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Did another random pull from the Box of Yesteryears, this time drawing yet another oldie, Nicole of the Blade: Nice bright pics this time, but they have washed out the darks slightly. So. Garrity Eyes strike again, and these were the smallest yet. The first thing that caught my eye was her chain mail. In the past this has been steel/silver, so I wanted to change it up and do a nice bronze. Unfortunately, the closest I had was Antique Gold, so I went with that. Basically everything not flesh or hair got a base coat of Cloudy Gray, then went metallic with Honed Steel, Blade Steel, and Polished Silver, with Antique Gold for the filigree work and the dragon on the shield. Then hit everything with a light Black Ink wash to grunge it up and fill the cracks, and a little bit heavier to line around her legs and skirt and such. Her hair is a mix of 3:1 Desert Sand and Leather Brown, which I only note because I don’t want to forget it. Again. And finally some purple for her hair ribbon to counter the grungy and morose. C&C welcome!

This mini showed up in a recent thread, and I had to have (and paint) one. It’s an old Sandra Garrity piece, one of the oldest in the Reaper catalog. Once again, Final Fantasy provided the inspiration, this time the White Mage. Here is Gwendalyn (and apologies for the very poor pics): Taking some recent advice, I looked up the Bette Davis eyes tutorial and tried it out. The results aren’t visible in these photos because I failed miserably and painted over it all. Her eyes were simply too small for my good detail brush (a size 1). It was not a bad learning experience though. This was another experiment in white cloth, built up from Cloudy Gray and Rainy Gray, through Linen White to bright whites. It ended up looking a bit dirty, but I think is the proper look for this mini. Additionally, I really like the way her staff turned out looking like a wooden stick. Hopefully I can remember how I made that happen for the next time. The stick, the bag, and the base were all done with varying browns, so hopefully they came out somewhat distinct. As always, C&C welcome and appreciated.

For the Company of Wolves: A real live one: This is the 77437 Winter Wolf from the third Reaper Bones kickstarter. And about the size of a horse, so I think of it as a werewolf’s full wolf form. Or a Dire Wolf as needs be. Miniature sculpted by Sandra Garrity. Bespoke 50x25mm 3D printed base. and the real dead ones Two pairs of 77533 Dread Wolves from the Graveyard Expansion from the Bones 3 KS. One pair brown and one pair grey. Ended up rather samey…Too dark perhaps. Bespoke 35x25mm 3D printed bases. In the immortal words of Lord Flashheart: "Woof Woof!"

Decided to have some fun today as I was digging thru my figures pulling out stuff I am going to put in the BOGW. I ran across the hydra and remembered that next weekend I planned on throwing my d&d players up against one. 3-4 hours later I have a painted up hydra on a scenic base from secret weapon miniatures. Added some water effects for a tiny swampy pond beneath it. I’d love to hear your C&C!

well, it seems to have been not quite a year since my last post, and a bit longer since my last post to Show Off. In the meantime, Nissiana and I have purchased a house, which ate most of the Fall, Winter and Spring, and our Summer has been, per usual, filled with rehearsals and performances. Although I am currently imbroiled with a production of "The Three Musketeers," I've managed to unpack some paint kit and brought it to work. My recent lunch breaks have yielded a passel of kobolds and a pile of rats, both of which will likely lurk the basements of Sharn (or the waste drain of an alchemist's lab, in the case of that one rat) soon enough. Anyway, these are all to a very rough "look ma, I finished!" standard, mostly just to knock some rust off my brushes. Hope you enjoy. Penny bases will be blacked eventually.

This little guy will be a wedding cake topper at a friend's wedding this week. I wish I had the time, energy, and ability to do a better job, overall; it feels in many ways incomplete. But I really do like how the wing pattern and spine turned out. I really struggled painting his body, and frankly I'm hoping nobody gets around to looking at his legs and feet. He does look like a nice little fire drake from the top, I think. This was another exercise in not trying to be bigger than my britches.

