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I was painting with a bunch of kids, and one of them said "I'll bet you can't finish that bird guy before lunchtime!" I present to you: the bird guy before lunch time.

or as those Texans keep spelling it, "Griffon". (Texans are lovely people, I wouldn't dream of antagonizing them over their simpleton spelling. These folks have guns. I mean, not even the more common "Griffin"...) I went with the African Bateleur Eagle, as it has a striking black, white and red colouration with large creamy panels on the top of the wings. The back bit is just a generic big cat, with reddish brown hairy bits to balance all the red on the front. This model is made in regular 3rd generation Bones plastic. Which in spite of being much more rigid than earlier Bonesium, is not nearly strong enough to hold any weight in awkward positions over time. If one of its front talons had been sculpted touching the base in some way, this would probably not have been a problem. As it was the talon was involuntarily touching the rim of the base anyway together with the wingtip dragging along the ground. This was discovered and fixed some time ago, and I forgot to take any pictures of the listin' gryphon. Anyway, since it drooped quite a bit after just standing around on the shelf, it was nessecary to brace it. I did this by drilling up into the leg and inserting a 1mm diameter metal rod (I used a part of a paperclip for this) to make it stand up properly and discourage further drooping. The pin goes up into the hip or so from beneath the base. This fix has now held in the several months since I fixed it. A long time being exposed to the enormous monsters from Warhammer has skewed my size perception. For some reason I have been thinking about this gryphon as "the small one". Drybrushed from a black undercoat. Yeah, it is a bit rough in places, but perfectly serviceable. #82 The "Griffon" Bones 4 Core set, 2019 Reaper Miniatures unknown sculptor Made in Bonesium PVC 50mm base. should be available from reapermini.com some time in the future in Bones.

My gryphon suffers heavily from a top heavy wing. After 3 hot and cold baths I took a less pretty option of making a 3rd point of contact. It shows, but it works!

So I started out sculpting a school of fish for my Coraldrax, and ended up accidentally squishing it. However, i thought to myself that it looked like a eagle head so I went with it. And here we go! The start of a griffon!

Woo! So, I finally got a camera, and I thought I'd upload some of my painted minis~ I'm gonna upload them in the order I did them, so I'll do the "Unicorn" first! Now, all of my mini's are painted in Marie's Artist's Acrylics - I get mine for 5$/box at Ocean State Job Lot. My paint brushes are these - they're cheap, they're tiny, and they move paint from the palette to the mini, which is all I really ask for in a brush. They last okay; I need to order new ones, and even 15 brushes don't last long, so I usually order 2-3 sets at a time - with free shipping, spending 5 or 6 dollars isn't that big a deal for 40-50 brushes, but they take up to 2 months to get here, a bit of a wait. Now, onto my figures! I've never painted minis before these - initially, I was looking for cheap minis for D&D on amazon, prepaints and such, and someone in the comments mentioned Reaper; I visited here, dropped a hundred bucks on some minis, and now I'm 800$ in the hole for KSII. Never gonna play D&D without minis again... they'll make my mats so much livelier. And of course, now I want to get into Hirst... but that's a matter for another thread! So I got my minis, and I was very happy. The first I decided to paint was a unicorn - my sister wanted to see a fire unicorn, and I thought, "I can do that!" So I did! HELLO, FRIENDS! Hello, unicorn! I started this one by basecoating... black, I think. Then I did the mane and tail; white, then yellow, followed by drybrushed red and orange, and with a dryer sort of drybrushing of black after. Then I made grey, and I added a little blue & brown - just the tiniest bit - and used that for the body. A slightly darker shade added the collarbone and the leg's shadow, and then I reblacked the hooves, eyes, teeth and horn... All in all, I think this one came out great! I plan to base it when the KSII bases get here; I want to do it rearing on a brownstone cliff in scrublands - something with a deep, dark red color, to give it a lot of contrast and make the mane pop! Here are some other pictures: The blur! THE BLUR! This picture shows off the mane really well, I think. The shading on the stomach, too. Next up: THE GRYPHON!

So this is my second fully painted miniature. 99% of the paints and washes are citadel, I did use two Apple Barrel craft paint colors, white and black. The initial basecoat is Charadon Granite. The lion's body and claws and beak were color blocked with Mecharius Solar Orange; the wings alternate between Calthan Brown and Khemri Brown and the eagle's body uses the Calthan Brown. The wings and eagle body was followed up with Gryphonne Sepia Wash while the lion's body, claws and beak was washed with Devlan Mud Wash. I then layered the lion's body with first Tallern Flesh then Khemri Brown and finally drybrushed/layered it with Iyanden Darksun. I drybrushed the eagle's body and wings with Khemri Brown then Dheneb Stone. I painted the eyes with Dheneb Stone followed by black and white. I layered the claws and beak with Iyanden Darksun and the tongue with Mechrite Red. The base was layered with Calthan Brown and washed with Baal Red and the Stones were painted Dheneb Stone and washed with Devlan Mud. I'm unhappy with the lion's body as the Devlan Mud wash gives it a mange look. The second one I'll probably make a wash from Iyanden Darkson to try for a more golden fur look. While not visible from these shots, I went for a heavier drybrush of the Dheneb Stone on the bottom of the wings and eagle body for a lighter look. Trying to replicate features found on some predator birds so that it would be harder to see them from the ground while in flight. Nakos