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I almost didn't bother posting these, but I went ahead and did so. Just some quick rats and spiders. The rats are from the D&D Castle Ravenloft board game, the spiders are from the Legend of Drizzt board game. To mix it up, I alternated colors between brown/dark gray/light gray. They came out a bit dark, but I guess that's okay for rats and spiders. Nothing spectacular, but they actually get used quite a bit (on the rare occasions when my group actually gets to play).

This is actually a 54mm miniature; it was made by GW for their long OOP Inquisitor game. It came as a pet/sidekick for the mutant character Quovandius. I got the pair of them for $1.50 at a store clearance sale. While going through boxes the other day, I found the rat, but not the other figure. I decided the rat would make an excellent mad scientists experiment, so I painted it up. Please let me know what you think.

A little speedpaint job before breakfast today; after playing Burrows and Badgers at Christmas, my brother and I agreed that we’ll run some at Gencon this summer. So, I need to work up another couple of war bands. For the Redwall fans, I gather this is not-Cluny the Scourge...

This is the fun Bobby Jackson sculpt 02867: Matthias the Twisted, concept art by Talin. He(?)'s a lassic rat-lovin' nosferatu type vampire with an awesome wardrobe and a great pose. He has a lot of great details, including three tiny rats! (They are 28mm scale. They are really tiny.) WIP thread here.

The GM said we needed a nosferatu, so here we are. This is Reaper's 02867: Matthias the Twisted, a gnarly rattish vampire. All paints used are Golden Matte Fluid Acrylics. Color mixes are (usually) noted, but not exact ratios. Questions are welcomed and I will try to answer them. Critiques are appreciated. This is the way I usually start miniature figures: Lightly primed with Titanium White, then when that is dry, washing it over with Burnt Umber. Burnt Umber is a dark, transparent pigment that settles into crannies when thinned down and shows the details very well. It also gives a nice warm undertone to later paint layers. (I have to remember that I experimented with a cold blue-grey wash on some vampire figures that avoided all the nice warm undertones.) I paint vampires with stark white skin, shaded with flat greys mixed from Titanium White and Carbon Black. This is almost the only time I ever use such a simple mix for greys. The first layer is a thinned white (blodginess is the underpainting showing through). Steps in shading:

I've been wanting to paint these rat swarms since I got my Bones I shipment. However, the base was cut into this jagged shape, so I always delayed painting them as I waited on basing them. Finally, I decided to base some with a good heapin' helpin' of sand. The other two got green stuff treatment to try to blend the base that way. One was wood planks, and the other was flagstones. I tried to emphasize fur/hair in the painting. I totally "phoned it in" on the tails, noses and claws. I really didn't want to over-spend time on these guys. Sorry, I realize I didn't give you a good shot of the skull they are swarming over. C&C Welcomed.

I finally finished by Giant Rats Dozen from Bones I. I tried to give them fur texture. The texture from the cast was too light for drybrushing, so it's essentially free hand. The gray rats have some red and green glazed into the shadows to give them a little diseased feel. I spent WAY too much time painting these... Mold lines on the actual rat (as opposed to the base) were too tricky to try to get rid of, especially in light of the subject matter. They’re rats. A lot of them. C&C Welcome.

Bones1 rat swarm, done in a couple hours to kill time while my main project was drying. Tabletop level.

Howdy, For my fourteenth day of International Mini Painting Month I present PF Red Dragon head/Dire Rat conversion from ReaperCon 2016 Kev!

well, it seems to have been not quite a year since my last post, and a bit longer since my last post to Show Off. In the meantime, Nissiana and I have purchased a house, which ate most of the Fall, Winter and Spring, and our Summer has been, per usual, filled with rehearsals and performances. Although I am currently imbroiled with a production of "The Three Musketeers," I've managed to unpack some paint kit and brought it to work. My recent lunch breaks have yielded a passel of kobolds and a pile of rats, both of which will likely lurk the basements of Sharn (or the waste drain of an alchemist's lab, in the case of that one rat) soon enough. Anyway, these are all to a very rough "look ma, I finished!" standard, mostly just to knock some rust off my brushes. Hope you enjoy. Penny bases will be blacked eventually.