I wasn't originally planning to do a WIP of this guy, but after struggling with super glue and vaseline and half-cured greenstuff, I thought that it might be wise to post about it and learn all the ways I'm going about this wrong. I decided to swap two of the heads because I thought it would look more balanced, and I also decided to add wings because why not? Then, because it totally looked like I'd just hacked stuff apart and sorta glued it back together (because...that's what I did), I decided to break out my increasingly stiff greenstuff. I didn't want to wait for the GS to cure before putting brown liner on, which as you'll see later was a mistake. :P I made a sort of half-hearted attempt at scales in a couple of spots, but really all I wanted to do was smooth the join between the neck and head, so I basically just tried to smush it as flat as I could and feather the edges a bit. And here's the wings, which were 'voluntarily' donated by my extra Rauthuros. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, so I just cut them apart and sorta...glued them on. Pinning didn't even occur to me until after the glue had already set (and I used a fair bit). I did try to scrape off the Brown Liner where I'd planned to join them to the body, but being Brown Liner, it rather stubbornly resisted both my fingernail and my sanding needle, so I shrugged and stuck them on anyways. I originally was going to just smooth the super obvious place where the wings met the body, but after I'd poked and prodded and squashed the GS into place, I decided to get...creative. That there is my super-rough first attempt at scales. It looks pretty horrid close-up, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to disguise some of that with paint. At least this way, there's some texture there that I can play with. I am actually quite pleased with how the areas closest to his spine look, though! If you squint, they look kinda scale-like! And here's the final result: The wings are lopsided, but I can't do anything about that now, and this is a just-for-fun piece anyways, so I'm not going to stress about it (though it will bug me until the end of forever, lol). The next step, after all the GS cures, will be to scrub him off again, because vaseline and paint don't mix well. And I totally did the intelligent thing in slathering him in brown liner BEFORE I'd done the conversions; there's vaseline all over that now. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Merryn Elmshadow, Female Elf Thief (Reaper SKU 2590) is a classic Sandra Garrity sculpt. Other than the studded leather, I really enjoyed painting this one.

I got this sweet baby on Feb 2nd, started it on Febuary 3rd. This is the first of my three Secret Special Projects for February. This is also the big lead beastie that weighs a gazillion pounds. (I am very muscular now, plan to audition as Conan) I bought it planning to match the studio model, opened it up and it said: "I want to be GREEN." I make it a policy never to argue with lead dragons when they tell me to do stuff, so green it is! Looks good in green, actually. Hope you enjoy this one, two more very cool special projects to go! Edit to add link to Project Two: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/73228-secret-project-two-ral-partha-10-500-the-red-dragon-of-krynn/

Well, here's another started project. Ral Partha OOP White Dragon. You saw him before and after his dunking. Here he is rebuilt and ready for a bit more sanding, a bit more detail to the base and then priming. No great conversion or adjusting. Just a better assembly, slightly larger base (2 inches square now) and this time cleaned up a lot more. Enjoy and Stay Tuned.

This guy was a test piece... I have another 2 like him and 3 female centaurs that are all going to be painted roughly the same. The base isn't done because I'm planning to actually cut them off these bases and attach them to something better later, but I don't have those bases yet so... Comments and criticism always welcome.

Orrrcs! I got two reaper army packs of these bad boys, and they look awesome. One pack, 06015, only had the two Sandra Garrity orcs and not the two Bob Olley ones. Their fantastic customer service has already sorted this out for me, so a Bones orc of the same type is standing in as a stunt double to show the other one that comes in the pack while his compatriots travel by mail. But these six funtime fellows are getting some paint, and I've been looking forward to this!

I still don't have replacement brushes, but I've been getting oddly useful results from my u-shaped brush and managed to heal a W&N Series 7 00 enough to help the terrible brush along. I'd rather fight them a bit than take a painting break, because I've been going gangbusters since about mid-december. I might fall out of the groove if I take a few days off. Since it's been a while since I last did a WIP, and as this one is very fresh and untouched, I thought I'd post her up as I went along. I think you can see the rather large mold lines on the inside of her shield. That's going to be trouble, but I think it's worth it. I'm always a sucker for a nice Sandra Garrity fightin' lady. I've already been picking at it, so she should be ready for primer soon.

I was going for a more sinister looking fleshtone with this one. I've done it in green, purple, and finally this one. I am quite please with how he came out. Also, I am still getting used to actually using the metallics from the bones paint line. They are quite bright, even after being hit was dullcoat. I love the sheen in them. Hope you enjoy, and as always C&C is always welcome. CAH

I'm playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and apparently we need a dragon. So I'm painting the Shadow Dragon that's been in my "Box of 20" unpainted minis as a blue dragon. Last night I boiled, cleaned and glued the wings (because why not? Oh, ok... THAT's why not) and slopped on blue liner/medium. I will probably slop on some more liner to actually line. Colors I'm planning on using. -Interference Blue (Yes, this dragon has been Pingo'd). Skin:Dragon Blue (!), Frost Blue, Blue Flame, Ghost White, Magic Blue (VGC), Denim Blue Plates/Bone: Handle Wood (SW), Bone White (VGC), Pearl White, Creamy Ivory. That may be more than I actually use, though. No mold line prep.

My mom got this mini in Secret Sophie I believe. I swiped it from her as she returns the favor by swiping ones I like to paint for herself. Standard in this house... More phone pics. She is the one where drybrushing finally worked and I can do it with only minor mishaps.

