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Dark Tide - An Ongoing Painting Project Starting another WIP thread for my other major ongoing project - Dark Tide: a nautical 5e campaign. While my other project, Frostrun, at least got a few sessions in before pandemic put a stop to in-person games, Dark Tide is my pet project that's been in the works for going on three years. I have pages of world building notes and have been collecting a ridiculous amount of minis to populate the islands and port towns of the world. Here is where I will document some WIP as I start painting through the minis and build myself a fleet of ships to accompany them. I would love to hear feedback or hear tales of your own nautical adventures. And feel free to share photos of your own maritime miniatures! The Ships A major part of this project is building a fleet of ships. I have attempted this in the past and abandoned the project when I became unsatisfied. I have recently restarted this project, building on my knowledge from the first attempt. You can follow my progress here: Moonglow Builds a Boat Troubled Waters - an Introduction to the Seas For centuries, the kingdoms of Cellion and Aridia have warred over the seas that separate them. For the last 100 years, a shaky truce has kept war from the water. But rumors have surfaced that the Aridian Emperor is dead, and tension once again brews over the waters between. To the east of the mainland lies the Great Sea Wall, a vast expanse of jagged rocks, stretching high up out of the ocean. Beyond this wall are the Wild Seas. The waters are violent and dangerous, and terrible creatures inhabit the depths. Few have reason to travel these forsaken waters, and fewer still are brave enough to attempt it. It is said that long ago, Chrona, the goddess of death, forsook the seas. Drowned souls are doomed to swim the waters for eternity, never able to rest. Because of this, sailors have a healthy fear of the seas they travel, and go out of their way to rescue the bodies of any who die at sea. Only proper burial on land can carry their souls to the other side. Yet for all the danger and risk inherent in sea travel, many find its call alluring. The open ocean, the promise of new land, and the rumor of lost treasures from times long ago. But for those attracted by treasure, nothing is more alluring than the lost treasures of Captain Dread. The legendary and fearsome pirate king was rumored to have hidden an immeasurable horde of treasure on the island of Istishia. And yet the island's location remains a mystery. And as for Captain Dread? He vanished, along with his ship, and the knowledge of the Istishia's whereabouts. Captain Ulysses Ashe Captain Ulysses Ashe is said to have sailed alongside the infamous Captain Dread. Word around Port Venture is that he's looking for a crew to man The Bloodhawk. And rumors say he's going after the lost treasure. Frost? Who is this Frost guy? This is Captain Ashe! Every crew needs its captain. In the role of Captain Ashe, we have Barnabus Frost, Pirate Captain 77132 But our captain here needs a proper base, and he's missing something pretty important... ... ahh much better! A base as symmetrical as his needed some green stuff to blend it out. I'm not the greatest at it but it works. Also made a hat for the first time! Found a guide on the interwebs of someone making pirate orcs and the hat seemed pretty simple. Just flatten out a small circle of green stuff, press it on your minis head, fold up the back flap, then fold the front two sides. Easy peasy! Just need to let that Green Stuff cure before i can prime and paint. Ghosts of the Drowned Souls With the seas forsaken by the goddess of death, the drowned souls are doomed to swim for eternity. Here they are easily picked up by all manner of dark being promising them an escape from their eternal suffering. "You best start believing in ghost stories." No pirate campaign would be complete without some ghost pirates! I was painting up a demi-lich recently and loved the ethereal wisps i ended up painting on it. So i felt inspired to paint up some other ghostly minis. Finally decided to put some paint on the Ghost Pirates from Bones 4. I started by gluing them to bases and blending the edges in with some super glue and baking soda. I have started trying to think about what i'm going to paint before priming and choosing a primer based on that. I typically prime grey but figured it'd be useful to prime these ghosts with white so i'm giving that a try. Going to paint up the ethereal wisps with a bluish-green color and transition to a more traditional physical paintjob on their clothes and bodies. Also, if it wasn't obvious, I decided to paint over the translucent. I've avoided the translucent minis so far because I wasn't sure how to handle them, but I think I might end up being in the camp of painting over them. I think i can both control the paint better that way, and will enjoy the end result better.

When you want fish men on the table you can never have too many of them. Here are two more tiik warriors, with spawn in tow, and a champion. I painted the champion in predator fish colors, dark blue and grey, kind of shark like. He is on a Bag of Crap base with a ruined stela. The warriors are on swamp terrain bases that I built.

