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Hello all those in Reaperdom! So just finished this figure last night and just got him photographed, an Earth Elemental Lord, sculpted by Jim Johnson. Tried to keep him mostly in earth tones because he's an Earth Elemental Lord: His original blister came with a large earth elemental and a little elemental lizard. Going to be painting those in the near future. Enjoy!

Good evening all you fine Reaper acolytes! So this evening I've finished another grand old Partha classic, sculpted by the immortal Julie Guthrie, a Sorceress Casting Spell. As always, couldn't easily choose colors, but this is what I came up with: The only problem I really had was her other eye, which just couldn't be reached with a brush, so this is with a close up, how it came out: Sometimes it's just rough getting a brush in such an itty bitty space. So I did what I could. Anyway hope you all enjoy!

I love me some weekend painting! Got another one from the 90's batch of Ral Partha's. This one is a Drow Elf. Was feeling like trying some of the darker skin tones after watching another RVE on it. Feels pretty good! BATTLE REPORT! Wins: * Skin combo: Black Brown, Black Red, Orange Red. Used in conjunction with one another. The highlights are still on the darker side, but you can still make out muscle and shape. Win! * Used copper/brown combo to bring this guy to life. Feels very warm, but still needs some kind of "pop" color somewhere. I tried to make that happen on the fletchings on the bolts, but feels like it needs more. * Gradient work on the weapon. I was trying to think of it radiating heat, since this is the underdark afterall. I wasn't able to pull off a glowing effect or OSL, but it seems like it works. * The face - getting the mustache, side burns, and eyes to really pop was fun. I feel VERY happy about the eyes. Misses: * Not wild about the accessories colors. * Questioning the color chosen for the sword. * Was messing around a few times on what parts were wood, metal, or otherwise on the crossbow. Meh. * Hair is still an area I struggle with. I did 3 layers on this one. Deep grey, light grey, white. I feel it comes out strong, but not super good on showing definition or volume in the hair. Always open to any feedback anyone has. I'm also curious to think of what kind of base to put this guy on. Any thoughts?

Gotta love the weekend. Time to get caught up on some minis! This particular mini is sentimental to me. I had picked them up back in 1990 when I was just finding my way with painting. Sadly, it would only be a few years before I found sports and other things to occupy my time and left the hobby for 30 years. 30 years later, though I'm rearing to go! My parents send these minis to me that they found at the old house and I happily take them. A few were somewhat painted and a few were only primed. This is one that was somewhat painted, but nothing I felt reluctant about stripping. That said, let's get to the painting! Battle Report! Wins: * Stripped this metal model right down to the bare metal with the ol LA Cleaner. Holy smokes - that stuff eats paint like a champ. Leave it in there for a few days and it is practically falling off. Major win to discover this very inexpensive and effective method. * Primed this model with Stynylrez Black and zenithal with DR White ink. Worked out well, but still have some learning to do with the new airbrush (Badger 105) * The primer and ink dries quickly allowing for work immediately after priming. Yay! * Once again learning my new training gained from RVE with using white, I figure this tunic would be perfect for a Paladin. Using dark grey, then mid grey, and finally light grey to a white highlight. It worked great and looks believable. However, there is still a bit more blending I could learn going from dark to light. For this being the 2nd one to test this method on only hours within learning it - Win! * Tested a gradient on the sword. Since my confidence was high and I was feeling saucy, I wanted to give a gradient a test. I've often wanted to try doing something else with metal, but this seemed like a nice one to try. I think the dark to light worked well on the blades. This is only the first of many steps to getting to NMM, but it's a good start. * Used a aluminum color for the chain mail, then shaded it with GW Drakenshade. I kind of like the blue tint and nice use of it being like a 'blue steel' look. Dig. * Going light on metals was definitely the way to go. Misses: * Face still feels a little weak. Used a Flat Flesh up to Pale Skin with two gradients in between. It still feels spotty. * With the lips I tried adding some warmth to them with a light red glaze. Meh... * Swords and dagger after I did them, I realized don't have the same direction in their gradient. It's a small thing, but once I spotted it, Ican't take my eyes off of it. Minor detail, but sucks that I didn't catch it earlier. * I am not super happy with the boots/gloves leather . I feel like Ishould have gone with a different leather color. Not bad, just not great. * The gold coloring on the moons was added after. I originally had them as a silver color, but it didn't look as good on the skin in silver. So I swapped the circlet to gold . In doing that Ichanged them all and am not as happy with the gold. May change back. This was a really fun one to do. It's a bit smaller than the other minis because of the older style, but what a trip down memory road to paint it. Any thoughts? Any feedback. Let me have it!

