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Hi everyone, sorry I haven't posted in a while. I mostly post on the Reaper Facebook Page and Twitter now. I still check out everything on the "Show off" every day, though! Here is my most recent tartan project. This is Aeslin sculpted by Sandra Garrity. My customer is a fan of the show (and books) Outlander and this figure was chose specifically for it's potential for painting a tartan. The tartan that was picked is the Wilson Ancient Hunting Tartan. It has these very thin quadruple orange lines that give it a very interesting blue/green/orange colour shift look. I was only able to fit in three of the thin lines, but it was enough to give the cool effect.

This is from Atlantis Miniatures dwarf Kickstarter - I painted him a while ago but only just got around to getting the photos off the memory card. The red hair took a few attempts, doing my best to follow Marsya's tutorial. My first attempt at tartan as well, and I think it was successful! And I've got lots more of his dwarven buddies on which to improve!

02476: Lorna The Huntress sculpted by Bobby Jackson. This is the P65 version. A bit of a speedpaint in order to try out a different tartan colour scheme. This one is based upon the Robertson Hunting Tartan.

02243: Robert O'Mannon sculpted by Bobby Jackson. Some time ago I said I would post a step-by-step of a tartan being painted. I've done the photos and here they are: Tartan Step by Step

My BF had a PC made with Heroforge I've been putting off, cause he wanted Tartan painted. I've seen all the recent Tartan posts here and followed along with the tutorials and I'm so pleased with how it came out! He also requested a red leather jacket and green mohawk. Overall I am so happy with this mini. Used almost all reaper paints, and a couple of citadel washes. Thanks so so so much for all the tartan inspiration!

I've been working on painting tartan a bit (Ian MacAndrew Show Off) A while ago I said I would post a step-by-step of painting a tartan(Painting Tartan). So here it is: 02243 Robert O'Mannon sculpted by Bobby Jackson. I started by deciding what colour tartan I would paint. On the last project I used the Afghanistan Memorial Tartan ( Tartan reference material ) but changed the blue to green and left off some of the highlight colours. I've found that most patterns of tartan are really far too complicated for me to attempt to paint, so I pick out one that I can simplify into easily painted elements. These elements often combine multiple lines from the original tartan into a single line of a similar colour. The result is a pattern that suggests a tartan but without having to paint a lot of very fine lines. Painting very long, fine lines is the particular challenge of painting tartan, so the fewer you can get away with the better. So for this project I decided to use the same tartan pattern again, but to keep the blue colour and to add in the red and white lines. This is risky because the white lines in particular can be very hard to paint smoothly and they stick out like a sore thumb when they are messy. Mistakes will be highly visible, as you will see. Another consideration for selection of the tartan and the colour of tartan is the overall composition of the final miniature. The very fine lines can be hard to notice, so adding a similar colour elsewhere on the miniature can help make the colour more easily noticed. This is why I painted Robert's hair red and his amulet blue. Step 1: Draw out the main lines for the pattern and select the colours. I also test painted a swatch of the pattern. From this I knew that the blue would need to have the intersection squares painted in darker or it wouldn't look right.

Ian MacAndrew by Bobby Jackson. This is the first of several projects with tartans that I'm working on. Once I get a better grip on the process I will do a detailed WIP.

I needed to paint a tartan. The miniature and the reason are here: 02178 Knight Templar with Royal MacKenzie Tartan Painting a tartan in detail would be very hard. Here is the source material picture I worked from. Most of the tutorials I looked at involved painting a black grid and then painting in each square individually. I'm too lazy, was in too much of a hurry and don't have the quality of eyesight for that. My daughter who is a highland dancer and water colour painter helped me figure it out. We figured out which of the lines of the tartan would actually be visible at arm’s reach. Then we worked out which colours are forming those lines. Tartans aren't generally composed of stripes of solid colours. The colours come from the mixing of two colours of wool interwoven. So, we worked out which two colours were involved in each stripe. For example, red and green give you brown. So, by putting a stripe of green glaze over red basecoat, I get a brown stripe. If I put a second green stripe over the red at a 90 degree angle, I get another brown stripe, but where the two cross I get a green square with crisp corners. I put a thinned dot of the green in the middle of that square to deepen the green colour, and voila, a cross hatch of brown stripes and green squares on red. Then I sketched a map of it, noting that the tartan is not a perfectly spaced grid, and selected colours which when added together will produce the colours needed. The map: This proved to be still too difficult to paint clearly, so the number of thin lines was further reduced for simplicity. I started with a red basecoat and gave it minimal highlighting and shading. Then I started with one black line running parallel to the characters belt, midway between hem and belt. This is marked on the photo below. This gave me the line from which to measure out and place all the other lines. After that it was, in order: - green horizontal stripes - green vertical stripes - enhance green squares - black lines. The lines in the source material are not actually black, they are sets of black lines and blue lines. So each black line was traced over with blue as well to tone it down a bit and give a slight blue hue. It may not seem like much, but the before and after change was remarkable. Then the very thin yellow lines, with paint thinned somewhat. Finally a yellow dot at the intersection of the yellow lines. Here's a close-up with the starting line marked. It doesn’t look very good up close, but it looks good from a distance. Looks pretty good in other colours, too. Iron Wind Metals 67-005 Female Sibeccai I have some miniatures on the way in the mail which I had intended to use for practicing tartan and other free hand designs. I will post one as a step by step at a later date. Geoff

