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I've been working on my drakes/dragons for what feels like forever now. Last week, Jim of Dark Sword brought me a copy of the metal masters for the small versions of them as they are being prepared for casting. He gave me permission to paint one up as my ReaperCon entry, despite their not being released yet. So here goes... If you want to read the whole tale on the sculpting of these drakes, check out this thread in the sculpting section. After prepping the mini, I primed it with my airbrush, using stylrnez. About 6 months ago, I had started painting a resin prototype of this mini that I had printed. That mini was a bit too small and had some errors in the scales on its tail, so I abandoned it. That said, I am sticking fairly close to the color concept I had with that one and will be using it as a preliminary sketch of where I want this one to go. Here is that sketch model: On Saturday, I got together with a bunch of friends to work on our Open entries and I began the painting in earnest, All paints are MSP. The dorsal scales are based in Sharkbite, the sides in Marid Blue, and the belly in Grindylow Green. The belly was washed in a mix of Grindylow Green and Clear Pthalo Green. I have more work to do on that shading yet though. I then shaded the sides down to Sharkbite. I also have more work to do on the deepest shadows there yet after I get the highlights done. I also painted the eyes and teeth. Yesterday, I highlight the sides up to white and based the claws in Drow Skin. I plan on spending every night this week working on it and have Friday off as well. I hope I can be done on Friday, but we'll see. I do have all my classes prepped, so am ready for ReaperCon other than this project and one other metal work project I have going. It is going to be a busy week though.

So no pictures yet - this is starting from the planning phase. I am going to be working on Dark Sword's Thief of Hearts: Warrior. This one - She's a pretty imposing figure. The humanoid part of her is pretty normal sized, but the cloak and wings make the whole thing quite grand. The arms and wings are separate - they're going to be tough to get in place. Not really able to pin the one with the flame in hand either. Okay, so what is my plan. What is her story? I was going to paint Dark Sword's "Broken Wings" a tragic maimed angel figure, and about 3 months or so from now, my players would return to a horrible dungeon and rescue her. I'd plop that one in and go "this is who you find". Well.... I only got to show them the primed version, because they rescued her early. Now I'll be painting her all healed up and ready to kick butt, since my group threw me for a loop. Alice is a justice archon. Lawful good outsider. She decided to Do Good Things in the world, grew accustomed to humans, and stuck around. She became friends with a wizard and they went around smiting evil. At least they did, until they got captured. When she's able though, she is the light in the darkness and she won't back down. Not ever. How am I going to try to convey that? I've done NMM before... and I've done OSL.... I'm going to try both. She'll have red hair, befitting a justice archon, and rather golden skin, similar to the DSM display model. But instead of being in normal lighting with a yellow flame, she's going to be in "darkness" and the flame in her hand will be illuminating white around her. White light should lighten stuff to be its own color, mostly, yes? But with the NMM, I'll have to be going for a non-standard light source, since it is a nearby oval of light, instead of a general "from far away, this direction". The armor has to reflect strongly, so it may be brighter at longer distances, but the skin and cloth will need to have diffuse reflections, with the normal intensity-falling-away pattern. Then the rest of her in darkness should still have some minor shading - so I intend to use "moonlight" as my inspiration on that. And then the arms and wings have to be attached probably after painting parts of this, due to ability to reach certain sections. Ack! I want her to look like she's there to prevent evil from spreading, by literally bringing the light. Am I crazy? Good plan? NMM + OSL + Dark setting.... thoughts on my plan?

I have been threatening to finish Zoe The Golden Retriever sometime this week. Last nights sixteen degrees F provided the impetus ! I was too cold to sleep well. So Here is ZOE. This is a beautiful, soul full piece to work on. Capturing the emotion in that small face, getting everything painted and mounted proved quite the challenge to me. In the end Zoe was a real treat to do. Not that often I really get into a feeling level while painting a miniature. Mr. Summers must have had a beautiful and loving companion in Zoe, it came through the Sculpt ! Hope I did it Justice. Let me know what you think of my efforts on this mini please ! Jay

I started working on this several days ago. Few Tricky spots (sword sheath wants to be flat against body, bends as you paint. The piece has some DEEP recesses, and it's going to be fun playing with the darks, shadows and lights. I experimented on hair and beard to see what they will look like highlighted. Some washes will bring those under control. Think a snow capped plinth, or flowered one might be in order. This piece needs a well thought out base ! Here are a couple photo's to show where I am going with him. Jay

So I've been pretty busy with work and other things and haven't had a chance to paint much lately. Got this guy as a gift from a friend and painted it up a couple of weeks ago. Pretty happy how everything turned out especially the eyes. I used some owl pictures for reference. Though usually their beaks are a dark grey, I wanted this to stand out a little more. Thanks for looking!

^^ Link to the WIP. My Stephanie Law Kickstarter loot pack had their first goof up! Lucky for me, they rectified the situation immediately. At any rate, I had a spare necromancer body and a spare bard arm. I decided to do my first ever conversion and connect the two! I told my friend about this, and we came up with the idea to make The Necrobard an emo-punk rock musician, with heavy influence from My Chemical Romance (specifically The Black Parade). See inspiration: Instead of a summoner, we settled on a "everything hurts" idea of the stereotypical depressed musician/comedian who has very high charisma, but hides a lot of pain. And he wears a lot of black. My friend is indeed going to play this character (his initials are hiding in red in the crook of the lute). Bardic party buffing plus necro debuffing of bad guys. I attempted to make it look like he was casting a necromancy spell by freehanding his hands to have the skeleton glowing through the gloves, and the lute glow where he holds it, and out of the center. I picked "The Punisher" character's logo for an easy skull to freehand on the back. The red stain is because the character beat his brother over the head with the lute as a backstory. I added the skull to the base for the heck of it. If you look closely at the bard-arm, it doesn't line up perfectly... but good enough for a first conversion, yeah? My epoxy was being a butt, so I settled on pins and super glue. If not for the inspiration being bleach blonde, I likely would have given him dark hair. But hey, crazy pale was an adventure to paint. As was the absurd amount of black/gray. The photos I think are over-bright, so I will be tweaking them in the future; I think less light but longer exposure (if I can hold steady) would do wonders - better ones to come in a week or so when I can pin Doug down with my camera. Comments, critique, musical expressions of sadness or joy - all welcome!