This was painted tonight, in about 3 hours from washed to clear coat, during an online painting session with some pretty cool people. We do this almost every week, just in case you might be interested. At any rate, I wasnt sure what I wanted to do with the staff, so I decided to go for a kind of living staff. I decided to paint it like I did the tentacles on his face. Overall, I'm happy with how he came out, and I think he's going to look good on the table. I'm sure, the model itself, would have been enough to send my players in panic mode. With a little color, it should be full fledged hysterics. Mwuhahaha!! Also, this is the first time I tried wet blending on the cloak and robe. Still trying to get the hang of it. Enjoy! CAH

From my drop in on London, I also bought a unicorn. Hell yeah. I decided to do a classical pretty unicorn paint, and I had all these grand ideas of soft blue hued whites and stuff... And it all went horribly wrong because I drybrush a lot and am less than amazing at blends. Partly white blends. I actually ended up just outright covering up all the Vallejo paint on here (on the mane, tail, and legs) and just going to town instead with my usual GW paints, and then tried out my new Soulstone blue over all that. I was pleasantly surprised. I ended up putting in loads of shade on him which I then tried to drybrush back out, but didn't get the gradual change I wanted overall. He's very tabletop, but... To be honest, girly stuff isn't my thing, haha. I like monsters way more. Perhaps I'll buy another and then try and paint that one as the evil twin =P So yeah... Unicorn! My photos are grossly inconsistent atm :S Paints used... Citadel: -Whie Scar -Fenrisian Grey -Drakenhof Nightshade -Ulthuan Grey -Soulstone Blue -Gehenna's Gold -Auric Armor Gold -Abaddon Black -Pink Terror -Seraphim Sepia -Temple Guard Blue And some Vallejo Sky Blue. Urk.

This is Reaper's "Dara, Psionic Warrior" sculpted by Sandra Garrity. I primed her with Titanium White, then washed with Burnt Umber to show details. I changed a little from my usual pattern in that I left off the Burnt Umber from her sword since I wish it to glow later and for that a pure white undercoating works best. I've painted her face and skin with mixes of Titanium White, Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, and Red Oxide. I washed black over her hair, thinking I would paint it silver later, but I like the look so much I may keep it.

I painted this up with my Old School Grenadier minis because I've never felt quite right with all-male parties. She's honorary Old School, although a modern Ironwind metals recasting. In old Ral Partha she was #03-107, but in Ironwind Metals' new catalogue she is #61-093. She is very small. Here she is compared to a Reaper figure (02881: Dara, Psionic Warrior); both Ciera and Dara were sculpted by Sandra Garrity: Anyhow, she is a lovely sculpt and I enjoyed bringing her to life. The original WIP was here, then I finished her on the Memorial Day Weekend Paint Binge.

The Pillar of Evil! Should be a fun terrain piece for a wargame or RPG... This was painted in the "Cavern Stone" triad from GameDecor's PaintWorks line of terrain paint, then washed with Army Painter green tone ink. Pretty quick and simple. The base is a 1" square Hirst Art's tile done with the same paints, part of a grab bag of tiles Bonwirn gave me a couple Secret Sophies ago.

As some of you know, I'm working on a local convention, MarCon as their Guest Relations coordinator. I'm happy to announce that James Wappel has agreed to be our Artist GoH (Thanks to ReaperCon moving). In addition, Sandra Garrity is a regular attendee and she and James may be cooking up something special. MarCon is a non-profit, fan run convention no going on year 51 and will be held May 6-8, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio. Our guest list also includes: S.J. Tucker - Filk Guest of Honor Seanan McGuire - Author Guest of Honor Onyx Path - RPG Guest of Honor Japanime Games - Board Gaming Guest of Honor Mogchelle Cosplay - Cosplay Guest of Honor TBA - Media Guest of Honor Along with special guests: Michelle Belanger - Author Matthew McFarland & Michelle Lyons-McFarland - Gaming More info can be found at MarCon.org.

Hey look I finished him! Or her. No offense to Bathalians but I can't tell the difference and don't much care. Anyway. Not the greatest paint job ever but I think it came out pretty decently, and by my standards it actually went really quick. Probably under 4 hours total. Comments and criticism appreciated, as always.

03375 DHL Classics Female Wizard by Sandra Garrity

Here's the super quick speed paint I did for my D&D buddy tonight, about 3 hours start to finish. For the purposes of our D&D game, this is Belatos the Aasimar Druid. Figure: Tolan, Male Druid - Reaper SKU #02692 Sculptor: Sandra Garrity C&C welcomed and appreciated! Thanks for looking