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Alright, during the winter I was in a deep blue funk and had halted my painting completely, and tried to get out of the rut to no avail. One day I was bored, so I had started looking through some of my old D&D prepainted minis. Then I found one of these duplicate Baaz draconians from the Dragoneye expansion: As you can see, their paint jobs are absolute crap. But I did notice that they have a good amount of detail for the kind of minis that they are. So I thought, why not try using them as cheap minis for testing things? I took these pics on Jan.24, and then tried a soak in good ol' Simple Green. The results were.........not great. Not only does it appear that the "paint" is pretty much baked on, the reaction of the plastic with the SG made it smell pretty bad for a couple of days, and didn't do a darn thing. That was was the end of that for awhile. And so April 9th rolls around, and things warm once more. At this point I was able to pare away the mould lines and prime the figure, and I used Duplicolor Sandable Grey Primer. It comes out as a mist rather than a spray, and I found that a great amount of detail popped out of the draconian, which I was pleased by the results. I did a touch of painting on it by using Citadel Warplock Bronze for a base for skin and Daemonette Hide for the cloak. I decided that he would look better as a Bozak than a Baaz, but my enthusiasm began to wane......... ......until June 18, when I joined the Google Hangouts group! Thanks to all the crazies that hang out here, I was able to do more painting in a week than I have in the last 6 months. I found that being able to be around people who love this as much as I do. It gave me the push I needed to focus on it once more, and special love to those of you who supported me. So i decided to use my lesser-known paints this time, just to see how they work. I used P3 Cold Steel for the armour, and then hit it with P3 Armour Wash. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, it's exactly the way I wanted it. Used Reaper Black Wash on the cloak( almost used Reaper Pure Black!), just to get the folds to show. P3 Brass Balls (hee hee) on the hilt and pommel, and the P3 Pig Iron on the sword edged with P3 Cold Steel. Of course, I couldn't let the experiment end at that. I tried a bit of Citadel Retributor Armour for the cloak clasp, and it's like a little sun. I love that colour. Everyone on the forums knows how much I adore Tri-Art Liquid Mirror, but I never got the opportunity to try it out on miniatures. As you can see, the bracer got some love, and I may have blinded some of the Hangouts members. When I used Reaper Black Was on it, it dulled it down slightly, but it's still far bright than GW Mithril Silver. It's heavy body, but when it dries it conforms around the details underneath, so there's no loss at all. Also, I placed unwashed Liquid Mirror on his claws, because he has to look faaaaaaabulous. I did find that it can be watered down too much, at which point it slides away a bit. Tried P3 Jack Bone on his horns, but I didn't like the colour it had, so a coat of Reaper Mouldy Skin made things look right. Put a bit of Citadel Stirland Mud for texture, and I pretty much called it done. And this is my foray into the wonderful world of basing! I tried making my own static grass tufts with both white glue and hot glue; I found that the latter tends to work better, especially when you need to trim it with your X-Acto. Just a simple bit of playground sand for the base; didn't want anything to complicated, just wanted to test how it would look so I put it on quick and dirty. A final comparison shot of original figure vs. new awesomeness. Keep in mind that this is all just an experiment. I know that the painting is rough and that the basing could be cleaned up, but this was more of a test of several techniques and paints. I finally made my foray into basing and am beginning to understand what works and what doesn't. I found that D&D prepainted minis are perfect if you want cheap subjects to practice on, and Buglips isn't handy.

So while painting during the hangouts, Was extolling the virtues of Dullcote, not realizing that everyone does not have the airbrushing station in a climate controlled area that I do, and it got me to thinking about some of the other sealers that I have on my desk.... So I decided to test the Aztek Airbrush Clear Matte, as it comes in a 2oz (59.1ml) bottle, and it is still available at places like Michael's, AC Moores, and Hobby Lobby. (I bought mine at one of the three, forget which ) So I sprayed my Bones Seoni mini that has been used as a test for Grey liner through an airbrush, and other things, and gave it 2 quick coats of Testors Glosscote, so we could see what we could see.... This gave me something suitably shiny for my test. Since everyone doesn't have an airbrush, I brushed on the Clear Matte... When it dried, it was still shiny, so I did another coat... And here are the results.... Still a bit shiny as far as I am concerned.... But as people on the hangout reminded e, different companies define "MATTE" differently, so if that is the effect you are looking for, it might work for you! Will need to test others as well, I have a Bottle of Polly S Flat Finish as well, but I believe that it is Out Of Production... Might do a coat of that over these results for my own knowledge, and will post the results.... For Science! George

we were discussing the merits over locking an announcement thread versus leaving it unlocked. the concern is that a locked thread might disappear for people. I suspect it is a specific setting that the user has to toggle. It is currently just before 5pm central on Friday. I'm setting up the auto lock for 8pm central tonight. please look for the thread between then and noon-ish tomorrow while it is locked. when locked, you can't reply in it, but you should be able to view it. I'll unlock around noon, and we can get you to chime in if you can see it or not, please. I would appreciate the assistance with this strange request of mine. Thanks bunches!

this is a highlight test mini, there's a Lot of shadow on the underside of the mini and I went over the raised areas with 2/1/1 matt medium stuff / base color / lighter shade. I didn't shade most of the lower left leg as it's sticking out from under his body. http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8270835110/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8270835576/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8269773221/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8270839324/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8269774683/'>

so this is a bit of a test piece to work with blending, I didn't have a lot of time as I needed it ready to go for game today as it's for one of my players so it's a bit on the rough side. http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8270842944/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8269775469/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8270842242/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8269775979/'> http://www.flickr.com/photos/78059741@N08/8269774169/'>