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Doing the freehand on this guy ended up costing me half a week away from painting and most typing but I'm not regretting it much because he was fun to paint. His rainbow bird ( that does not resemble any Pokemon AT ALL) was a hawk and his trousers were trackie bottoms ( sweatpants) before the application of green stuff. Originally I intended bright multi-coloured Middle Eastern/ Indian clothing for my Cloud Giants but that looked crap. It's difficult to photograph but I've tried for a silk taffeta effect on his trousers by painting a cloud pattern in Vallejo's galaxy shifter paint which looks quite effective on the table. Considered pale grey skin as per lore but you have to be a genius to make that work so I've gone Middle East/ Indian but grey-eyed. Ferrero is the CG ambassador to the Hill Giants ( who he utterly despises) and can be found disgusted at the banquet or appalled in the guest chamber he is forced to share with his servants and a Stone Giant. He is more likely to offer a party (orgy?) invitation than voluntarily fight for the Hill Giants but he is both clever and dangerous.

Hello all you Reaper people! So, Bones V will be hopefully arriving in the next few months, and one thing I told myself was that before I got my package, I wanted to finish the smaller Yephima sculpt before the new and larger Yephima shows up at my door. I really love both versions, and I just wish this Yephima would be available in metal. I tried painting her already years ago, started even a WIP in the forum, which I'd have to hunt down. My original thought was make her a very, dark dusky color and blonde hair with pinks and oranges, but at one point my inspiration went awry and I stopped painting her probably to be an eternal WIP. But then a few years later, I got a new copy and this one I did more sky blue and blonde, but it doesn't look as pinkish as I originally had thought. I also think I made my metals way too blue, but oh well. I actually enjoyed painting this lady to the degree that I could see myself painting her again with a different color scheme. One of the other benefits of Bones is the cost, I can grab a new one quickly for around 7.00, so that's also a nice Bones bonus! Anyhoos, here she is: With such a big model, after taking photos, I can see so many glaring issues, but oh well, not going to let myself worry about it too much and will rather maybe go back and paint her up gain some day, incorporating a few fixes.

I'm trying to improve my flesh tones, and for some reason it helps me to do it with inhuman tones to get the technique down before moving to more realistic stuff. I'm not quite sure how it's going so far. If nothing else, Yephima's proving that I need to practice some blending and feathering. Still need to highlight the Wereboar. I love the muscularity of this guy, he was fun to wash!

The female changed from being a Storm Giant to being a Cloud Giant between the kickstarter and the retail release of the miniature. Whatever the subtype, she still gets a case of Smurfette syndrome. The pose of the female is a bit strange, and she does have a certain supermodel-vibe going on. Reaper has explained that the pose was meant to illustrate her bending down to talk to someone human sized, and as such it is not too bad. But taken out of context it just comes off as a bit cheesecake-ish. Reaper has acknowledged that the pose did not work as intended. The swimsuit-like corset really does not help to avoid this impression at all. Again, a mini with a slight case of bendyweaponitis. (which, in fact, is the proper scientific name for it). Treated with hot water then cold to straighten out the worst of it. I based her on a 50mm round lipped base. 77162 Yephima, Female Cloud Giant (the male one did not get a proper name, I wonder why not?) From the first Bones kickstarter, 2013 Storm Giants subset. Reaper Miniatures sculpted by Patrick Keith Bonesium PVC 50mm round lipped base available from reapermini.com

So now that the contest is over, here's my Giant entry. I was short on time (and may go back and highlight and drybrush to finish), so I did not do as well on her as I wanted. Hope you all like the use of breast cancer pink:)

I had a lot of fun with this, but I think she looks more like a storm giant, so I painted her how I thought she would look. This is a better photo pair than the last Reaper quarterly contest (which I photographed and took a not-as-good photo of her). Her basing is made of the Happy Seppuku "Splintered Wood" stamp, the sand/asphalt stamp, and a resin railroad rock I cast myself to look as if it were "un polished marble." The pink/purple armor was a decision by my daughter, who wants everything to be pink and/or purple. As always, C&C welcome!