Forumites may remember I painted this more than a year ago. Which I did, and then I, errr forgot to take finished pictures and post them. Sorry. I'm fixing that. This is Reaper's Bones kraken, #77291, which I believe was once offered in a resin-metal combo but is now sold in the much lighter and less fragile (and less expensive) Bonesium. When I put one together for a friend, I noted that the front end would make a pretty good carnivorous plant, especially when tucked into a lotus flower-shaped candleholder we have. It also seemed a pretty good evocation of the Sarlacc in "The Return of the Jedi". So when I put my own together, I left the body and the front end separate, both for ease of storage and for versatility of use. (I never did figure out how to put the tentacles on, though. I tried to follow the store image in both the ones I put together and they still both came out different.) I also love this model because it comes with a wonderfully elaborate base, the prow of a wrecked ship. We have been using that as scenery. Some of the creature has been painted with interference paint, which is either near-transparent or luminously glowing iridescent color depending on the angle of light and viewing. I've tried to include pictures to show the change. First are photos with a white background, to show the model clearly (I went a little overboard with underwater effects later). A few have Dark Sword Miniatures' mermaid warrior, DSM 1197, to show the scale of the model. This creature is BIG. Dark Sword Miniatures' mermaid warrior, DSM 1197, included to show the scale of the model. Very, very old WIP thread here.

Well after what seems like forever I have returned to painting stuff. Has been a huge couple of months. I bought and moved into a house, started a new job and lost my Dad to cancer. Kind of put the kibosh on painting. Didn't help I also screwed my arms up moving in. Anyhoo on the weekend decided to start on finishing everything that has been sitting around while I went back and forth between my old home in Sydney and new place in Goulburn. The sea elf was first cab off the ranks. For some reason came out a little fuzzy. Am thinking might need to get new camera.

Book of Nox:Voyage to Mirovia is the first expansion for Book of Nox, a Victorian horror dungeon crawler and will bring an aquatic steampunk element to the game. The game uses 28mm white metal miniatures with cast resin tiles and doors. Its a 30 day campaign and backing this project you will be able to get the miniatures at up to 35% off the retail price. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1043156996/book-of-nox-voyage-to-mirovia/description http://i.imgur.com/1vf7qIY.jpg

I painted this around 9 months to a year ago and am just now getting up the courage to start posting some of my minis. This one I'm pretty proud of. My photography skills on the other hand could use some work.

Here's a fun Bones figure by Julie Guthrie. She is covered with sea life: kelp, barnacles, a small octopus on her left elbow, a starfish on her left calf at the back, and a little crab on her right forearm at the back. She has great lines as a piece of sculpture. WIP threads here and here.

While not the first started, this is my first finished from the Bones II Kickstarter. This mini is huge, the size of a small dragon. As usual, I am lazy-arsed about basing and have simply painted up the base as-is. Comments and criticisms honestly appreciated. WIP thread here.

This is the first of two little predatory underwater plant-creatures sculpted by Patrick Keith. I had originally planned to paint them like kelp, but I think they turned out more like bok choy. Such is life in the vegetable kingdom. Their faces are really that featureless, with nothing but eerie eyespots. This one is 92691, which has a single skull on its base. WIP thread here. Second Kelpie photos to follow shortly.

This is the new Bones II version of Bob Ridolfi's Mab Grindylow, recently released in the store. There is a WIP thread here.

This is Julie Guthrie's sea hag, part of the core set of the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter. To begin with, I cleaned up the flash some, scrubbed her with soap and warm water, and primed her with Reaper's Brown Liner. When that had dried nicely I painted up her flesh with a pale sky blue and layered first a brick red color, then a pale yellow on her base for sand color.

I went back and forth over whether these needed to be linked for nudity, but they're not nude, they're plants that look sort of like women. I saw other versions posted on the forums so I guess they're okay. These are fun figures. They're killer seaweed with humanlike form. They haven't got faces, just sort of eyespots. There are little skulls nestled under their fronds. I have them in metal too, but these are the first I've painted. Here they are primed with Reaper Brown Liner. I mixed a transparent dark green out of Phthalocyanine Green and Burnt Sienna and washed it over the chlorophyll-bearing parts of the plants. I mixed a sickly pale green out of Phthalo Green, Hansa Yellow Opaque, Yellow Iron Oxide, Burnt Sienna, and a lot of Titanium White. It was actually for some frog's bellies, but I also used it to pick out the woman-forms of the monsters. First (on the left) there's one layer (it's semi-translucent), and some yellow sandy color washed over the bases. Against a dark background the color is almost unnoticeable in the white. Then (on the right) there's another layer on their flesh and more yellow on the bases. The color is coming out a little better. I mixed a medium brown, sort of skin tone and washed it over the sand to head the color in the direction of more realism. I also added a bit of a very pale, just slightly greenish yellow as a highlight on the woman-forms. They are pretty sloppy at the moment. I wanted to get basic coloring down before moving in to a finer level of detail. I love that there are so many possibilities in the Bones figures.

