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The Egyptians of old venerated the scarab as an aspect of Ra, the motivator that propelled the Sun across the sky like a dung-ball. Thousands of years later, the red desert has covered the sacred sites, and vulgar adventurers dig for treasure. But it does not do to profane the shrine of a god! Or perhaps it is just that, in the desert, everything is hungry. Either way, it's not pleasant. Or quick. What a great pulpy sculpt, and what a horrible way to go!

Doing a quick paint. Here's some basecoats

These are from the Cuetzpal Kickstarter from Lost Kingdom Miniatures which I backed for a "few" lizardmen etc.. Part of my Lost World Project: WIP here: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69308-lost-world-project-glitterwolf-paints-coldblooded-creatures-and-conquistadores/ They will act as one of many Jungle Swarms. ***************** David Attenborough Voice: Hatching time! The mother of these little creatures laid her eggs in this carefully constructed nest some time ago and now the little ones are hatching. One could argue that it's a bad mother to leave her babies alone at a time like this, surely she should be there to protect them, right? Well, if you look at these little ones you can see that they have all the protection they need! Look at that armor, and that clubtail, now one could think these little herbivores to be harmless, but think again! If one should get too close to one of these little ankylodons they might use that clubtail, even at this age it's fully capable of shattering bones. Someone with a shattered leg wouldn't last long in this Jungle. It's best to leave these little ones alone! *************************

Created a Bat Swarm with one of the Giant Bats from Reaper Bones ( SKu 07058) and a stand of metal bats from a Halloween Set, I believe from Reaper as well but can't find the SKU. Part of my Children of the Night Project. WIP: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/79298-children-of-the-night-by-glitterwolf/

Back again with some spiders! I tried out Rangers of Shadow Deep last night and got to break out my spider minis. I've got a few Giant Spiders and Spider Swarms from the D&D board games Castle Ravenloft, and Legend of Drizzt respectively. I had started these ages ago but quickly became dissatisfied with the direction they were headed. A few months ago I picked them back up and went in a different direction. The giant spiders in particular were letting me down. The sculpt is pretty undefined. It took some freehand fur work to bring it to life. I also switched from a warm brown tone to a cool grey. I think the added contrast makes them stand out a lot better. I also added some used dryer sheets as webbing. It's mostly successful. The super glue turned it invisible in places which sort of works as holes in the web. Definitely will revisit this idea again in future projects. The spider swarms are less successful. I tried to keep three distinct colorations to help them stand apart from one another. But with such poorly defined details, they could have used more contrast. They work well enough. Maybe I'll revisit them, but I tend to just move on after calling something "good enough." What do you all do for swarm minis? I find that most of mine look rather drab or incomprehensible.

To support my Undead army ( noticed I really love the Undead by now?) I painted up a unit of three swarms. 2 bat swarms and a Murder of crows. Speed painted, so not really great. But fun I think. I sold them afterwards to make more room for my 20 minis.

Got a second wing of skimmers to get together and a few more conversions to hack up but the Kulathi Horde is starting to take shape ... 3 strike units to the left, 3 fire units to the right, 2 hound assault up front, 2 heavy weapon teams and 3 command elements in center with skimmer fire support wing around back (skimmer assault wing and ace special in the works) ... Some paint and basing to go ... Thank you again Bob Ridolfi for the Kulathi and Kevin Williams for the Hounds of Tindalos ... im sooo glad you can sculpt better than I (try to) paint.

I've been wanting to paint these rat swarms since I got my Bones I shipment. However, the base was cut into this jagged shape, so I always delayed painting them as I waited on basing them. Finally, I decided to base some with a good heapin' helpin' of sand. The other two got green stuff treatment to try to blend the base that way. One was wood planks, and the other was flagstones. I tried to emphasize fur/hair in the painting. I totally "phoned it in" on the tails, noses and claws. I really didn't want to over-spend time on these guys. Sorry, I realize I didn't give you a good shot of the skull they are swarming over. C&C Welcomed.

Here was a quickie. The bats are mainly drybrushed then cleaned up with lining. Then I did the gravestone using Michael Proctor's tips about lots of different colored washes. It was a bunch of diluted GW Shades and Glazes, then re-lined the stone with Weathered Stone. I liked it so much, I tried it on the bats themselves to add some interest.

The two spider swarms from Bones 1, painted to a table top standard. I tried doing a little free hand with some markings here and there to hopefully make them a little interesting. Thanks for looking.

A friend handed me a Reaper bat swam and asked me paint it. Of course that reminded me of the 3 Bat Swarms that were primed and waiting to be painted for use by the hubby in his Undead army. Might as well paint them all at once. So here we have 4 Reaper bones Bat Swarms. The 3 on square bases are the Undead proxies. Fast table top, lack luster phone photos. Enjoy! CC always welcome.

A quick paint while trying to base a semi realistic poison pattern on the carapaces... I think I should probably hit it with some gloss sealer to help it pop.

This is used as a spirit host in my warhammer army, or as a filler for the skeleton unit when not. Everything on this base, except the zombie, is from reaper, but I can only find the tombstone using the figure finder. There are quite a few reaper minis in my block of 50 skeletons:

Here's a quick one I did. Randomly went into the box of Bones (KS I) and pulled these out. Pretty simple paint job. First off, 9064 Brown Liner as both primer and base color. Next, 913 Forest Green, 9134 Clotted Red, 9050 Antique Gold, 9126 Gunmetal Blue, and 9280 Nightmare Black were all used to paint individual beetles. Afterwards, I probably would have stuck with just the red and gold. Those looked the best on the base color.

I didn't do a very good job on these, but they were quick to make. Trooper for scale.