So looking around the forums and I found the Year of the Giant painting contest. Since I was in an inspired painting mood I decided to break out Yephima and the male storm giant. I went and looked at alot of the other submitted giants in show-off, WIP, and Inspiration gallery. I was really inspired by Pragma's Storm Giant, especially the lava cracks on the shoulder. I decided to try and go the literal 'storm' giant route and went looking at photos of lighting strikes. I saw lots of blues, reds, purples, and whites, then I saw this one, I love the blue/green-teal highlighting the greys of the clouds and the ice-blue highlight of the actual lighting. Hopefully the final result will look similar. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Current state of the models Since I wanted the blue tint and I've been really happy with Buglips' brown liner discovery I went with Reaper's blue liner to base my bones. A technique that I've been playing with but not really focusing on has been to dilute the paint to almost a glaze to allow more of the undertones to show through. I figure that this color scheme would benefit the most from this to really try and get the blending and depth that I'm looking for. First up, the base of Deep Ocean. The first of the glaze attempts. Armour Grey.

Got this guy from the by the ounce boxes at the ironwind booth at Gencon a few years ago. Just got him together and started just before this past gencon. He's my first attempt at greenstuffing a min to make it fir smoothly together. I don't think I did so hot on that. I tried to make it look like pieces of leather that were part of his loin cloth. Other than that I like how he turned out. Comments and critiques welcome. I'm fairly pleased with his face. Sorry about the mostly similar pictures. The Ipad and my lighting were being finicky together.

I've been painting up a few batches of minis for a client out in Oregon. This happens to be the 2nd Cloud Giant (by the wonderful Julie Guthrie btw) that I have painted. The first was my own. My client told me to go nuts on him, so I decided to bust my butt on him using nothing but NMM for his weapons and armor. She has since seen the pics and told me it was, in her words "Magnificent" and "Fantastic". So, having already had my ego stroked, I shall toss him to your critiques and judgments O Reaper Forum Folks! LOL He took me about 10 hours to paint, most of them spent on the "bronze" of his armor and the "blue steel" of his sword. Enjoy and thanks for looking!

Yephima is one of my favourite new sculpts from the KS1 set so I decided I would make her my second bones paint. First I had to fix her left foot though - the last three toes and part of the left side were simply missing, so I used some liquid green stuff to create some new toes. You can see the result here. There was also a weird, sinuous, flash mark along the ground between her left foot and the edge of her skirt where one side of the ground was a little higher than the other so I couldn't really file it off. Since I was mucking around with the liquid green stuff in the area anyway I dabbed it around a bit as a way of hiding the line. Next I used some brush on primer to cover up the green stuff and then I used Nightmare Black and lots of water to make a dark blue wash which I coated her with so I could find all the details and see if I missed any flash lines. (Amazingly, I hadn't!) Cloud Giants can have skin tones ranging from "Milky White to Sky Blue". I've seen several examples of Cloud Giants with the "Milky White" with blue highlights and also a lot with the bright blue of a hot summer sky, but neither felt right to me. In the end I decided to go with a soft grey-blue, closer to the colour of the pieces of sky that peek through the clouds in Spring or Autumn, like this: So I fiddled with a few of the KS1 blue and grey colours until I found a mix I liked. In the end, the base coat colour I settled one was Aircraft Grey, Maggot White & Soft Blue in a ratio of 3:3:1 (I also used the same base coat on her skirts because I'm thinking I might make them "cloudy", so it seemed reasonable to start with the same sky colour as a base. Not 100% sure that is what I'll do but since I had the colour to hand it made sense to use it now.) Then I took a deep breath, and started glazing shadow and highlights to her skin. Prior to getting the Bones KS, all the mini's I'd ever painted were done in enamel paints with washes and dry brushing, so this whole "glazing" thing is a really new technique for me. I used it a little when I was painting "Vaeloth, Helborn Paladin" for the Summer Exchange and made the colour on his sword darker towards the sharp edge but that was all. This was going to be a learning experience. My plan was to glaze down to shadow first and then back up to highlights. So first I mixed up a shadow colour using Soft Blue, Maggot White and Nightmare Black in a ratio of 4:1:1 and 6 drops of water. Then I started with her right leg ... and discovered I'd already screwed up as I got way too much colour off the brush and instead of barely increasing the depth of shadow I now had a dark blue blemish on the outside of her upper thigh. (Sorry, no photo!) sigh. So I repainted her thigh with some of my base coat colour and then I went online, did some research on the technique to see where I went wrong, and decided the problem was that I hadn't thinned it enough, so I doubled the amount of water with another 6 drops. And that was much better! I started glazing down towards the creases between her legs and her clothing, and also areas of her left leg that would be in shadow such as her hamstring area, around her lower calf and her thigh where light would be blocked by her hair. So far so good. While I was doing that research I also found some tutorials for faces so I knew to use the shadow in her eye sockets and along her nose, under her jaw line, along her neck where her hair blocks the light and all along her hairline. Next I mixed up more of the base coat colour and made that into a glaze so I could go back over some areas that should have remained mid-tone but that I'd accidentally gotten some shadow glazing on. This worked well until towards the end when my mixed colours started to separate into distinct patches of soft blue and white/grey! I didn't notice this at first so suddenly found myself layering on a colour that was far more "white" than I expected. I managed to fix this by mixing some straight Soft Blue with water and glazing it a few times over the odd spot and then I fiddled with this now separated colour to see if I could save it. I managed to determine that I could continue working with it if I remixed it with my brush, dipped the brush in water to remove the excess pigment after the mixing, dried the brush on a napkin and then used the remixed glaze. After that I could usually get two or three glaze passes done before it started separating again. Then I created a highlight colour with Maggot White and Soft Blue in a ratio of 4:1 and thinned it for glazing. I expected that this mix would also separate after a while, and it did, but this time I was ready for it to happen and knew how to deal with it right off the bat. This I used on her right hip and the front of her right leg, her left thigh and calf and part of her left hip where light wouldn't be blocked by her hair, her left bicep and lower arm, the top of her right arm and her shoulder blade - basically anywhere the light should hit directly I also used the highlight colour glaze on her face to emphasize her nose, cheekbones, forehead and chin. And here's the result of my first serious glazing attempt: I think it looks okay, for my first try with this technique. Any comments or constructive criticisms would be appreciated. Edited for typos.