Something in a post I read earlier reminded me of unreasonable demands made by non-painters. A new guy joined our D&D group, so to be friendly I offered to paint a miniature of his character, who was as yet not introduced to the party. He says "Yes please' and the night before the game send me this: I'm thinking, this guys a bit of a $%&^ but I'll show him up. So at the start of the game the next day I gave him this: I shouldn't have bothered, since he rage quit about a month later because we were 'role-playing' too much and not taking the game seriously enough. Anyway, an adaptation of the Royal MacKenzie Tartan for your viewing pleasure. Here is a link to how I painted this. How I cheated at painting a tartan Geoff

Hey all, Wanted to take a break from painting big stompy robots (CAVs) and get back into something with curves. Someone in my pathfinder group just made a new character, a female slayer... So I used that as motivation to paint up this awesome sculpt. I looked around and got heavy inspiration from these two posts by Pingo and Evilcoatrack: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/61985-scáthach-scotswoman-warrior-77389-highland-heroine/ http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69147-77389-highland-heroine-wip/ I decided to try a few new things with this mini, including thinning using matte medium, and a tartan pattern. Tartan is really hard to make look good... If anyone had any tips, I am all ears. I just finished the hair and am really happy with how it came out, and this is probably the best face I have ever done as well (with eyes, no less!). In fact, the irises went on a bit thick, so there is a little dollop that creates a shadow under strong light to mimic a pupil ... Kind of like the opposite of what Roman sculptures do. A fortunate accident. Anyway, C and C appreciated. I reckon I'll have her done by the end of the week. I'll be trying nmm on the sword and shields. Pingo and Evilcoatrack, thanks for the inspiration!!!

My third and final bust (for now) from Heroes & Villains Miniatures. This one is "Jacobite Highlander: Culloden Moor, 1746." The big challenge here is, of course, going to be the tartans. From my research, it looks like pretty much every piece of the outfit could be a different plaid, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going to leave the shirt and/or jacket a solid color for my own sanity. This is definitely going to be the most extensive freehand I've ever attempted. He also has a few accessories that I haven't attached yet, and even came with another, much angrier and beardier head. I probably would have gone with that one except that I just did a bearded bust and I want to try clean-shaven. (That last photo was taken with my new phone camera macro lens!) I've collected a few inspiration pics that show how just how much plaid can go into these outfits.

I was heavily inspired with Malefactus work and I wanted to paint a Goblin old style and sculpt / add some mushrooms. The Goblin is from Metal Magic ( now OOP). The Mushrooms , some are sculpted ( the larger and the round ones) and the pointy ones are Resin from Ristul's Market. My WIP for those interested. http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/66981-goblin-with-mushrooms-metal-magic-by-xherman1964/?hl=bagpipe The little guy has just consumed some mushrooms for inspiration on his latest musical creation. I wonder if the other Goblins will like his music. Without further ado, the pics.

This is the first Bones II mini I started, although I finished a few others first. She is for a player in one of the games I'm in. The figure doesn't have a name yet, so far as I know is simply called "Highland Heroine", so I am calling her Scáthach after the mythic Scots martial artist who taught Cú Chulainn and gave him her spear. I painted her hair ridiculously red. I also learned a thing or two about plaid while painting her. WIP thread here.

This is one of the add-on set of the Thank-You Pack in the Bones II Kickstarter. I don't know what she's called yet. Someone in my gaming group needs her for a PC (the character is named Scáthach, which would be a great name for this figure as she was a legendary Scottish woman warrior and martial arts trainer), and she was my officially named "first Bones II mini", so I'd best get started. Here she is primed with Reaper's Brown Liner. I painted her cape a deep woollen tartan green. I intend to attempt plaid later. Don't judge me. She had a slight tendency to topple over backwards, so I glued her down to a fender washer. I shaped the epoxy a bit to blend in with the rocks she seems to be standing on, but I didn't do any serious sculpting or anything. I primed her skin (I decided her legs are not bare) with a very pale, slightly sickly skin tone mixed from Titanium White, Burnt Sienna, and Phthalo Green. I'm going to try to make her a redhead with the pale sallow and rosy pink skin they (we, tbh) tend to have. This is her face at the moment. Eyebrows will come later with hair (or be invisible, as redheads' eyebrows so often are). Lastly I painted some stone-grey on her base. It's mixed from Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and Titanium White and was originally mixed for drow flesh.