Search the Community

A few years ago (hmmm…2015), Iron Wind Metals did a Kickstarter for a Chaos Wars revival. The first two armies featured were orcs and elves. I got most of my compact orcish army painted a while back, but was looking at a new set of rules last week (Fantastic Battles). I needed at least one more leader stand to use my Chaos Wars orcs, and I knew that I had a few orc leaders from that Kickstarter I hadn’t finished. Happily, I was even able to find them among my boxes of primed figures on sticks.

So I had an old Ral Partha (now Iron Wind Metals) raptor with missing arms, and a tiny pair of dragon wings with no dragon. And then one evening, probably after too many beers, I had a eureka moment. Why not slap them together? I present to you the one of a kind raptor/wyvern (raptern? wyvtor?). I still need to work on the base, but that can be said about most of my minis.

I had the opportunity to play some Dragon Rampant last weekend at Huzzah, a convention in Portland, Maine. I decided that it was time to get these figures off the painting sticks and into play. DR calls for 6 figure units for war beats and cavalry, but these rats are small enough that I decided that 6 bases was a nice unit of measure. The two large swarms are single piece castings (01-045 from Iron Wind Metals), and the outrider bases are the DF-106s, originally scultped by Julie Guthrie. This was a speed painting exercise; total brush time was just under an hour, and they were, as you can tell, mostly dry brushed.

My Iron wind speed paint. He was just a little guy but I liked him. However I was disappointed when I accidentally over washed him in black and it darkened his purple and red scales too much so that you couldn't really tell the colors. Normally I don't add any more paint a mini that's done, but I felt I needed to add some more purple when I got home to bring him closer to my original "vision".The "Before's" The "After's" I may base him up some day if needed but for now this is what he is.

This is an old lead Ral Partha figure, from Shadowrun, I believe. I painted her rather neutrally, so she could be used in a variety of modern settings.

These are old Ral Partha sculpts from Iron Wind Metals. They are assorted deckers and /or riggers from the Shadowrun game, i.e. people Of The Future who use computers in a virtual matrix and puppet combat drones in the physical world. It occurs to me that decker miniatures are not much called for, since all of their relevant gameplay is in online virtual personas which don't tend to look like people and in an environment where mapping out positions is impossible, so tabletop gameplay with minis is ... a little diffuse, at best. So I wonder how much demand there actually was for figures of the "meat space" physical reality of the deckers, the people who (this is so '90s a vision of the future) carried big physical keyboards in their hands and had to be physically wired into the computer network, including physical implanted wire plugs in their skulls! I love these figures for their outdated vision of future tech. Also they are lovely little sculpts. Anyhow, I have here the elf man from the set 20-572: Elven Deckers - Male & Female; the woman (who turned out to be an elf) from set 20-524: Riggers & Drones (5); the human woman decker from the set 20-501: Deckers (3);and the orc man decker from the set 20-595: Assets Inc. I: Shadowrunners. At the moment I've primed them with Titanium White and washed them with Burnt Umber. The hair is only blocked in so I can do the faces; it will be elaborated later. I am still working on the faces, although I like this first one: Elves are supposed to be a bit full of themselves, so I tried for a haughty look. Speaking of an obsolete vision of the future, this one is wearing cut-off jeans. I'm dissatisfied with this one's face. Fortunately in-game there are prosthetic "Chibi eyes", so I can paint them over weird and claim that's what they are. This guy is full of personality, although you can really see how bizarrely retro the idea of the tech is. Yep, he has to lug that thing around wherever he goes because there's no way a portable computing and communication device could be made, I dunno, pocket sized. As usual, this thread may be sporadic as my painting time is almost random between art projects.

So finally have finish the third elf in my little Tom Meier trilogy of the All American elves. Just got this one done and based, and reasonably happy with him. Kind of took forever to choose colors and they are a bit more lively than the other two I did.