Figured that since I have been lurking so long then I might as well post my most recent learning experiment. I started painting miniatures in September at Dragon*Con and have sense fallen in love with it. I'm still learning a lot of techniques to see what works best for me and what just doesn't work at all....example: I'm terrible at glazing. @_@ That's my first bit of work, not sure if its a Reaper miniature though, but sense then I have achieved this sort of quality. She's only half way finished but so far I think she's pretty good. I can tell where I have improved but I'm am totally open to where I could use improvement! I hope to post her here again for you guys when she's finished. :D I guess for the details. Ummm lately I started using a mixture of paints. Mostly to experiment with wear and tear and how they mix together. (Plus some desperation) Most of Yephima is Reaper paints but I used a mixture of Vallejo's Gold with Folkarts Metallic Inca Gold. (after that particular experiment I went out and bought several other colors of Folkarts metallics). Why? Because when it came to painting the armor, though this picture doesn't do it justice, this mixture made an interesting 'armored' look. It's slightly reflective like you would imagine armor or something metal to look. It also glazed over slightly uneasily like it had been tempered. The only downside to this concoction is that it goes on very thin and it dries very fast! I'm going to have to use a drying retarder next time I paint with it. The thing I like about Folkarts metallics is that the 'metal' look is very slight unless you add a lot. I think for this armor I used 2 drops of folkart gold and 3 drops of vallejo gold. I was bummed about the casting lines at the top of her head and I know I'm going to have to carve at her again, but I'm glad I got to share my newest project and painting attempt with you all.

So I've finally finished my last of my Ral Partha giant quartet. Just got the grass put on about thirty minutes ago and might need a slight non-giant break for a wee bit. With this one, figuring he was a cloud giant, I actually used rainy gray, then cloudy gray as his main colors and worked from there. It's a little monochromatic with whites, greys and black, but added just a tad bit of color with his shield belt buckle (it's supposed to be a cloud with a lightning bolt in case anybody's wondering). I also tried giving him some pink eyes as I could just kind of see some adventurers picking out two pink pinpoints coming out of a foggy morning. Not so happy however with the picture but it might be because it's a grey giant with a grey background behind him. Anyways, enjoy!