I am not good at telling stories on paper. my mind races far ahead of where the story wants to go and I never get it right so I will let the diorama tell itself. this is an original copy of the Clutch of Fear produced by Ral Partha in the early 1990s. The piece is high lead content. so soft infact that without some strategic pinning the joints fail (or so I have been told). The basic story is that 2 egg thieves come to relieve a mother dragon of one of her eggs and she comes back early catching them just as they are leaving. The setting on the box seems to be some type of sulfur spring or volcanic hot spring and I get the impression of stillness of morning broken only by the shriek of an enraged mother. I went pretty classic on this one, going with the red dragon and robin blue eggs like the box art but decided that the spines and chest plates should be more contrast than the slightly darker red of the box. I took the original base pieces included in the box and expanded them to a small diorama of a hotspring using Magic water, a transparent epoxy to create the water around the spring. The resin developed a little bit of a lip at the edge but I wasn't willing to cut it down and risk the clarity of the water by trying to sand and polish the resin. (its more rubbery that solid and difficult to polish -- I tried on two sample pieces and it didn't work out well.) anyway the WIP is here if your interested: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/94482-a-new-year-a-new-old-dragon/ and here are the images of the final project. Hope everyone has as much fun looking as I did creating this. Feel free to comment and question away as always. The project was a lot of fun and the they got the expression of the egg thief who is looking back to see an enraged mother dragon bearing down on him just about right! One shot from the human's perspective to give an idea of the trouble they are in.... And one from a mothers perspective as she hones in on the ones who are trying to steal her precious eggs!

Tere Reaperlased! So here's another miniature from the days gone by, a Julie Guthrie Female Giant, originally in her All Things Dark and Dangerous line. This is apparently version two of the miniature. The first one I painted maybe a year or so ago, a more primitive looking hill giant lady, who has always been one of my favorite figures Julie has sculpted along with her female centaur Julie Guthrie Hill Giant Julie Guthrie Centaurs Anyhoos, here she is: and then afterwards a comparison photo so you can see her against one of her contemporaries, a female mage: once again, color choice was so hard and I have no idea where the inspiration for purple hair came from. I think it was due to the fact that she wasn't a earth-tone hill giant, but a little more civilized. And we all know most civilized women have purple hair. Anyhows, hope you enjoy!

Hello everyreaperbody! So just recently finished these three go-lucky ladies, a trio of Dancing Girls sculpted quite a while back by Dennis Mize. Colors were the hardest part fo figure out plus I tried to do some semi-transparent clothing, not sure how well that turned out and here they are together: Wanted different hair and different skin tones for each one. Relatively small figures, almost horrified when I see them so close up, but oh well, such is the curse of this hobby. I'd painted a set of them maybe 15 years ago. Don't have any pictures of the original set unfortunately, and then I went and sold them on eBay for I don't remember at all how much. So I'm glad I got a hold of another copy to do again and keep. I'll probably be putting them on super-simple bases in the near future, just so they don't fall over. So anyways, hope you enjoy!

I can't begin to tell you how excited i am that my parents found these in the basement in some supplies i had stored. These are Ral Partha models from 1988 to 1991. I bought them with my allowance back when i was like 9 or 10 and am thrilled to see these again. I remember being so afraid to paint them because i didn't want to mess them up, that i never ever tried. These are primed and need to be stripped. These are early pewter-white metal. They even had packaging that read "now lead free". What I'm wanting to do is savor the joy of painting them, now that I'm way more capable. However...i need to get this crappy primer off of them. These are 30+ years old and I'm blown away they look as good as they do. Anyone have a solution that can strip this down to the metal?

Well 2020 is over and even though the year wasn't so great I did get my dragon goal of 12 dragons completed (actually completed 15 !) So with the new year I'm looking to try it again. The last year I did a bunch of dragons from all eras a d makes. This year I think I will make the challenge a little more specific. This year I'll try for 12 dragons from defunct companies: grenadier, Ral Partha, Thunderbolt Mountain, heritage, and others that are no longer producing today. Whether i include minis from companies that died recently, im not sure (and I know Ral Partha lives on as Iron Wind and Grenadier lives on as Merltion? But I'm including them because its my challenge and the ones I have are the originals. That said the first piece I did was the Bridge of Sorrows. It came out really well so I let my better half look through my old boxed sets and she chose the next one: Clutch of Fear! This is another mini that I have had sitting in its box waiting for decades to be completed and its time has come (besides if I really mess up they have started recasting the molds again so its not an utter disaster. Also, since i have this one in the original box, I thought i would do a WIP to show how it goes. Here is what it look like when I opened the box... All the parts are there, including the instructions (more on those in the future) and an "inspected by 3" as well as assembly instructions. Hope you all enjoy the ride. I'll try to be diligent with updates.