some barrow rats, painted up for ROUS challenge

Painting up a rat dude for a Pathfinder game I'm in. I wanted to go with an albino white rat look. I had trouble getting the skin to come out right at first. I'd gone with a medium caucasian skintone (Vallejo Medium Flesh), washed with GW Carroburg Crimson, and then highlighted with Vallejo Highlight Skin, a very pale skintone. I wanted to go with a high contrast. It ended up not working quite as well as I had hoped. Adding in some Reaper Old West Rose where the Medium Flesh showed helped a lot. In the future, I think I'll either add a midtone in between the two skin colors, or else start with a pink like the Old West Rose. The end result isn't too bad, but I think I can get there faster, and with a less mesy looking result. I used my Scale 75 steel alchemy set, using their guide for a more blue steel for the sword and chainmail. I think I'll want to add in a bit more of a neutral steel color for the midtones. Right now, it's coming across too blue and green. After that, I need to finish up the fur cloak, do some finishing on the leather belt, and add some basing.

An old large lead rat-person in armor and a leather skirt. I know nothing of its origins. I probably shot these photos too soon. You can see areas where the matte varnish is still wet. (title edited to show correct identity)

Decided that I'm gonna do some quick and easy animals. Not much progress tonight, but then it was a late start...

Back to monster-painting, after a fairly long break. This is one of the two nasty boil-ridden critters from the Reaper Bones 77198: Barrow Rats pack. They're pretty big rats; beside a regular human-sized figure they'd be about the size of a pony.

I am starting a new D&D 5e campaign Monday, running the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure. I was inspired by getting my Oathsworn terrain yesterday to incorporate it into the adventure, so this morning when I got home from work I started painting minis. The first adventure involves five giant rats and a black bear, and the party has a druid who wants to wild shape starting at level 2. I started prepping five terrain pieces (two tents, the well, cookpot/fire and firewood) and nine animals (6 rats, a black bear, a lion and a dire wolf). I am a slow painter at the best of times, so I really forced myself to work fast. I am also not a very good painter at the best of times, so I was prepared to accept some serious mediocrity just to get them table ready. My group uses a lot of prepaints, so that was my quality goal with this speed session, make something that wouldn't look out of place next to prepaints (low bar, I know). Amazingly, I got both tents, all the rats, the dire wolf and the black bear finished. I also got a fair bit of progress on the cookpot/fire. And even more amazing, they don't suck. They aren't great by any means, and looking at the photo I can see some things that could use fixing, but I am really pleased with the results. Especially the tents, and the black bear. I think I got a nice weathered canvas tent look (the green on the bottom edge was deliberate, I wanted it to look like grass from the base), and the bear's snout really turned out well, I think. For colours I used a bunch of Reaper paints. Most of the figures were base coated in ruddy leather, the others were based in tanned leather (unfinished lion, tents) or black (black bear and a couple rats). I did have some trouble using the pure black (09037) as a base coat, it tended to bead a bit, but I did manage to get it to stick after re-coating it a couple times. I will pick a different black if I want to base coat another mini. I used ruddy leather, tanned leather and linen white for the tents, and did a black wash on the dire wolf. I used muddy olive and olive green for the mossy looking grass, and some stone grey for blending, sun yellow for eyes , brains pink for tails and fresh blood for mouths (and some drips on the dire wolf base).

These have been setting around waiting for me to paint them for awhile. I already have some normal colored painted rats, so I started tame (light purple instead pink on the white rat, then added stripes), then tried a "plant" rat, and finished with a sunset rat. I didn't spend very long on them. Perhaps an hour total including time debating over colors.

Finally got around to basing up the 20 pack of rats from the Amscan "Super Mega Mix" bag of Halloween favors. {I've never seen this rat mold anywhere else] Drilled holes into the rat's neck and using Gorilla Glue to secure the tail tips (tails secured in place with rubber bands until glue cured). Tails were tucked to the side of each rat after curing. Bases are 25mm x 50mm rounded calvary bases ( a.k.a. Pill bases ) made of custom ordered MDF. Texture just happened from the process of splitting the bases with a X-Acto then applying PVA & paint then drybrushing. Rats got a bit of sloppy drybrushing to differentiate between each along with pools of blood and tail positioning. Not very good, but I'm glad to have these ready for tabletop. And now I just got the idea to use gorilla glue to make some "rabid froth" on some mouths...

