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Kind of ended up sketching an idea for a faction symbol for a setting that I'd been working on, then it gave me another idea with parts that looked a lot like an owl, which led to me working out the general owl look, then a youtube video on someone making a pendant with wood carving as I was finishing it had me try and fail at that (I don't have a dremel at the moment), so I decided to try sculpting it...which led to this. The second includes the sketch of the owl symbol that I'd started with... It's on a larger wooden "nickle" from the craft store (Don't try carving with normal wood carving tools, the end result isn't pretty there) with some greenstuff, had the loop from something else that was just in my bits collection, and a leather cord. Painted it up with metallics.

This is my entry for the seasonal category in the Reaper Challenge League. I picked St Patricks Day as my holiday and found this adorable little fellow and his buddy in the Reaper Store. Normally I paint much bigger, meaner looking minis so this pair were a really nice change of pace. All comments and criticisms are, as always, very welcome. There was a slight hitch when taking the photographs for the mini. I was taking the photos in an area with great natural light, but I was interrupted by an angry Kurogane who was furious that his sleeping spot had been hijacked for something as trifling as miniature photography :D The mini suffered 1d2 bite damage to his hat..... .....and the perpetrator showed a distinct lack of remorse! Such is a life with feline overlords The mini was quickly fixed with some paint plastic surgery. Thanks for looking everyone!

Gotta touch up some areas later like the excess paint in the mouth. But other than that I'd say it's tabletop ready! :)

Female Owlfolk Fighter by Stonehaven Miniatures Finished this commission the other day. Part commission part engagement gift for one of the ladies that I play D&D with. She was so stink'n excited to get it. :) This is the tabletop quality {Tt}, quick paint job done in a couple of hours. Hope you enjoy! I used reaper brush on sealer before taking the photo's. I will not do that again. I don't like the shine it gave off. Made it look odd.

My father is one of those people who is always really hard to buy for. This year I drew his name for Christmas. He is an amazing woodworker and craftsman. I wanted to get him something he didn't have and wouldn't buy for himself. I was perusing Wood magazine, and saw an add for ID coins; essentially they are laser engraved metal coins that you countersink into the bottom of your woodwork to identify it as having come from your shop. The design is yours and they make the coins for you. I can do that, even better! So I started designing it. My dad loves owls; they are kind of his symbol already. Also, our last name is Pieper (pronounced Peeper), so every guy in my family going back at least 4 generations has been known by the nickname "Peeps" at some point in his life; it's kind of a family right of passage when your friends start calling you Peeps. So I am designing a 3/4 inch coin with a barred owl (his favorite) on it and the words "PEEPS WOODCRAFT". I will then mold it and cast a bunch of copies in bronze for him for Christmas. Last night, I sculpted the owl:

I painted the Bones Black, Bones, and Wizkids owlbears as Great Horned Owls. This is the Bones Black owlbear. Not sure why it isn't in the store, even under the special edition section. I used the number it was assigned my order form. Anyway, it is a pretty cool model! I have several of them so will be able to paint them as different types of owls. I definitely need a Hedwig owlbear!

“OK, so the Fireball spell didn’t work that well. Any other ideas Owl?” “Hoo!? You asking me!? I’m just an owl.” Probably my last mini for the year. Wasn’t planning on painting the cloak brown since it sorta merges with the hair and owl, but a slight accident forced it on me. I like the way it turned out tough. Thanks for looking.

Figured I'd drop a few more unprofessional pics of the few things I've done in the last year. I painted this wizard for my son to use in a potential game of Frosthaven that we still haven't been able to play. At any rate, I like how he turned out and my son likes his owl. I really need to get my light tent set up as the simple desk light doesn't do anything for these mins.... LOL! -K

While I was working on the combat diver diorama - Please check here: -> Let's make a present! Combat divers on the beach<- my boss approached me with another present. Another colleague would leave us soon, so I had to prepare a third present. Errr. Okay. I am doing it because I can and because it is fun. Well then - Let's go. I knew this: Our colleague was playing football from time to time. Wow. Well I guess that's what it's like when you keep all your information to yourself. I guess I should do that more often. In conclusion - I had no idea what to do. So my boss thought of the following: A giant owl that carries an anchor. I checked the internet for a fitting miniature and by accident found a human coach figure for Guildball tabletop. It didn't look exactly like him, but the hair was georgous. So I bought it. Then I stumbled upon a giant owl and bought it, too. Now I had both figures and started to make some plans. But I didn't like it. Way too high, way too small, height difference too big. No. That's not what I wanted to create. I 've gotta think of something else. Actually, that's quite demotivating ...