I got my Stephanie Law KS pack from DSM. Its awesome. There are many more pieces to glue than in Reaper figures so I'm kinda worried about that. Anyway, onto the not so pressing but very fun matter. I had the honor of being the first one to get a goofed up package in the kickstarter. I got the male necromancer (arms and body), the arms of the male bard, and a second male necromancer body. DSM swiftly sent out a replacement bard, complete with a body and arms. Goal: The Necrobard Now I have spare bard arms and a spare necromancer body. Dilemma: the arms are well, arms. The body needs a single arm. The socket is also not perfect due to slightly different clothing but it is darn close. The arm and the arm-hole that are needed are both at the elbow joint. How would you recommend taking the right hand off the lute so that the male necromancer can be holding a lute in front of him in his left hand? Thus he would become the necrobard, who would sing the dead back to life.

Sorry, I had to get punny with the title. This is DSM's Musk Ox Warrior. I will admit, I got a bit tired of him towards the end. The thickness of the fur is such that even 95% done I was finding nooks and crannies that had no paint applied to them. Michael Proctor did DSM's gallery version. For one, I wanted the figure to still look like a musk ox, so we are pretty similar in that respect. And the colors we chose are similar although not the same. I deliberately did some things different as to not copy Mr. Proctor's excellent beast. Nonetheless, his freehand on the purse and the loincloth served as an inspiration for mine. When I did the rainbow fairy I was asked if I was going to line the intersection of colors on her skirt. I didn't, but for three reasons: I liked how it was without lining, I'd already planned it without lining, and I was worried about fudging up the good work if I tried. For the musk ox's freehand parts though, I tried, but I cheated at it a bit. I painted the outline color first, then painted the main color inside the "liner". Also: @Doug Sundseth, I am bringing my camera next paint-meet-up to pick your brain on getting my settings right. My depth of field is suffering on photography. As always, C&C, rip it to shreds. Inform me of my failures. I also accept praise in the form of (literal or figurative) cookies.

I got the critters as an addon to the DSM kickstarter recently. The first thing I am painting is this guy, a musk ox warrior. He's big, so priming took a while. And I am using a crummy brush for base coating all this fur because it is a brush mangler until I get to the nitpicky stuff. I'm trying to make the small bit of chainmail 1) NMM to see if I can do it and 2) slightly tarnished. I don't think thia guy is good at cleaning. Armor color themes I am thinking dark red primarily, with black, blue, and green accents. I was looking up eskimo art for the sake of doing his belt-thing justice, and those seem like reasonable colors to go with. Thanks to the CMPA for the poster tack and the jar idea - had to find a big jar for him!

Finally finished this warrior from darksword miniatures. He's going to be used for my 2-handed greatsword paladin in a new D&D group that starts tomorrow. For the most part I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. One of these days I really need to take the time and try some NMM. I didn't highlight and shade the face as much as it should have been and the hair was mostly dry brushed as there wasn't much sculpting of strands of hair in certain parts. Comments and suggestions are welcome as always!

I whipped up a couple of really quick TableTop figures to represent my new Ranger PC (Leif) and his Wolf Companion (Daelas or Shadow Leaf in Elvish). Took me about 5 hours total for both figures and their bases. Bases are stamped with the new Happy Seppuku grasslands stamps and then I used some grass tufts to add more texture. Figures: The Ranger is from DGS Games - SKU: 101008 Forester of Falkaar, Material: Pewter The Wolf is the "Hunting Wolf" from Dark Sword Miniatures SKU: DSM7410, Sculptor: Jeff Grace, Material: Pewter I've painted up a few of my DGS figures so far that I got at ReaperCon last year and from one of their recent kickstarters, am really liking the line, very nicely cast, few mold lines and great details to work with! Of course, I'm also a huge fan of DSM and have also painted up quite a few of their figures.

Here is my attempt at a DSM mini from the KS. After watching the videos I understand blending a little more. Just need a lot more practice at it. C & C encouraged

With most everyone having received or receiving in the next few days, I'd like to open up a thread for EVERYONE in a Group/Open WIP thread. Although I won't be doing mine until after the current projects are off my desk with time constraints, I can see quite a few of us really wanting to paint these up. This is open to EVERYONE and ALL the new DSM Stephanie Law Masterworks figures. Feel free to post up your WIP here and most importantly... HAVE FUN!! P.S. Let us keep chatter to a minimum and only about these figures.

I could use some help pushing this forward. I have just about reached the end of what I am willing to do with this piece. But I really want to make it better. The concept is an adventuring party stumbles on a pool on the beach and everyone cautiously approaches, well almost everyone. There is always someone in the party who just has to provoke the easy kill. All done with DSM critters. I still plan to add some beach grasses and with the pictures, I can see some blending and touch up issues but I would really welcome some critique on where I can improve these guys. Between work travel and some medical issues I haven't had the time to paint that I would like and my entries are reduced The pieces are in their pin holes but not attached yet as I'm still messing around with positioning. If closeups are helpful I can still take them Thanks for any advice you care to share! Roo