So started a bit of work on these two, since they're using the same colors as my Kraken. Going for a mangy, nearly-hairless, nasty look Thinking yellow or green-yellow for the boils

When I was in highschool, I learned the basics of mini painting. Ordering most of my minis from Wargames & West, and using (what I have now learned are called) craft paints. Before highschool was over, I had gotten out of it, and some time during my college years, I lost all the minis I had painted. This August, I picked up the Learn to Paint Kits #1 and #3. (Try as I might, I could not get #2! What techniques does #2 cover?) I already knew about washes and dry-brushing, but I never had much of an elegant hand for it. I do love it though. I love that the sculptor did so much of the work for me; that if I put the pain of the right consistency down on the mini, the mini almost seems to know what to do with it. Well, at least that's how it seems to me. Anyway, I finished up the town guard dude about a month ago. And I finally got around to working on the big ole' nasty rat. Just in time for Halloween. They're nothing special. I'm aware of many issues, most of them which would be alleviated if I were just a little patient. I made a real mess of the base of the rat, first by not letting the primer dry, then by not letting wash(es) dry. I also missed a fair amount of flash on the rat, and forgot to paint the straps on the guard's shins. Still, I'm not unhappy with them. I was a fun process, and I'm looking forward to doing some more painting, and having a nice collection of minis for playing D&D. Finally, I just want to say. I have to believe the LTPKs are one of the best things Reaper can do for itself. They smash through the barriers to entry for the hobby. I really hope they get Bones LTPKs on shelves. Also, I really would love to see the LTPK2. I wanna know what I'm missing.

Alright so a few weeks ago I posted in the Tips forum explaining how my brother and I had decided to begin painting. Well this week the first LTPK arrived and we finally got to put paint to miniature. So since I got a lot of tips from this forum I decided to do a WIP. Of course we have the soldier: And the Rat: Obvious observations include lots of flashing, mold lines and a soldier that just can't keep his sword up in the face of battle. I'll be right back with new post with the cleaned up and painted versions of the minis. I'll then post a 'lessons learned' post shortly there after.

I finally got around to painting up the L2PK1 that I've had for years...old enough that it came with the older Pro Paint in the pots! Anyway, here they are, forgive the quality from my cell phone camera. All in all I'm pleased with them, my first mini's painted in over 20 years.

As I looked through my Shelf of Ancestral Shame, I noticed a really interesting looking rat sculpt. Given I had just finished the Barrow Rat from L2PK1, and also the pack of Bone Rats, I figured I'd paint it up along with two less awesome looking rats from the SAS and basically have a squeaking wave of terror ready to descend on my players. Once I actually get around to getting some players. Mental note - minions before twisted acts of artistic science next time! Anyways, here you go: my rat pack. I apologise in advance for my ghetto photography skills. If anyone knows the providence of the plague rat (I think it's a Grenadier sculpt from the late 70s or the early 80s) could you let me know? Plague Rat Of Unusual Size Anhurians Bad Day

So I ordered a couple of bags of 1" slotted tiles from frp this weekend and I went a bit nuts and Now I have a wip thread just for this order.... So posting in order of interest to me. Or something like that, it's late and I'm pissed my tengu necromancer didn't get to cast animate dead on that troll he just killed. Nice cheap mini. freebooter lillith So after last week we had 2 pc deaths in my game and one of the new players (I have a weak spot to make sure they get attached to their characters) rolled a ratfolk alchemist who wear's full plate and I stumbled apon this in the sale rack.... Had to get it. So this is my first ever resin mini... I must say I don't like the way it behaves it's easy to clean/carve but it's brittle, also takes a Lot more prep work than reaper's bones or worst metal mini's. Game is tomorrow so I suspect I will base it and toss it on the table and paint it later. scibor miniature rat warrior [/url] And we come to the pilot... I have been eying some of these busts for a WHILE now and I noticed they keep putting them on 40-70% sells so I figured now is the time to press myself in the corner and learn something new. I'm really excited to get started on him but a bit worried too. At this point I had to do a LOT of clean up, it came covered in resin bubbles that I had to scrape off with the back of my eXcato and other minor things. scibor mini dwarf pilot lenoardo

I paint very few creatures that my RPG adventure groups encounter; but this is (1) of a pair of beautiful barrow rats that Reaper put out and I painted both as adventure playing pieces. This is (1) of those two.