this is one of those miniatures that has sat on my shelf of shame for far too many years (or decades even!). I got this as a used mini over 20 years ago which a paintjob that was actually flaking off the miniature. In addition I was missing a few parts, namely one leg and a wing bone. So I stripped the mini and put it in a baggy with the rest of my dragons. and time passed.... about 4 months ago I opened up an unrelated box containing a keep wall from Games Workshop and there, lying in the box are the old pieces to the Bridge of Sorrows. I looked it over and I decided its time had come: I had some new painting skills and tricks to experiment with and the mini itself was just too iconic to be left lying forgotten in a box where no one would see it. With that I started cleaning up the mini and seeing what was left and what I could do with the mini. I like the idea that drakes are a usually a little plainer than dragons, being occasionally eaten by said dragons, I decided I wanted the body to be a brown and started as such. However, that quickly got boring and I thought, 'what if he had some mating plumage and his wings brightened when that time of the year came around. Of course to woo the ladies he would need some really nice present, and what could be more like chocolates to a Wyvern than a damsel in distress! so with the dragon started it was time to move on to the rest of the diorama. The wizard is done pretty typically, using a shade from dark to light which seems to work very well for me, but the centaur was a challenge. I went to start painting his armor using metallic and the miniature was just too small to let any sort of variation in the metallic show through. So I decided to try NMM and this time it worked! I really could not be more pleased with how the centaurs armor came out, looking for all the world like bare metal that has seen a number of battles but has not been allowed to rust but has lost some of that factory polish and shine. (if you cant tell i am really proud of that armor!) So with that history, here are the results! I hope you like what you see. This is a really excellent model and one of the most dynamic set pieces I have. The plinth the piece rests on is a piece of black palm I got in a grab bag of wood and I chose it because the surface looks like muddy water and does a good job of making the bridge look like its just hanging there. Enjoy!

And good evening to all towards the end of the year of 2020! So I just finished this one this morning, another Wood Elf sculpted by Tom Meier for Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures and recently re-released by Ral Partha Legacy. His eyes are very small, and I tried to stay "in the lines" but they may have slightly gotten out of their orbits. My only other problem here was trying to figure out the colors, but hopefully what I eventually chosen doesn't clash. Anyhoos, enjoy!

Winter Salutations to you cold weather Reaper ptarmigans! So I'd mentioned in a previous post how Ral Partha Legacy, a sister company of Iron Wind Metals, has recently opened up and one of their ranges they have acquired is Tom Meier's Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures. So here is one of them a Wood Elf Lady: I really love these miniatures. I'm used to painting Ral Partha stuff, but these are quite a bit different, as the detail is so fine and detailed. The eyes and some of the jewelry is so small and hard to paint. Even though they are 30 mm, they are quite realistically proportioned so lots of the details aren't exaggerated. Anyhoos, hope you enjoy, and if you've got a few moments check out the Ral Partha Legacy page!

Hello again Reaper Message Boardonians! So here's another piece of old school goodness, a Ral Partha Charging Barbarian, sculpted by Julie Guthrie way back in the delightful eighties. This one was originally in one of the Partha Boxed sets, 98-015 Bezerkers, and now is sold individually at Iron Wind Metals. Pretty quick to paint as he was unencumbered by too much armor, clothing or general stuff. My biggest challenge with this fellow was to figure out his hair color. Blonde eventually won the day. Anyhoos, please enjoy!

Hello guys! I'm not sure if this is the place to put this and I don't think it's permissible to put links to other web sites, but just as some general information, Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures, that was a company that Tom Meier had founded quite a many years ago after leaving Ral Partha, are once again available, and being cast through a subsidiary company of Ral Partha, called Ral Partha Legacy. They are working on releasing some classic Partha for their Chaos Wars game, other miniatures that were previously out of production, and of special note, miniatures from Thunderbolt Mountain. At the moment on their site they have all their 32 mm elves, orcs and goblins, as well as their smaller 25mm Arthurians and a variety of other historical and fantasy miniatures. Worth checking out, some very nice pieces out there!

Hi guys and gals, So just painted these two, which were pretty simple jobs being they didn't have too many things hanging off of them. These are bugbears sculpted by Tom Meier, back in 1983. I had always thought these were odd kind of figures, because my other concept of bugbears at the time were the Monster Manual version as well as the two Grenadier bugbears that were available at the time. One of my future projects is to paint the Grenadier bugbears as well, plus some more recent Partha bugbears and I think I have somewhere the female bugbear by Reaper that I'd like to paint up. Anyhoos, these guys have these huge eyes that I really didn't know what to do with. I thought of one color and not put in any pupils, but then changed my mind. Hopefully green eyes look okay. Anyhoos, enjoy!

