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Finished a couple of the Greybeards set from Bones 4. Here's the latest: The camera's being a bit weird and I can't get the colours right for both the clothing and skin at the same time, so the first pic is to show off the skin colour and the rest are to show off the colours for the rest. It's been a while since I've done any significant painting so my skills are pretty rusty, but I moved my hobby area and finally got some motivation so I decided to make sure that I had spare wizards so friends could join a spontaneous game of Frostgrave with me if they wanted to. It's never happened but I wanted to be prepared.

Fairly quick mini... Needed something fun to give myself a bit of a mental break over the weekend. Probably 3 hours total - yes, I'm slow!

Getting into more Bones 4 goodies. (For once being in Canada is to my advantage when it comes to shipping!) Doing some frankly ridiculous hell hounds from the Fan Favourites expansion. Ridiculous because of the colours I've chosen, to be clear - the sculpts are delightful, if a little more explicitly male than I might have preferred... This first one is going to have a pink glow in all the cracks. The goal is to look sort of like lava only weird and magical. Not sure how well it's going to look but we'll find out! First step was to paint the poor beastie pink... Really only the cracks needed to be pink but there are so many cracks and I was so tired when I was doing this that I just slopped pink everywhere: Then tonight I started to go back and make the dark plates: Hopefully more tomorrow!

Starting in on Bones 4 already! (It's impolite to ask how I'm doing on Bones 3.) And I had to start with Izzy, because Izzy. Just roughing in some colours, and sadly had only a couple minutes to paint tonight and part of that went to cleaning up some of the disaster from the last time the kids painted. Suggestions on colours for the rest of her would be greatly appreciated!

Calling these little maniacs done. Not the greatest paint job ever and I should probably have done something - anything - with the bases, but oh well. They were a ton of fun to paint. For those who hadn't seen the WIP thread, these guys are old Night Goblin bodies (sent to me by the ever-amazing @malefactus ) with heads from the Frostgrave plastic gnoll kit.

@malefactus sent me some old Games Workshop plastic night goblins, and instead of putting them together properly I decided to stick the heads on the bodies of some Frostgrave plastic gnolls. There's another one but he's badly unbalanced (in more ways than one) and keeps falling over.

Been spending a lot of time fighting brain weasels lately, and mostly losing, but the ever-wonderful @malefactus gave me the ammunition needed to give myself a break today. So it seemed fitting to start something brightly coloured and a little ludicrous. I bring you the mostly base coated Mrs Bones! The goal is to make the whole thing as blindingly vibrant as I can. Still going to do highlighting and shading and such to bring out more character, but this should give you an idea of what I'm aiming for.

Decided these two went together, with the grandmother figure maybe working in the innkeeper's inn, and painted them with the same colours. Quickie paint jobs for both. Not thrilled with the way the green turned out...

I got the (old) Necron "Start Collecting!" box and finally got everything put together. Time to start painting... (There is actually some assembly left to do, but I'm waiting for some magnets. Those are a few weeks out still but I figured I'd get most of the painting done in the meantime and just touch up whatever bits need touched up.)

Super quick paint job for these guys... My son wanted them for the Dragon Rampant army I'm painting him for Christmas, and I've still got a lot more to do so I everything I do in the next while is likely to be a bit rushed. Base coat was Vallejo Model Air, Armour Brown, then drybrushed heavily with Desert Stone, lightly with Dirty Bone, then a little more heavily again with Olive Drab. The Olive Drab doesn't really show up in the picture but it's pretty decent in person - not overpowering, just enough to make them look more like old trees.

Finished this guy up as part of my son's Dragon Rampant army I'm buying and painting for him for Christmas this year. Super quick, by my standards - 2 hours, including a bunch of time spent messaging a friend. And yeah, I know things are rough and I missed a bunch of mold lines... I'm trying to paint an army, not a competition piece. Comments and criticism welcome!

I've been dealing with some nasty brain issues lately. To help cut off the worst episodes before they really get going, or at least make it easier to ride them out, my therapist suggested I do some sort of art project that would remind me of times that I've made a positive difference in someone's life. I spent a while trying to figure out what kind of project I would be able to do, when it occurred to me that minis count as art, and I'm reasonably competent at it and really enjoy telling stories with them... For me, it's the perfect thing. The plan is to do a few different scenes and vignettes, eventually tying things together over time as I add more pieces in. Each figure or cluster of figures will represent a time I've made a significant difference in someone's life, or an ongoing way in which I continue to make a difference over time. They'll sometimes be fairly literal scenes - like the burly warrior lifting some hapless monster by the throat and choking it, representing the time my brother picked up someone who was bullying me in school and threatened him so he'd leave me alone - and some will be more metaphorical. A good example there is Kyra and Lavarath; I don't know the actual story behind those two, but in my mind, the dragon's a match for the warrior and does what she's asked to do only when she feels like it, and other times turns very hostile and needs to be wrestled into submission again. All of which seems like a perfect metaphor for my friend's struggle with mental illness - she's incredibly strong, one of the bravest people I've ever met, and ferociously competent when things are going well, but at other times she's barely functional (or not functional at all ) when her brain's turned on her. So that's the project. Should be fun. I'm a pretty slow painter and there's a surprising number of people who need to be represented so it's likely to go on for a while.

