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Good evening all you Reaperpaths! So tonight I've got an old blister pack of miniatures, a mounted and and foot Lord Soth, sculpted by Dennis Mize for Ral Partha's D & D TSR series from the eighties and nineties. This is another one of the miniatures that I'm going to be selling on EBay (just listed them a moment ago), and the proceeds of the sale are going to go straight to Melissa Noe, the wife of Michael Noe, Iron Wind Metal's president. She was diagnosed last year with cancer and their bills are copious even with insurance, so trying to do a bit to help out. Anyhoos, here they are finally, first Lord Soth on foot: and then Lord Soth on his loyal steed (not saying the steed has much say in the matter really): and here they are together: I had a few problems, as I'd mentioned in my little post under the "Painting Tips and Advice" forum, where lots of the chainmail I could see little white holes that just didn't get filled, but spent lots of hours trying to fill them individually and was successful to some degree, and if not under a 3000 x 2000 pixelated photo, you really notice overly the holes. The other thing that I did was I was able paint the second eye in the Lord Soth on foot, for which I added that close up because I was so happy I was able to get it done. So crossing my fingers and hope to find a buyer for these two fellas and their horsey. If you happen to know anybody that collects Partha figures, make sure to mention to them that this is out there, just waiting to find a new owner, and that all money received is pretty much just going to straight to some medical bills for a very nice lady. Anyhoos, at the very least I hope you all enjoy the paint job! Thanks, Mark

This piece has been sitting in my mini drawer for quite some time. I'm not sure where it came from or why it showed up but it appeared and desired paint so it got some. I am thinking of making it the grand mentor for the legion of Justice and Caeke to counter the dread influence of Fatimus but we will see. In the mean time, I dont know too much about this mini other than it was produced by Ral Partha in 1991 for TSR Its pretty and it was fun to paint, but my google fu is not strong enough to find the name of the character and the base has no further information. So without further Ado, my dragon Elder

Ok, so with the Ogre nearing completion I've decided for my next magic trick I'll turn my attention to my limited edition Ral Partha Takhisis. But, I don't like Takhisis. So I'm painting this as Tiamat. The head order is different between the two, but I'm going to paint the colored heads same as given for Takhisis. Basically all I'm doing is painting her black parts red, except for the black dragon head. Now, usually I start a WIP thread at the beginning, but this one was already under way before I started WIPing around here. So instead I'm going to post pics of my progress, run you through what I did and what I have to fix, and then document the (possibly very slow) attempt to bring this Dragon Goddess to full frightful fruition. I wasn't going to document this, but since I'm not the only one with a Takky to wrassle then I decided I should. Problems I run into, and especially mistakes I will make, may save somebody else a pile of hardship when they go to do theirs. Make no mistake, this kit is as evil as she is beautiful. Also, normally when I do a WIP thread I don't ask for advice. That doesn't apply here - here I'm tackling something quite a bit more challenging than the usual fare. If you've got something to say, I'm all ears. I'm going to divide the pics over multiple posts so I'm not just creating one giant wall of text. So first here's a picture of the work done so far, minus her heads: (Ogre for scale): I didn't want to assemble this much before starting to paint, but with this beast I didn't see a way around that. The fit is atrociously bad. Mine is Takhisis Local 2406 out of 5000, which is middle of the run. If you have an earlier number, it may be better. If later, especially in the late 4000's? May god have mercy on your soul.

The dwarf is the 5th figure that I have painted from the old Grenadier 2007 set. It was so hideous that I never posted it, partially because I didn't really like the figure and just slapped some paint on it to call it done. I mean, those eyes were just sculpted circles. I filled the center with color, edge highlighted the raised outer edge, and then went around them with a shadow color. If you are an aspiring sculptor... never ever sculpt eyes like it is 1980. But I was talked into posting it, so blame 72moonglum and Volksfest for the horror. For scale, here is the dwarf between and Infinity Nomad and a Reaper bugbear. Knee-capping is her only option.

