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So I've been painting a lot of character models and low level monsters lately, so I decided to tackle a large monster. I pulled out the bag with Bones manticore, chimera and sphinx and lost my mind, deciding to paint all three. Then I acquired the Bones Black efreeti and could not resist painting her as well. First up the chimera 77257. I should have taken another photo of the front of the model from a higher angle so that you could see the eyes of the dragon head but I was too lazy. I did not notice the blob of white paint until I uploaded the file. Isn't that how it goes? Maybe I'll get around to fixing it, but I'm already plotting what to paint first from Bones 4. I spent all that time painting the striations on the wings and didn't do any highlighting on the belly scales of the dragon, either. Manticore 77577. I have another, older manticore model (I know, shocking) from Grenadier that I painted with the more traditional dark bat wings. I wanted something different and I have been itching to try an idea I had for bright new copper, like a shiny new penny. I painted the wings and scales with Reaper MSP Coppery Orange and then over painted the webbing on the wings with the old Ral Parta Metallic Red. I like how it turned out, and Iron Wind Metals is again selling this paint, however only at conventions so far. In retrospect brass dragon wings would have been better, but I can always buy another one... Oh, and this model is the one I used the Culture Hustle Black 2.0 as a primer on the base. No difference in performance from Reaper MSP Black Primer. Sphinx 77576. Not much to say about her except be careful when trimming the mold lines on the ears; I lopped off half of the left ear and had to do reconstructive surgery. I really like the sculpting on the wings and the base is a really neat small bit of terrain. The nice thing about Bones is that they are cheap enough to by them for just parts. And finally the efreeti 44003. My color scheme was heavily inspired by (shameless stolen from) Wren's magnificent work on the store display model. You can't improve on perfection. If anyone is interested in boring technical details I did something different with the skin tones for this one. I wanted the bright red skin to appear almost like it was glowing, as befits a fire spirit. I primed the model in black and then painted the skin with a burnt sienna color. I then did my first layer of high lights with Reaper MSP Pumpkin Orange (because it was the first orange I found in my bin), and then the second high light with an ocher yellow, and the final high lights with a pale yellow, Ral Partha Blonde as it turned out. Once that had dried I over-painted the entire area with Ral Partha (sorry, IWM) Red. One of the interesting properties of the IWM paints is that they are rather translucent. This gave me fits for years back in the 80's when I first acquired them as RP paints at Gen Con; I paint for table top and prefer my paint to be opaque for quick coverage. However I slowly learned that I could get pretty smooth transitions with the RP paints by applying several layers of the paint in smaller and smaller areas. It also works pretty well out of the pot for glazing over a pre-shaded area. Overall I'm happy with the result. The cloth was painted with a burnt sienna, high lighted with MSP Runic Purple, edged with MSP BCA Pink and glazed with MSP Clear Magenta. For the sword blades I was going for obsidian; seemed appropriate for a fire creature. Painted dark gray, edged in white, and glazed with black ink. I hope you like them and thanks for looking. I wonder if I can call in sick tomorrow to stay home and paint...

It's as if the creature is saying "This is my watering hole! Go find your own" I really wasn't sure how to do the wings, which was why there's so much contrast between the wing webs and the wing fingers, but I do like how he came out. Feedback appreciated, especially any advice on the wings!

Howdy, This got painted somewhere along the way... It's dangerous to go alone, Kev!

The next set out of Bones 3, various monsters! The Carrion Worm really grew on me! The Temple Dragon is really cool. I hadn't even realized until I was inking it that the base was a statue of a robed woman: The Manticore, who I was specifically hoping for before they announced it during the campaign. It's a classic monster I didn't have a mini of! Lastly, the Giant Cobra. Kind of rushed this one along...he also appears to hide from the camera focus.

Manny & Manfred the Manticore Brothers. They've teamed up with Goreflame the Chimera for a bit of Town baiting.

While painting has been a little constrained, it's been a good month for gaming. I attended two conventions, running demo games of Chaos Wars for Iron Wind Metals. At Cincycon the first weekend in March, we had access to the company collection of figures, so I didn't need to worry about what to put on the table, but at Cold Wars I was running games (with the aid of my brother) out of my own collection. My collection runs to vintage rather than current production, and I thought it would be nice if I could work toward getting some stuff on the table that is still in the catalog, although vintage sculpts. I started a unit of a dozen goblin archers from the recent Kickstarter, but left them at work on Thursday while on my way home for a three day weekend. That made finishing the last six a little difficult. So, I picked two medium monsters that I had primed at the same time, that were going to be largely monochrome, and went to work. As stated in the title, these were a Tom Meier Jabberwock, and a Dennis Mize Manticore. It took me about two hours to get these to the point where I was ready to start basing them. For wargaming, I kept the base treatments fairly simple. They're both on 40mm round wooden bases, to which I'll add a flexible steel bottom to engage my magnetic storage boxes. Here's a closer shot of the manticore: And the Jabberwock:

So here's what I've been working on the most lately, a manticore from the old Children of the Night series from Ral Partha, circa 1979. Sculpted by Dennis Mize, it' s a figure I've always really liked, but have never gotten around to painting. My biggest problem was basically just deciding what color to make his wings. I decided though in the end on Black and Red, and I took a few pictures of him because he's a figure that you need to kind of see from all around, even though he's really pretty simple. Anyway, hope you enjoy!