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So, my Eberron players are very likely to face a large, otherworldy horror from Xoriat, the plane of madness. I have lots of options, what with the Daelkyr and all, but really, why pass up the chance to drop C'thulhu in front of a bunch of 13th level PCs? Why, indeed. Of course, this means I need to paint the big guy...and I really haven't painted much in nearly a year. So, out of practice as I am, I decided to spend President's day to, as the kids say, git'r dun. (do the kids still say that? Did they ever say that?) I started out trying something new. I've used artist's acrylics to good effect in the past, and for Christmas my parents sent me a set of something very cool: Turner's Acrylic Gouache. It has a lot of the properties of gouache, with the ease of use of acrylic paints...here's the box copy from a popular online art store: " Incredibly versatile, it will adhere to most substrates like wood, acrylic boards, stone, cloth, clay, metal, slate, glass, aluminum, iron, hard vinyl, styrofoam, stretched canvas, and properly-sized artist's papers. Turner Acryl Gouache is quick drying and water-reducible (2:1 paint to water ratio), yet water resistant when dry. It can be applied in multiple layers with no bleeding or streaking, while retaining a velvet-like, matte finish and brilliant color hue. " This stuff sticks to Bones like whoa, it's massively opaque with great coverage, dries totally matte ("velvet-like," indeed) and is crazy bright. So, for a basecoat, it's great. Here's an image of a basecoat with some initial attempts at highlighting: You can see, that "opaque" thing makes it hard to blend. I found that watering down about 10:1 still produced a chalky-at-best opacity. The good news is, this was one of the fastest, most complete basecoats I've ever put on a bones mini; Brown Liner need not apply (*gasp*). After discovering the acrylic gouache was not suitable for layering in the shadows and highlights, I went a bit Wappelly and did some really primitive versions of his shaded basecoat and glazing technique. All told, about eight hours of work (including the basecoat experiment) produced this tabletop-worthy paintjob: There's a lot I'd like to be better, most notably the underside of the wings and the lack of color in the glazing (I really just used two glazes to unify the highs/lows), but this needs to be ready for my next game session, and it will impress the players well enough. C&C as ever are welcome! Edit for typos..."Everron" sounds like a brand of battery, not a campaign setting. Although Cannith may very well manufacture Everron-brand batteries...