So for those who celebrate such things, I hope you all had a really nice Thanksgiving as well as a beautiful Black Friday! So I finished these a few days ago, but have kind of been a bit busy for posting. They both have shields, but only one of them I had to worry about putting a "something" on the shield. I didn't know exactly what to put on there, so ended up with a little green face with X'd out eyes. There was still space so painted a little triangle. No great significance, just filling in some space. Being I was painting them too both at the same time and in the effort of saving time I ended up painting their footwear equal colors, hopefully nobody will think the less of me for it. These are two miniatures from Ral Partha, sculpted by Dennis Mize, that were part of their Ral Partha Imports range. Partha originally was distributing some Citadel figures back in the eighties, but I think they either lost the rights to the miniatures or just decided to sculpt their own alternative versions. In any case as a result, there are some Citadel figures that have a Partha version, mostly sculpted back then by Dennis Mize. I was watching too around last week Anne's Twitch channel in which she mentioned she actually does some painting or dry brushing of static grass and I mean to try it one of these days, just haven't quite figured out with it yet if it's just a bit of random dry brushing or if there would be a method to it. It kind makes sense though. I found out years ago that if you used sand or rocks on your bases, it looks a lot better if you painted them as well, as the rocks don't seem to check with the whole miniature and base being painted. So anyhoos, everybody enjoy your long weekend if you happen to have one, don't shop too much, and maintain some social distancing!

Hello to all the forumites of this fine page! So just finished this set a few days ago, the Ral Partha Water Lords, sculpted by Jim Johnson I'm thinking in the nineties, even though as per always, I forgot to look at the date stamp at the bottom before I put them on their base. I can really only directly show one of these minis, because the other two are ladies with their aquatic lady parts floundering all over, so here's the first one: and here is then a link to the female aquatic elf: Female aquatic elf from the Water Lords If you were interested in seeing other angles (this is the one I put on the Lost Mini Wiki), you could check out on my Instagram account Moonglumsminis And here is the Water Elemental in this set, a really cool piece in my opinion, but once again, full of even more mammal parts than the lady elf: Water Elemental Also on my Instagram page is the back angle of this wet and wonderful woman! So it was very fun painting these guys, and I got to use a lot of my sea color paints from Reaper, which just don't get enough use these days. For the elves, I wanted them to be kind of subdued colors, as if they were down in the deep blue sea, and then with the male elf's mount, I was kind of in a conundrum, do I also give him subdued colors, or do I do a more tropical color scheme to offset the pale elf colors? In the end, I opted for the brighter tropical colors to give hopefully a bit more visual interest. The whites I think as the highlights for the water come off "whiter" in the actual minis, wish that would translate a bit more in the photos, but I think they came out more or less decently. Around this same time, Ral Partha also did some other "elemental" blister packs, they did a fire one, an air one, and an earth blister pack. They were all sculpted by Jim Johnson, one of the few sculptors I can never seem to find anything out about. I'd previously painted a female djinn from the air set, but I think I'm going revisit them all to hopefully get them all done one of these days in the far-flung future. And just as a final mention, you can get all of these elemental minis, the water ones and others, on the Iron Wind Metals web site. Anyhoos, enjoy and have a beautiful week of labor and painting (labor as work, not a week full of pre-partum pain)! Mark aka 72Moonglum

Hello everyone, here are pictures of a model that had been waiting 34 years before being painted, Ral Partha 02-333 Acrobatic Thief sculpted by Julie Guthrie. "Thanks to @Thoramel, for providing me with the model info.

Hello all you fine purveyors or all things Reaper and miniature related! So here this evening, I'm posting up a miniature sculpted by Dennis Mize back in 1989 (I actually looked at the bottom before adhering him on to his base) and you may or may not recognize him. He's a more "realistic" version of a certain comic book classic, Groo the Wanderer, officially named in the Iron Wind Metal Site as a Brainless Barbarian: In case you've never actually met him, here is what he looks like in the two-dimensional world: Super-fun mini to paint, pretty straightforward, the only issue that I had created in my mind was painting his tunic orange, kind of to match his comic book coloring, but in the end it was a bit easier than I thought. I think it was also way back in the day that maybe Dark Horse Miniatures made cartoon versions of him as miniatures. I would one day love to snag some of those, but that will be for another Ebay adventure I'm sure. So a double blast to the past, both in comic book and miniature form, hope you enjoy!

