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These are two Reaper figures that I sculpted, from art by Izzy "Talin" Collier. All right, I didn't finish this in time for Day of the Dead (Dia de Muertos) 2018 ... or even 2017. But I'm ten months early for 2019. If you're inspired to buy these, you have ten (or 22, or 34...) months to paint them, too. You can see my Works-in-Progress thread here. The basing is more extensive than I normally do, but I decided to push myself and try something different. Enjoy! Derek

This one has been sitting on my desk begging to be finished for awhile now. After taking the pics I fiddled with the face and changed the color of the stained wood to a walnut which I like better. I'll try to get a photo of that up at some point. I had a wip on this with all my colors and process but the evil empire of photobucket ate the pictures. I used some of the bright skin triad and for the shadow colors corporeal shade. The basework is made from the firm sculpey (the gray type,) a stick and etched brass foliage. The spider shield and barrel are from reaper's bones line. The crystal I did with a few real ones and then just made the rest out of sculpey. I had fun with the idea of someone emerging from shadow so painted the back with the shadow colors and then blended the front to back which gave me a very nice green I used also on the foliage. I made that using a combo of chestnut brown, corporeal shade and linen white. Enjoy! C&C welcome and feel free to ask any questions! I can try to dig up some of the old photos, but having lost my hard drive, it may take time to find the right SD card. Also, I have clearly been playing too much Skyrim...

Right. This project has been kicking my butt, but I'ma gonna kick it back! The idea originally was to use Monique from the master series minis range and do something involving a bunch of critters attacking on her command. I gave up on that because I didn't feeling like that much sculpting. Then I remembered I also had Magnus. Hmmmn, I thought. I do love that Dire Straits song "Romeo and Juliet" I can just see the scene now... ...finds a convenient streetlight (check, I can make that), steps out of the shade (oooh, paint a backdrop doorway?) and says... well, you know how it goes. So, the downside is Magnus is a teeny bit smaller than Monique. Never fear, I said. I can just do some forced perspective, move him more to the foreground and up on a set of steps and put some vines/plants in front of Monique to make her look smaller. I'll also do some fun contrast with the colors and OSL on him to make him stand out more. That'll work. What this has done though, is made me work with a larger space than I wanted and do a heck of a lot of styrene scenery. sigh. Plus, his sword? Not very romantic to be holding a sword while courting. I can sculpt a little heart shaped box of chocolates though. Hmmmn. At any rate, enough talk. Pics! instead of the bouquet I'll probably just do a single rose and have the bouquet at her feet. You can see the size issue. Also, let me just say, it would have been so much easier for me to resculpt his face first. I spent about 2 hours trying to get the expression changed into the dopey almost-tangled smoulder and ended up carving off his eyebrows in the process. It'll pass, but I still need to fiddle with it. this was my first mock-up and sketch for the background. Behind him I'll paint a doorway and wall. I set the pillar of evil in place of Magnus since he's less fully painted. see my cute chocolate box? That was fun to make. The lantern I made out of styrene and spent the rest of the weekend getting the glue off my fingers. kindof the plan anyway. But I'm not liking the background at all. I knew it just wasn't right. so I re-planned as I painted. I'll add in a fence in the background with gravestone and some ruins. Much spookier. The only thing I'm not set on is the tree right now. I'll need to change the shape and move it back father and put something else in the foreground. But i'm using the same colors for her mini. I'm debating taking all the brushstrokes out and making it smooth versus my typical style which is to be much looser and more impressionistic. Right now it's all just sketched in with paint. I'll say on composition for pieces like this, I think about the flat space as having a fore, middle and background. Most paintings divide these up not completely evenly. I tend to put a "horizon" either significantly under or just a bit under the center of the space, leaving my fore and middle ground to share less than half the real estate. I think this balances nicely for the most part. Anyway, more soon. I'm going to try to make significant progress this weekend.