjoy one another's company while I was painting them up. And finally, here's one of the ogres from bones 3 (77455). My group has already run into a pack of ogres from that kickstarter and narrowly survived. What they don't know is I have a second set. So next time they run into a pack of ogres it will be twice as big. I'm certain they will appreciate that. I also finished the green head on a certain 5 headed dragon. But that's still a long way from being complete.

Here's a group portrait of some random minis I painted over February. The happy, green fellow in the middle is from Impact Miniatures recast of Oldhammer goblins. He is flanked by a couple of killer rabbits from a recently fulfilled kickstarter by Skull and Crown. The paint jobs don't do these a bit of justice. They are great and I'm likely to give them a repaint some time in the future. And up front are some Dark Hold kobolds from Rebel Miniatures. I absolutely love the scale of these little guys. Anyhow, that's it for the January/February RPChallenge for me. I enjoyed sharing a bunch of minis which otherwise may have went into storage without ever being seen by anyone but me.

What else to finish off the month of January but another dragon from my shelf of shame? This is Ollie. Ollie is from Impact miniatures and is supposed to be a mascot for one of the bloodbowl teams. Tom Acquired the license to produce him and I got a copy. I used him to test a number of different red effects and styles while working on another, bigger dragon. The skills may not have panned out like I wanted but Ollie still came out pretty well and deserved to be finished and shown off. Pictures are still with a phone camera but at least I got to my light box! So without further ado:

Got this out of Impact Miniatures last Kickstarter. The master was 3D printed, and then it was produced via spincast resin. Pretty much zero clean-up, although they use a pretty persistent mold release agent. I washed it with Dawn and scrubbed it pretty well. Primed it with Badger Stylynresin and had a bunch of areas where it flaked off with the slightest touch. Gave it another thorough bath & scrub and re-primed with Badger and this time it got a grip. Base coat and initial highlights are Tamiya paints applied via airbrush. Highlights and details are Reaper and Vallejo. Then tried out some Secret Weapon and Mig pigments. There's a spot near the back where you can tell it was a printed master because after i applied a wash it picked out the striations. After highlights you can't really see it. Some of the details lose crispness where parts merge i.e. the banding around the gas tanks isn't as sharply defined where it curves down in the back to meet the hull. All in all it's a pretty nice piece! First Chibi I've ever painted, and while I got inspiration from Odin's Chibi's for the eyes, I need a lot more practice to get them anywhere as nice as his!

The figures are the "Urban Achievers", by Impact Ministries. Got these suckers at GenCon for my fiance, since she's a big fan of the movie. Been saving them for a Christmas present, but she's got a bit of a cold, and I'm terrible with saving surprises. A quick paint job, all in one sitting, and they're done. The base is just printed on an interesting jet printer and mounted on some bass wood. Comments and critiques welcome.

Still learning to take photos with this new setup.

Just finally catching up on some of my photos for the group. I have been learning to use a new camera and there are definitely some ups and downs. we will see how they look as time goes on. The dragon is one of the Impact Chibi series. I took a more standard tone on his paint job, including some wing fades and a little more classic painting, mainly because I could not get the sharp color changes to work on him for some reason. here he is, I hope you like him...

Finally finished this one off. Colors just would not work the way I wanted them to. I am still not entirely satisfied but I am okay with how things came out. There is a lot more detail and fiddly points in this than the original ponies They are still cute though. C&C always welcome

I am calling this one done. I have repainted enough parts of this one that I am leaving well enough alone. This is my first time painting one of the Impact Miniatures chibi models and I am happy with how it turned out. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions for colors and improvements in the WIP thread.

I wasn't great about taking a bunch of pics along the way so far, but here are what I have: Both minis got a soap bath with warm water, Dawn dish soap, and a good scrub with a toothbrush. Once dry, I primed the pony with Reaper's Brush on Primer - which I had to scrub off with soap and reprime three or four times before it would not bead up. Then they both got a coat of Brown Liner: As you can see, I picked out a 30mm base for the pony. I haven't dug through my bases yet for the bull. I then hit them with a blotchy coat of Ancient Bronze, then Lava Orange, and then Bloodstain Red.

Picked this up a year or two ago at GenCon. Worked on it over the winter, finally got the base finished up. The figure came in 5 pieces and was a little challenging to assemble. The surface texture of the piece left something to be desired, I'm told this was an issue with early castings and has been fixed. I used about 5 coats of Reaper clear coat to smooth her out.

I painted up the Barbarian Babe sculpted by Patrick Keith. I was thinking of the snows of Cimeria while painting this one. We saw him hawking the babes on the floor at GenCon. Unfortunately I lost the tassle on her sword somewhere along the way. I also picked up some of the lovely Impact Miniatures line while at GenCon. I was really disappointed with the quality control. After I got home I found the minis were pretty poorly cast. This was the best of the lot. The only visible problem left on this one is tip of one of the shoulder pads is just completely missing. You might be able to see how bad the hour glass is if you look closely. Some of the other pieces were quite a bit worse. I will post pics later. I'm still trying to repair it. I thought the line of chibi figures from the old animated series "Dungeons and Dragons" were a terrific idea but I think I will pass now. Last of all here's Bob Ridolphi's wonderful Succubus sculpt. I am really happy with this piece. Bob is a great guy and a terrific sculptor.