Hello Reaper brethren, So some more Shadowrun tonight, a Female Rigger with Pistol, sculpted by Jim Johnson, that enigmatic sculptor of yore. I ended up really liking this figure, just general fun, and when I saw her shirt and coat, it reminded me a little bit of a Russian sailor, so tried some stripes on the t-shirt and some kind of dark blue peacoat. I was really struggling to figure out what color I wanted her boots to be and almost made them bright yellow, but then calmed down and went for a redstone shadow base color. I of course see all my imperfections and dots of dust but it seems that for the most part, once I've gotten to that part of taking pictures, unless I see something really gawdawful, I'm just not going to do any repainting or touching up. So here she is in all her lilac haired glory: I took a lot of different angles because she's one of those not so flat figures, where just a front and back seem to be enough. As always, metals are torture, but if you don't keep trying to paint something you'll never get better, so just paint and paint again. So, enjoy!

Good evening all you Reaper hooligans! So another figure finished, this time a Ral Partha Shadowrun Female Detective, sculpted by Dave Summers, probably latter eighties to early nineties. Kind of difficult with the eyes because they were small little balls, but otherwise, pretty okay with how she turned out. Gun a little too blue, but probably won't ever fix that I'm guessing. I kind of like this figure because she's from their Shadowrun line, but she could easily be any normal, modern detective gal. I tried to do very a mild colored blouse, pinkish, with a grey skirt and jacket. This is also the first time I've worked on pantyhose, so let me know what you guys think. It was after painting her legs as normal skin color, I did some washes of first storm grey, then Dark elf skin shadow, and then finally black. Anyhow, let me know what y ou think about the pantyhose and hope you enjoy!

Good morning Reapermaniacs, So here's one I've had painted for about a week or so but have never just gotten around to sit down at my normal computer to post him. This one is one I've actually had for a long time, and it's an old lead version back from the seventies. I had to at one point I think scrape off some paint. I had another newer version of him, but the detail was pretty soft so ended up painting up the original, whose details were so much more nice and crisp. And being he was a "high" elf, I wanted him to have some nice light colors, no greens and browns. Anyhoos, here he is: I've been on a recent kick painting these older miniatures, even old by Partha standards (pre-eighties). I think I'm going to keep painting them, putting them into my normal mix of newer, old Partha figures. In any case, hope you like them!

Hello again Reaperlings! So here is the other figure I finished this morning from their Shadowrun Range, a Jim Johnson Female Bounty Hunter with Machine Gun. With this gal, hard to decide on colors. Do I go strictly drab and military greens and browns or do I add some color into it? I opted for color: I'm hoping/guessing that she's got some kind of radio/cell phone/walkie talkie in her other hand, but hard to know for sure. I think Shadowrun probably had a bunch of different technologies, not at all familiar with the game, but really do like the figures. Once again, enjoy, hope you like!

Hello fine fans and lovers of the Reaper Miniature World! So today I've got two figures to post. I'd do them together, but different sculptors and different genres. The first one is an old Julie Guthrie figure from the eighties, Woman Warrior With Two Swords. I think she came in a box from the range "the Adventurers", which was full of female player characters. So here she is: In one of Anne's podcasts, she was doing non-metal metal and I'd asked her about her base colors and she suggested more grey as opposed to a blue beginning, so with this figure and her metals, I started out with Rainy Grey instead of Ashen Blue which is what I normally use. I think she came out pretty decently, even though of course I'm never satisfied with my own work. Such is the curse of the painter.... Anyhoos, hope you enjoy her, a very fun and basic figure. One of the reason I like old school minis as I've mentioned before. She strapped on her armor, grabbed her blades and took off. No ladening herself with bags, sacks and knick knacks.

Morning everybody! So just finished this one up and got photos edited. I've had this figure for a while now, just finally getting time to paint it, he's Ral Partha, Wizard from Ral Partha's Personalities and Things that Go Bump in the Night series. One of the first miniatures of that series, and this might be the second version. There was another version with a shorter hanging cloak, and then one was done many years later, where you are able to easily see Tom Meier's progress over the years. This was sculpted in the seventies, in the infancy of Ral Partha. It's a fun miniature and this is just a huge and heavy chunk of lead. and then kind of little close up of his tomes: and this figure oddly enough at one point came in a gold plated version as some sort of prize. No idea why I have it, I think it came from when my brother was working at Star Realm, our local game shop. Sadly, as I was bringing him upstairs to photograph, he did a nose dive onto my basement, concrete floor and got a piece of his gold plating knocked off around his hat: Beyond that he has certainly seen better days with rust/mold or whatever happens to gold plating after 40 years or so. Anyway, hope you enjoy this little look into miniatures history! Mark