Today (well technically yesterday, but since I haven't slept yet it still counts as today) I decided to take a break from my 54mm mini and paint something quick and easy. None of the Bones were speaking to me, but then I saw my unpainted Grenadier Females staring at me and remember that I had planned to paint the set this year. I grabbed the "thief-sling" basically at random and sat down to get to work. It would appear at first glance that she should be a relatively straightforward mini to paint, but there was a complication. This poor unfortunate woman was lacking a face. Sure she had a jawline, and cheekbones, and even a nose, but there was only the barest hint of where lips should be, no eyes to speak of, and to make matters worse there was even a casting defect going down from where her left eye should have been and onto her cheek. This and a few other defects were filled with brush on sealer and it was time to freehand some true 25mm eyes! Except that I didn't quite get enough sealer over the defect which made the freehand a bit off. The after painting sealing is a bit satin, which is fine for everything but the hair which lost all subtlety. To keep the theme from the previous ladies going I outfitted her in only the finest 1980 colors, and deliberately made a effort to use paints that I rarely grab off the shelf. This makes four out of ten taken painted and sealed. Maybe the other six will have their own paint days before the end of the year? My valiant attempt at freehanding eyes over a defect. And lastly, I realized that I've never taken a shot with a coin to show off how tiny the minis I'm painting are. Wow, she's smaller than the coin!

I've been looking to do a WIP for a while now but couldn't quite think what to do. So, after going through my collection of oldies, I decided to give this a crack: This was an old set of D&D Dungeon Adventurers by Citadel Miniatures & contained 8 character class minis plus a treasure chest. I started painting these many, many, many years ago but didn't get very far & never quite finished, as this pic shows....... also, whilst rummaging through my oldies, I found the partner set: which contains these D&D Monsters: and they go together, so I guess I'll have to do them all...... I am a very slow methodical painter & speed painting is unknown to me so if you're interested in following this to see how it ends, you may want to prepare yourself for a long haul! Comments are always welcome, many thanks!

Over the last 6 months, I've been working on a lengthy project to get a couple of old classic Citadel official D&D mini sets from the 1980's painted up & now, I've finally finished! Thanks to all who viewed, commented, encouraged & supported me along the way. The WIP can be found here. There's two sets, one of Dungeon Adventurers & one of Dungeon Monsters, here's the pics: Encounter shot: Adventurers group shot: Monsters group shot: Elf, Dwarf & Elf: Magic-User, Treasure Chest & Cleric: Unarmoured Fighter, Thief & Fighter: Giant Rats, Stirge & Giant Fire Beetles: Kobold, Giant Toad & Orc: Bugbear, Skeleton & Gnoll: Thanks for looking!

I found this figure in an antique shop. "TSR" was stamped on the bottom. I searched the web, and found on DnDLead.com that this miniature was part of a 1983 TSR AD&D "Basic Figure Set". I took extra precautions while prepping it, since I'm sure the lead content is pretty high. Photos of the TSR Box set (from DnDLead.com):

So my quest to paint more gnomes continues, even though it's a very slow process as I don't seem to have so much time to paint at the moment. Here's one I got finished I think last weekend, an old gnome illusionist from TSR. Not the most excellent figure ever sculpted, but I think he's a fun one. More gnomes to follow! I keep thinking too about having a frost giant-athon, but that would probably take a lot longer...

So a few days ago, by purest luck and coincidence, I was wandering around on-line and came upon a miniature that I have always wanted and have already painted, a Kenzer Hackmaster Female Gnome Illusionist that I had been wanting to get a second copy of now for years and there it was at a wonderful price. Out there as well on the same web site were a few old TSR miniatures, and I grabbed some TSR elves and dwarves, only three bucks per set, so I snatched those up as well.

I started this guy almost 10 years ago just putting base colors on him, but was never sure what else to do with him. Recently I saw him on a shelf and decided to finish him. Someday I hope to paint his blister brother and their big brother the greater wolf spider. I painted his eyes blue to try and make him look a little different. I'm not sure if it works or if it is even all that noticable. Hmmm. I'm seeing some places I need to touch up now and I think I need to do more with the fur on his face. now that I see it close up. maybe he's not finished yet. Criticisms and suggestions are appreciated.

Here is a Robyn from the Forgotten Realms set. I added to her base the fairy dragon familiar too match her little one on her wrist. Thanks for viewing. C&C welcome.