Speed paint tonight... Grabbed these two candelabra and knocked them out real quick... I think under an hour all told. Which is pretty darn quick for me. The metal was based with a mixture of shadowed stone and pure black, then I added in a drop of Vallejo metal medium and used that to drybrush over. It works better in person than in pictures. The candles were based in blond hair with some highlights in linen white. The flames were painted in linen white, then most of that was covered with pale saffron, then a little bit of lava orange. If I wanted to be fancy I'd try some OSL but I'm lazy.

Did up a couple batches of these guys for fun. Total of about 4 hours work to do the 6 of them. Had fun tinkering with making rusty swords... I think they came out pretty OK. What do you folks think?

This guy was a test piece... I have another 2 like him and 3 female centaurs that are all going to be painted roughly the same. The base isn't done because I'm planning to actually cut them off these bases and attach them to something better later, but I don't have those bases yet so... Comments and criticism always welcome.

Picked these up a little while ago and decided it was time to get them painted up. Very easy, lazy paint job (sorry Andy) but it's enough to look reasonable on the gaming table and that's all I was aiming for.

And yet another attempt at greyscale+glazing. Definitely needed shadows & highlights, could definitely do better. I put a bunch of time into this one but I'm not super thrilled with how it came out. That's OK, I have a whole vampire box to play with.

Started work on this lady a couple days ago. She's beautiful but right now I'm finding myself with very little enthusiasm for painting. I suspect it'll go away soon, but in the meantime I'm at least making sure I get a minimum of 10 minutes per day of painting in, so there's slow but steady progress. Anyway, here she is so far! Her hair is going to get a wash or two of black so it should end up looking more black than blue. Same with her wings. Thoughts? Suggestions?

I am declaring victory! This is my Khanjira. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my doom. I must master it as I must master my death. Without me my Khanjira is mildly peckish. ... wait, that's something else. Started on Boxing Day, and didn't get a bunch of time to work on it a few of the days, but I managed to grind it out. There's definitely room for improvement, but my goal was to get it to the point where I can put it on the table during a game and be happy about it, and I've achieved that. I do still want to put it on a more rigid base (I'll probably do up a fancy piece of MDF at some point) but that's not required for the goblin challenge and I needed to get this thing off my elfing desk so I can work on something else. Dunno what else to say... Any questions?

This mini arrived as part of a WOOF bombing run. (Thanks Xherman!) I figured it was small and relatively easy and would be a good antidote to the madness of Khanjira.

Decided to throw my hat in the ring and paint up Khanjira as a goblin challenge. Plan is to start tomorrow (Boxing Day) sometime in mid-afternoon. This may not be my best plan ever, as I appear to be suffering the edge of a nasty stomach flu, but I don't get a lot of good opportunities with enough free time to take stuff like this on so I'm going to do my best to take advantage of it. Pics tomorrow before I begin.

I got the Sea Hag in a bonus pack during last year's Hallowe'en promotion and just got around to painting her up. (Well, starting to paint her up anyway.) Thankfully I looked up Pingo's WIP thread where she commented on some of the details I'd missed, like the starfish on the back of the left leg and the crab on the back of the right arm! (Although I did clue in to the octopus... I'm blind, but not that blind... ) This makes two Julie Guthrie sculpts in a row for me (the last one was the Christmas hoard dragon) and I gotta say, I'm loving her work more with each one. So many details, but of just the right size and style that they're incredibly fun to paint rather than being tedious. And really forgiving of the terrible paint jobs I'm applying! I should point out that I'm still at the stage of finish up the base coats and starting to sketch in highlights. I'm not quite this incompetent. First, the obligatory front and back view: And now a few close-ups of the details! I broke out the big camera and the macro lens for these... please forgive the horrifyingly awful paint jobs you'll see. The crab on the back of the right arm: The starfish on the back of the left leg: The octopus on the left arm: (And yes I realise I missed like half of the top tentacle. Imma fix that in a few.) Anywho... Thoughts? Suggestions on colour scheme? Etc.

Here's the finished mini for this WIP thread. I'm continuing my attempt to paint these things up quickly and work on my speed, so there's some rough blending happening etc. And I just noticed a couple mold lines that I'd forgotten to clean up. And the spines came out far too white... Should have added more colour there. Anyway! Would still appreciate comments, suggestions, etc.

I ended up with a bunch of extra crates from one of my Hirst Arts molds, and decided to experiment with wood the other night. So here you go! In case anyone's curious about the recipe, here's what I did. Everything but the wash is done with dollar-store craft paints, that don't have great coverage, so this might not be the best plan to try to recreate with good paints (at least without testing it out first)... Basecoat with Burnt Umber Heavy drybrush with Bright Orange Light drybrush with Cashmere Tan Very light drybrush with Antique White (a sort of yellow-tinted off-white colour) Wash with Citadel's Agrax Earthshade The chest's metal bits were done with Blackened Steel, highlights picked out with Honed Steel, and then a few shadows established with Reaper Pure Black.

Yep, another of the townsfolk! And another relatively speedy paint job, probably about 3 hours total. If I could stop messing up the things I'd just finished so I didn't have to redo the mini half a dozen times, I'd probably be downright fast at this point... I'm finding the greyscale+glaze technique particularly useful for leather... I've always struggled to get decent highlighting on leather, but I feel like this is working out pretty OK. Thoughts?