Search the Community

This past week, I painted Kassandra of the Blade from the Bones 3 Core Set. A couple weeks ago, I found myself painting up a Disney Monopoly Snow White figure to command a unit of Dwarf Miners (Long story you can read about here: Princess Snow), and I was really struck by the simple but effective primary color scheme of Snow White's outfit. I immediately decided I wanted to paint a Bones female fighter figure with the same palette. So, I pawed through my boxes of unpainted Bones, and fell upon Kassandra of the Blade as the most suitable of what I had. The one thing I didn't like about her was the dual-wielding of swords. So I decided to chop off her left hand and replace it before I started painting her. Then came the decision of what to replace it with. I considered a shield for a while, then in looking through my box of Bones transplant donors I came across Sarah the Seeress, whose staff had gone to make my Highland Heroine into a Frostgrave Appentice, leaving her with just her left hand holding an orb of some sort. At first I thought, no, why would Snow White be holding a crystal ball; but then it hit me: paint it like an apple. So it was an easy matter to cut off Kssandra's left hand at the wrist and glue on Sarah's hand with the orb. And here's the final result. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and probably it's one of the best faces I've done to date. Fhttp://allbonesabout.blogspot.com/2018/07/kassandra-of-blade-bones-3-figure.htmlull painting article on my blog:

This past week I painted the Drys, Dryad, figure from the Bones II, Sylvan Creatures set. Since I was in kind of a Frostgrave frame of mind when I was thinking about painting her, I decided I would try to paint her up in winter colors, like a dryad that has been unexpectedly awoken from her Winter sleep, and is not happy about it. Photos linked for nudity: Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3

I started this as a Halloween project. Things got in the way and now it is an autumn piece. Any way I had fun. I bought a ceramic Pumpkin, converted it into a house. Reaper's Elise Witch http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/elise/latest/02869And Freebooter's Chaos Witch both sculpted by Werner Klocke are conjuring pumpkins. These are now wandering off into the world to cause mayhem, The pumpkins are part Ristul's Market and I used the Owl on a Pumpkin from the Reaper Halloween Familiars http://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/Special%20Edition%20Figures/sku-down/01548 And I added the great Halloween Tree from Reaper: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/halloween/sku-down/03692 Hope you like it. Some Pumpkins are a bit in the ground, so they are emerging.

This week I began the final 10 countdown of my Bones 1 Kickstarter Painting project, by doing the last of the Grave Danger set I had left to paint: Judas Bloodspire, Vampire. Not a fancy paint job, just getting him table-ready to use in my Frostgrave collection since I've been missing a Vampire figure as listed in the game's random-encounter Bestiary. For his full step-by-step painting entry on my blog, see: Judas Bloodspire

Slowly working on the the shelf of shame. Please excuse the pics.. phone camera and haven't got a good light box.. gonna try and remedy that this weekend.. Anyway she's good practice for skin, and I'm attempting some zenith lighting..

Over the weekend I finished up the first of the Bones 1 Iconics II Pathfinder Miniatures set: Seltyiel, Iconic Magus. I've slowly been trying to create a Wizard and Apprentice pair for each of the 10 schools of magic from the Frostgrave core rulebook, and one of the ones I haven't done yet is the Elementalist type. I thought this guy might make a good fire-based Elementalist, so decided to go that direction with my painting. ​For the step-by-step painting write-up, please see my blog: http://allbonesabout.blogspot.com/2016/09/seltyiel-iconic-magus-figure-244-of-266.html

I recently posted over on the Conversions sub-forum about how I converted the Olivia, Female Cleric, figure into a Sigilist wizard for a new Frostgrave warband I am working on: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69559-olivia-cleric-bones-jolie-scribe-to-sigilist-apprentice-conversion/ A Sigilist derives their magical power from words and languages, so I wanted her to be very "word" oriented. Besides her two books and inkwell, I wanted to paint her cloak to look like it had magical words floating all over it that appeared to floating to the surface and then receding back down again. I asked on the Works in Progress sub-forum for some help on how to achieve this and got some great advice: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69652-advice-wanted-on-word-covered-wizard-robes/ I put that advice to use, and am pleased with the results:

This past week I started painting the Pirates set from the Bones 1 KS, and painted the Mariel Twinspar, Female Pirate figure. I'm pleased with how she turned out and I'm glad I made the extra effort to decorate her coat, though in retrospect I wish I had taken a little more time with it, and concentrated on spacing and uniformity of the designs more. Since my pirate games take place in taverns and boats as well as in outdoor land settings, I usually leave the bases a plain tan color so they blend in both indoors and outdoors .

The weekend I finished up Terezinya, Bonepander Wizard, the last of the Bones 1 Kickstarter Necromancer set that I had left to paint. Even though this figure is labeled as a wizard, I thought her lack of extensive armor, or anything particularly 'wizardy" looking about her outfit, and that fact that she is carrying just one weapon, made her a good candidate to be a Thug in my Necromancer warband for Frostgrave. Since she was just going to be a Thug (low-level fighter), I didn't do anything fancy with the paint job. Just a quick tabletop application. As always, C & C welcome.