And here we are - after 48 hours of building time and another 20 or so hours of drying, our beach diorama is finally done. Check here for the WIP Thread ->Let's Make a Present! Combat divers on the beach<-

When my first present - please check here ->Let's present a ... present! Owl Mage<- was received pretty well by our female colleage, my boss asked me to do more. This time the task was to make a present for another colleague who left us. As he was in the military and also is a passionate diver, I thought of something military. What would be a better fit than German combat divers (Kampfschwimmer)? Luckily I found a bunch of German frogmen miniatures and ordered them immediately. When I told my boss what I had in mind, she asked me to include the following elements: 1st: Frogmen 2nd: An owl (of course) 3rd: an exit 4th: a sign that links the colleague to our work. Everything else was free for me to develop. As Frogmen often use beaches to infiltrate or exfiltrate an area, the overall idea was to create a beach setting. So I went down to the beach, spent some hours there swimming, enjoying the sun and making sketches, until I finally had an idea what I wanted the diorama to be like. The owl should be sitting on a sign that warned of mines - but instead of a mines warning there should be an inside joke written on the board we often did at work. The exit should be between two dunes and be marked by another sign. And the Kampfschwimmer unit should be astonished by what they witnessed. So I started painting the combat divers. After that I assembled the owl, used plastic styrene to cut out two signs, assembled them an started painting. Still I had one problem - the showcase I ordered ... *chuckles* didn't show up. That sounds funny at the moment but should be a problem later on. And as I was doing a second diorama at the same time, the pressure increased ... *Insert creepy music here*

Here we go again. If you don’t want to know what led to the whole “Let’s make a present”-stuff, feel free to scroll down to the first picture. I have to admit: I am not world’s best painter. To be honest – I am far away from that. I cannot remember color theory, keep forgetting important steps or read a tutorial just to throw it away ‘cause I cannot imagine how I should turn the advices into actual results. Life is hard … Anyway – it seems that persons in my proximity have caught attention of what I am trying to do and figure that it is actually *good* and from time to time ask me to do some presents. And that’s what I am doing for them. Presents. Often those presents have got something to do with my boss. She is the driving force behind this whole “You do wargaming! You can paint! You make present! Ugh!“—stuff. A specialty of her is to ask me to think of something and prepare something just to then remember me that I have got like 5 days left until the specific gift is needed. Thank you, ma’am! And – oh, yeah – there has to be an owl in it. She loves owls and she wants everyone to know. Therefore a typical process of creation looks like this: 1st. Not much time left 2nd Owls are needed 3rd No owls available 4th panic rises 5th awkward moments are happening 6th The badly needed inspiration comes to mind 7th realization of lacking skill follows badly needed inspiration 8th panic rises further 9th Finally! Owls are available! Construction may begin. So – Let’s make a present. The following present was the very first “big” present I made. I want to run you through the process of creation as it was a lot of fun for me to improvise and think of that whole stuff, and I think it would be a shame not to share it. The present was for a colleague who left us. Normally she would have gotten some kind of standard present from our workplace, but she didn’t want to. She had bad experiences regarding standard presents, so my boss was a bit unhappy. She didn’t want to let our colleague leave without anything in her hands. Normally my boss would have done something on her own. She is a good painter - I guess like Bob Ross (just different hair style … and not so many little happy accidents). But she didn’t have got time, so I stepped in. I had Five days left, and of those five days I was away for two days – not much time to come up with something. So when I came home from work first thing I had to do was checking the materials available. My boss wanted the present to be an owl. Well … as I don’t care about owls (only time I do is when they start screaming at night and keep me awake), I didn’t have got any owl miniatures. And then there was the question of what kind of present I wanted to make. I thought of a diorama, went through some stores in my area, didn’t find any helpful inspiration, and after a few hours of searching the Internet, I finally found what I was looking for: an owl mage. And that triggered a thought on the meaning of the present. Our colleague had been forced to make some hard decisions beforehand, which did not only have an impact on her work but also personal life, and my idea was to give her some kind of advisor to lead her through the upcoming time of her life. I figured this idea to be on one hand quite good and on the other hand to be somehow hilarious, so the idea was settled. Next thing I needed was a showcase. Luckily enough I had some miniature tanks which showcases I didn’t need. One of them seemed to fit the figure and leave enough space to create a small scene around it. Hm. I only had an overall idea on the topic by that time, but finally the whole concept rushed into my mind. Why not make a path, where the owl mage has a decision to make? The decision might be easy – go left or go right? Both paths will lead out of the diorama and therefore he cannot see what awaits him. He asks his crystal ball for advice but that doesn’t provide the answer and so the mage has to decide himself which way he wants to take. So I bought the owl mage and went on my two-day-trip. When I came back, the mage had already arrived. Time for me to start. First things first – I had to take the dioramas measurements and to make a plan … Then I did a first test fitting of all the elements I had thought of and made a plan, just to ignore it and continue with a second test, in which the owl mage was put together with a tree which I took from my forest box to create an outline I wouldn’t be able to read later on and started. A main element of the diorama would be the path. Therefore I had to carefully outline how I wanted to create it, especially as the parting of the ways should be clearly visible. After that was done and put away to dry, the next thing to do was the road sign. Checking my materials box, I found some balsa wood and plastic styrene. Using a scalpel, a rough file and some glue, those two elements became one to make a great road sign. Then I had to let it dry. Next thing to do was painting the owl – but that is a different story for the next post …