Hi All! so I finished this one's paint job last week, but went on vacation and came back to finish up the base last night. I painted this one as a gift for somebody I'm going to be seeing next month, which hopefully he likes. Don't know if he ever checks this forum out or not, and even if he does I'm pretty sure he has no idea who I am on it so probably not revealing any surprises. I kind of like how this one came out, even though the metal seems to look better in real life. I'm a bit disappointed that inside his helm I couldn't get his eyes to stick out much. They are painted red but it's either not red enough or the shadows are too deep so you really can't see them. Anyway, enjoy!

So, I'm running my group through the "A" series, and they are currently going through A1. I have noticed....discrepancies on the map. I usually consider my Google-Fu to be strong, but I am completely stumped on this. Does anyone know of an errata sheet that is out there somewhere? Specific Questions: Room 8 - Where do the stairs down lead to? Rooms 16-18: Am I correct that the only access to this part of the temple is through the portcullis in area 16? I have checked "Scourge of the Slave Lords," the map is exactly the same, and I do have a copy of "Against the Slave Lords," but I don't want to break the shrink on a book that cost me 40 bucks unless I HAVE to. In my experience with the reprints, they didn't do any error checking, and actually created a few in the OCR process, anyway. Thanks in advance!

I spent about 2 hours each on the first 2 elementals, they will all be used on the tabletop. I had just bought the 3 Army Painter inks, so I tested them on these. I like the results. I love this one from Lance and Laser "Elementals - Earth and Water" set. Its partner is somewhere unpainted in our figure stash. Ral Partha elemental from 11-426, very classic pose on this one. Here is the complete set, the Fire elemental was painted by my husband around 1990, using enamel paints. Sadly, he doesnt paint anymore , but he does help me with gluing, assembly and basing . The ugliest earth elemental ever is definitely this one by TSR, part of the "Elementals Air and Earth" twopack from 1983. I didn't think he deserved more than an hour of paint time. Here he is with his partner Air elemental that I painted in April of 1994, this air elemental was why we bought the set: Group shots are always fun:

So here's the second in my little series of orangey colored goblins. Did a front and a back on again just for fun, hope you all enjoy! As usual the NMM metal kicks my petard, but oh well, at this pace I might actually end up being decent at it in another fifteen to twenty years.

So as I keep painting gnomes, here's the next one up. This one is an old TSR gnome thief, when TSR came up with a pretty short-lived line of figures. I actually like the figure, even though the details on the figures aren't so magnificent neither by today's or yesteryear's standards, but it once again is a nice little figure with a lot of personality.

So having found some Tangerine Goblin Skin in my Ral Partha paints, I decided to try some out. I started two gobbers while waiting for my still MIA Ogre, and not knowing how much time I had before The Big Guy showed up I decided to focus on one and finish him. So he's out of the Ral Partha TSR AD&D line, and here he is:

http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/46419-tsr-drow-by-ral-partha/ So from this WIP above, here are the final results of the four drow elves from Ral Partha that I've been painting since November 11. I finished them actually about two nights ago, but just finally got around to working on the last pictures. I'm pretty well satisfied how they turned out, even though I can also see a few issues as well. I think a little too much matte finish got put on the one with the shield because I can see a lot of glare with the photograph, but oh well. I actually enjoyed doing this and liked doing a complete set of figures as opposed to random individual figures. I'm pretty sure that I somehow saved some time by doing four similar figures. If it took about six weeks to do four figures, and normally if I'm working at a regular pace of a figure every two weeks, I saved two weeks of my life that I would have otherwise spent in painting radically different figures. So I just gained two more free weeks of painting time (in theory). I also think that by working on the WIP and documenting progress, I tried to actually make progress and post it, not letting the figures just languish as sometimes hapens. So anyhow, here they finally are. Enjoy!

So I've been collecting for a while the old Ral Partha TSR miniatures that I really like, but haven't gotten around to painting many of them, so one of my new mini-mini-projects is to start painting some up between other things I'm painting. With a tad bit of encouragement by a certain goblinoid, I decided to do these four as a WIP. Why? Who knows, just a way to chronicle them, and who knows how faithfully I'll keep up with it. I was feeling kind of guilty because they're not Reaper figures, but I do use all Reaper paints, so that should lighten my burden of guilt somewhat. So here are the first four pictures that I've done so far. I'll try to post a picture when I get to some pivotal point. First picture is just the figures themselves, primed and on a balsa wood base.