This past week I started working on the Bones 1 Kickstarter "Necromancers" set, and over the weekend I finished painting the Ghoul Queen figure from this set. I had previously modified this figure, removing one of the scabbards she originally came with. You can find the thread where I showed the conversions I did, here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/67463-quick-and-easy-ghoul-queen-sword-conversion-bones-77175/ I painted and based her for tabletop use, to use as my Necromancer apprentice for Frostgrave. I'm generally pleased with how she turned out, though the highlighting on the scabbard bones came out a little heavy-handed. As always C-and C welcomed.

I started building a display piece, a vignette, diorama or whatever you want to call it. It will probably be too late for Halloween but then it will be a Fall / Autumn piece. Reaper 02869: Elise, The Witch and Freebooter Chaos Witch,, both by Werner Klocke will star the show. The idea is they live in this Pumpkin house ( obtained in a garden centre, added a plastic door from a board game) and they are conjuring spooky pumpkins. The Halloween tree stands next to their house. So here are the first pics.

This is a model I painted for someone as an anonymous gift. It should have gotten to him today, but I'll leave his forum name off just in case. This model was a lot of fun to paint and I only learned later that my model's armor and the painted version on Reaper's website (you know what I mean :)) both have purple armor. This is only the second time I've painted dark elf skin and its quite challenging for me as I often struggle to have good looking smooth skin tones on human models in general. If I hadn't given myself a hardstop time limit, I would have gone back and tried to shade and highlight the yellow on the armor. I don't think its garish, thanks to the blue cloak, but it could look better IMO. I'm extremely pleased with the blending of her ice crystal weapon "blades". I wasn't sure I could pull it off, but I think it turned out really nice, although the eye isn't immediately drawn to it. Please feel free to give any and all feedback, but I'm really keen to hear if folks think I should have gone with a darker yellow or another color entirely. Is there something I could have done better with the basing? The person I painted this for likes an online comic called Drowtales, which I also happen to like, though I'd not read it in at least two years due to losing all my links when my old computer died. But I went through the comic and found some armor and cloaks that I liked and tried to work them into model itself. Here's what the cloak in the comic looks like (sorry, no back picture): And here's the final model (I apologize for the random cat hair): Thank you all in advance for your feedback!

Here is the Vampire Queen herself. She has a Magic Sword guarded by her Crow familiar. Her faithful undead servant lights the way. I tried a bit of OSL on the servant, my first try. I don't think it worked out that well, but you gotta try right? The familiar and sword are from Reaper, pack X. The Vampire and Servant are from the Freebooter range, sculpted by Werner Klocke. Sorry about the quality of some pics, still struggling with the camera.

So, as is my tradition of sorts, every winter I paint up a Winter Sophie. This year we take the wayback to 2001 and this fine example of Klockenbooty by the legendary master Werner Klocke. Here we see the legendary Sophie the Succubus proving that she can make even a Snowman blush Comments, Criticism, and questions all appreciated.

(Updated photos in the reply below!) Here's my current WIP. He's from the pile o' unpainted minis someone in my gaming group acquired. I was actually able to track down this one: Halbarad, Crusaders Cleric. I wasn't surprised at all to find out he was a sculpt by Klocke, who is turning out to have made nearly all of my favourite sculpts I have come across. :) I wish I could give him a big hug and tell him how awesome he is! Anyways, we are possibly going to use this mini for our human fighter/ Cleric of Kiri-Jolith in our DragonLance campaign. 1. Primed/ shaded and ready to go! 2. Laying down some of the base colours (difficult to see the two tones of silver paints on there). Had a hard time deciding if I wanted his skirt white and cloak blue, or vis-versa. Also, Kiri-Jolith's colours are Brown & White, but we have a lot of brown already in the minis on our table so I made the executive decision to abandon brown overall. 3. His white cloak. I have found that items that are black or white are really hard, because shading/highlighting becomes problematic later... 4. Starting on the details. 5. More of the details. The bronze is a herald back to the brown of Kiri-Jolith. 6. Finally! With the head painted he doesn't seem so oppressively grey. Now that I have all of the base colours down things are coming together. Back in the day I would probably stop about now. However, next I will move on to fine details, shading/highlighting, and touch-ups. Woot! For anyone curious, music I am listening to whilst working on this guy is Imagine Dragons and the soundtracks from SailorMoon. ;)

I've been working on an entry for the Halloween contest the last month or so, and I had a crazy idea to hand-make an iron fence out of some aluminium. You can see some w.i.p. shots in my thread here: http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/49097-cassus-many-wips/page-8 Although the material was a little fragile, my Bones Bat was still light enough to be supported on-top there which I was impressed by. (Hooray for Bones!) I apologize for the out-of-focus parts in these photos, I fail at camera - even when given advice. I think when I can afford it I need to go out and buy myself a camera with a better lens and one I can actually learn to use properly. Any way, enough sulking about my lack of photography skills. Happy Halloween everyone!

You can see her entry in the appropriate thread for the contest here. She's been a bit rushed. I joke about the covered tattoos, but as a Kagonesti I intended to put a sleeve on her exposed calf. I may very well do so, but life got in the way of painting her more than this. So here she is, to the standard of "done," and there are things I'm happy with. The color palette I like, although the skin comes very close to being the same color as her skirt. For as quickly as I did it, I'm actually quite happy with the wood on the staff. As always, C&C welcome and encouraged.