So Ral Partha/Iron Wind Metals is going to be re-releasing some of their classic line of figures through a Kickstarter that they are going to be starting up the next week or so, and I did a little bit of painting for them on a few of the goblins they are going to be offering. These are from way back, good old juicy Tom Meier goodness! If their Kickstarter does well, hopefully lots more of this will be showing up in the future! Anyway, hope you enjoy! I painted three of them, but the front view of one of them is going to be linked because his manly parts are flying hither and thither. http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Image:Kickstarter_goblin_with_morning_star_front.jpg

I painted this up as a wedding gift for a couple of friends who are getting married this weekend. They go into a glass dome keepsake tomorrow with a little plaque to commemorate the event. The model is an old Ral Partha creation that was recast by Iron Wind metals. I cant tell which version this is as it came to me in a plastic baggie. tried very hard to keep the Blue dragon from fading out. I have a tendency to over highlight leaving the final mini much lighter than I intended. The blue is Prussian Blue by Derivan MINIS paints. One of my favorite blues. The remaining paints are by reaper. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

So usually a figure takes me around two weeks to paint, but this being a relatively simple figure, plus the fact that I had the day after Thanksgiving off and was home alone (my beautiful little wife was working), I got to spent the last couple days finishing this figure up, just getting the actual base done about half an hour ago. I like this figure as it's one of the few fantasy figures that Iron Wind has done after its Ral Partha days. One thing that I am concerned about and maybe somebody has an idea, is that this is the second miniature I put matte finish on (using Vallejo), where after putting it on, some of it actually dried white in the grooves of the figures (between the boots for example). I found (hopefully) all those spots and added either a black or walnut brown wash to those spots, but it's kind of a pain. Does anybody know what this might be caused by? I'm using probably a ratio of three parts water to one part finish. Anyways, hopefully you enjoy the figure. I did two front shots, as the one shows the eye a bit better.

I've been going back and forth over starting a WIP for these because I've been noodling on them for a while and they're pretty far along. But hey. Perhaps this will be an incentive to get cracking and finish them. These are some official and unofficial Shadowrun figures, cyberpunk biggish humanoids, Reaper's 50287: Caine, Cyber-Troll, and a couple of trolls and an ork from Ral Partha, currently available from Iron Wind Metals (there's another ork, a decker, in this WIP). They're big. They're futuristic (for a particularly 1980s vision of the future). They're tech and camp and fun. I am trying to do Reaper's cybertroll in red and green without making him look too Christmasy. I am still pretty new to pinning; his hands and gun are still separate. This is an old Ral Partha cybertroll. I am trying to do some object-source-lighting on him, as if he were in shiny armor in the city at night, with orangeish city lights reflected from the cloud cover above and different colored lights from different directions. At the moment he looks pretty awful. I used the colors of 'eighties fashions on the female troll, which my have been a bit mean. This is as far as I know Ral Partha's -- indeed, anybody's -- only female Shadowrun ork. She is, let's face it, grotesque. I like the newest Shadowrun edition's illustrations of actually attractive orks, but so far there's no figures like that available. This is Lord Torgo, a particularly nasty troll character from the Shadowrun universe. He's pretty over the top. There is a chain which goes between his hands and a rifle and axe for his back which I haven't glued on yet.

Hi everyone, I'm going to try the WIP thing to keep me motivated, and to help me improve on a few things. Most of these are mid-process, or very lightly started. I have a specific way I paint, and I really only photograph about once a week. So, without further adieu, here begins my wip. First up, we have The Bones Gnoll, about 2/3 of the way through how I paint, but there are several areas to improve upon. My intent is to give a more rusted look to the metallics, and to bring up the leather straps. In person, I'm happy with the upper fur, with the feet needing improvement (and the leg wraps and flail wraps). Eyes are going to be something fun. Next up we have Vanja, Fire Giant Princess, the metal version (the bones version will be more traditionally coal-black with red highlights). This is a very early stage wip of her for me. I'm starting with skin tones, bringing them up to Vallejo Pale Flesh. Next we have the Bones Darkrasp, Death Priest. I've started an attempt at OSL with him, and would very much like suggestions on this. I really like how the scythe is coming, but the robes leave a LOT to be desired. The cloak looks like a burlap/linen (which was my intent with all the drybrushing) and I'm happy with it overall, including the OSL effects on the hood. Finally, we have my 2-year-old's wip of the bones Unicorn