I haven't had much time for minis this month due to the cards and ornaments I've been working on. This is the most recent thing I've painted.

Got a few miniatures in progress! Still struggling with taking decent photos, but my phone can only do so much I think. I may dig around in the settings to see if there's anything I can do to maybe improve the quality. These guys are being made for my Pathfinder group! Just have a few touchups left on them along with the bases to do. The orc is for the cleric, the lizardman is our druid, and the halfling paladin already had a mini for her character so I modified the Leprechaun and Owl mini to make her riding owl (added more fluff to the legs and removed the leprechaun)! I'm really happy with how the armor is coming out on the orc, and feel like I'm finally getting the hang of skin! The pictures don't do his armor justice. I'm also happy with how the lizardman came out in general, it was fun blending different colors for his scales. He has a bit of orange on his belly, throat, and thighs that unfortunately didn't really come out in these pictures.

Hi ! After a long time away from my desk, tadam, a little Leprechaun for start 2016 :). Happy new year all !

One of my husband's DnD characters, a young mage. Of course he died the day I finally finished him. Not sure I'm super pleased with color selection after was all done, not sure if he isn't a little too gray and doesn't pop like I wanted him to. The blue looks okay though. I have two other metal wizards that were intended to be the older versions of the same character, so they will get similar color treatments. I might try to give them brighter secondary colors though so they don't look as boring.

Olsvalter the Aged by Tre Manor -Norse Human I am attempting to do more work with pigment rather than glazing with inks for shading. After reading the discussion about it, I thought it would be a good idea to push myself. The base is custom with spackle, The design is done by me, although you can't see it right now. This photo is not white balanced: It looked really odd when I tried to do it... The display of the colors is accuate though. The light bits are a light shade of GW: Shadow Grey.

A friend at work is departing (for Germany no less!), and as a way to say goodbye and how much I appreciated her, I decided to paint something for her. Since I didn't really know what she liked (aside from chocolate; we had a chocolate exchange going between the two of us) I figured I would painted a little animal. And I've always loved owls, this one is particularly nice, and was pretty easy to get based and make pretty. It was a pretty quick paint job too. After I got it based, the green stuff cured and the primer cured, I got it painted in just a few hours. I did give it a matte varnish, just to protect it from any handling it might see, but I figured since it was most likely going to be a display piece, it didn't need my usual 2 coats gloss + 1 coat matte I usually give metal minis She really liked the mini, I'm pleased to say

Been around here for a bit but not posted anything of my work yet, so here I go. Liked this figure a lot when I first saw it and have it pretty far along. Need to do more shading and highlighting I suppose and finish the base. Although I want to rebase it on a "snow" base. My wife tells me it's good as is and get it done and work on technique with a new figure with new perspective. My goal is a good table top paint job, looking to improve my technique to get more towards display quality.

I painted these as some familiars for my d&d group. The wolves had great personality in their faces, and the owl is tiny. Have a good one!