I'm painting up some aquatic PCs and monsters for upcoming ocean adventures. I had primed and glued these to fender washers for bases last year, but only just got started painting them. At that time I was priming Bones with a mixed brown of Burnt Umber and Titanium White, then washing over them with Burnt Umber to bring out the details. These days I think using just plain Reaper's Brown Liner is simpler and works better. The two Tiik Warriors are based on one-inch washers and the Champion is on a 1.5-inch washer. One fish-man is going to be greenish. I'm not really basing it on any actual fish species, although I may refer to pictures later. I glazed a pure Iron Oxide Yellow on the bases to begin to build up a sandy color. Then I washed over that with a much less saturated color with a similar value, a fairly complex mixed warm brown a little like a flesh tone.

This is an aquatic beast form I'm painting up for a shapeshifting PC. I primed it last year and started painting it last week. My creature had a tendency to topple over backwards, so I glued it to a one-inch fender washer, then primed it with a light brown mixed from Burnt Umber and Titanium White and washed it with thinned-down Burnt Umber (I have since last year changed my priming technique to using straight thinned-down Reaper Brown liner on Bones; much simpler, and obscures less detail). The first thing I did was wash over it with a transparent deep green mixed from Phthalo Green and Burnt Sienna. The color is pretty intense, but it's so transparent it lets the brown show through. I also left the creature brown in some areas. Later I brushed a fairly complex medium green mix (iirc, Phthalo Green, Hansa yellow Opaque, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Iron Oxide, and Titanium White) over parts of the creature, rather roughly, and laid in a sandy yellow color over its base. Later I glazed a very, very little Phthalo Blue (it's a color that overwhelms if one isn't careful) over parts of the creature. Most recently I took a pale mixed green (Phthalo Blue, Hansa Yellow Opaque, and Titanium White) and started laying in more careful highlights and shaping.

Hey Guys, Been a while since I've posted up a mini on the boards, been super busy at work with tax returns coming in and the weather getting nice in the midwest lol. Finally got around to finishing this Sea Lion, which my group is using as a stand-in for a Bunyip in our Pathfinder RPG. Tried out a few new things with this figure but ran into my typical problem of rushing and not thinning my paints down enough. Sadly painting at work gives me some sporadic start and stop times haha. Also I tried out using some Woodland Scenics Realistic Water, and Water Effects to give his base a shallow water vibe. Not sure if it turned out exactly how I had envision but it still looks cool to me. Hope you all enjoy :).

This is one of numerous aquatic creatures I'm painting for some oceanic-themed adventures. This one is for a PC. He's from the original Bones Kickstarter. He had a serious tendency to fall over backwards, so I glued him down to a one-inch fender washer. I primed him last year (before I seriously took to Reaper's Brown Liner) with a medium brown mixed from Burnt Umber and Titanium White, then washed pure Burnt Umber over him to pick out the details. The first thing I did was wash over him again with a deep green mixed from Phthalo Green and Burnt Sienna. Then I mixed a paler green from that with an addition of Hansa Yellow Opaque, Yellow Iron Oxide, and Titanium White, and brushed it lightly over the creature as a sort of basic highlight placement. I also washed over the base with a sandy yellow color.

Conversion of Bombshell's Edo Underling #1: More pics on my blog.

Familiars completed for my Coraldrax basing project! [found here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/56564-basing-coraldrax/ ]

As you might gather, I am really slow at this. Also my miniatures painting things have been stowed away for the long holiday season. But I have finally finished my first Bones mini, 77188 "Sea Lion", sculpted by Julie Guthrie. I have been intrigued by underwater photography, particularly in shallow clear water under bright sunshine where the lensing effects of the wave ridges create constantly changing lines of glowing pale green on whatever swims under them. So I tried a bit of that on this mini. I had a difficult time capturing the colors accurately in the photographs. Some of them are in front of a neutral gray card, and some in front of crumpled "Tiffany blue" tissue paper, which I thought might give a nice oceanic feel but may have too much reduced the color contrast.

Designed by Larry Elmore, sculpted by Jeff Grace. I spotted it in a game store and thought it was way more interesting than the pure eye candy mermaids. I was concerned about the flimsiness of the join between arms and arm sockets, so I pinned them. With very. Tiny. Wires. The arms were mighty thin to begin with. I may have left the pinning wires a bit long, making her upper arms a bit long. I deliberately didn't give her pupils. I wanted her to have preternatural, milky nonhuman eyes. I figured mermaids would not have easy access to metal, so I painted her armor and weapon as if they were made of coral, ivory, and bone. In the fourth picture for some reason the colors came out very bright, but the other pictures are more true to life.