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KS : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/zombicide-undead-or-alive/ Safest thing is to pledge $1, wait for the Pledge Manager, check shipping, VAT, and other charges, then wait for the base game at half the KS plus shipping price during a holiday sale.

This is a figure that I painted during a 'Sophie says' at Reapercon last year. It was a fairly decent paint job that didn't take too much time to clean up, so I did. I'll be using him as a flunky for various different gangs/crews/whatever. Just look at his face; he very obviously has no idea what he's gotten himself wrapped up in.

Bombshell just came out with a resin version of their dieselpunk pinup/supersoldier, Liberty. She's a great dynamic sculpt, zaftig and muscular with it. Now, we all know this is evoking some 'what if Haley Attewell became Captain America' vibes, but I've already painted up our red-white-and-blue hero before, as well as an Agent Carter type and even a Captain Canada. So, I might as well continue down the North American continent. Presenting: Capitan Mexica! Click for the rest of the turnaround: Alas, the resin gun she came with was fragile and I had to kitbash on a sturdier one. Her shield is taken from an Aztec warrior from this series. Not so much Nazi-punching to do, but she has plenty of threats to contend with that would imperil the good folk of Mexico: ...some stranger than others! And some downright bizarre: Here she is with her northern counterparts: Guest appearances by: Cactus Joe, 50318; Lobo Sanchez, 50050; Diamond Sue Dawson, 50111; El Diablo, 50035; Incredible Woman, 50212; and John Bishop, 50068.

I'd used leather brown with an umber wash as a primer on this Irish bartender from the western/savage worlds part of the Chronoscope range. I then thought that the skin tone looked quite good and tried to highlight it up to a black/African American person' s skin. I used a 5050 mix of African Shadow from Scale 75 and Troll Claws from Army Painter. I have no idea what rules I will use (and when...) but am putting together a bit of a crew of the western reaper minis with this chap providing medicinal and room clearance support.

Rescued this pair from the Box of Goodwill over the summer, and tried for a quick tabletop job during my Thanksgiving paint binge. Didn't quite get them finished in November, but they are done now. Spent way too much time on them because I didn't start with a color scheme in mind and ended up having to repaint a couple areas.

Well, I figured that the market for cactus-folk was small enough that I shouldn't wait on it, so I decided to get to work on a Saguaro Cowboy and a Cactus Dryad. I got the inspiration to get up and get to work when I saw a picture of a crested saguaro: which really settled the question of "how do I put dryad hair on a cactus lady and make it work?" Twisted up an armature for a dude and a lady, and started slapping green stuff on. Here's a very rough outline of the dryad's torso with a preliminary series of grooves, almost none of which will probably make it to the finished product. Both she and the lariat-wielding saguaro vaquero will have blunt, stubby feet and arms with little muscle or joint definition, both because that's how saguaros do and because I am...not a professional sculptor by a long chalk. C&C welcome; this is the rough draft of the first draft of each of them and I'll be doing a lot of trimming and repositioning, no doubt.

Truly delightful sculpts by Bombshell that work well for a Weird West of gun-toting saloon gals and persnickety varmints. The sculpt listed as "Warfare Wombat" is clearly procyonid and in no way meant to represent a marsupial. Thus does copyright law make fools of us all (well, all except copyright lawyers, I suppose). While he might have been intended for a spacefuture setting, that uniform with the two rows of buttons looked like it could be retconned for a strange American Civil War. So I slapped together a half-assed kepi from greenstuff and painted him in Union blue. I didn't want to obscure the markings on his forehead, so the kepi is being blasted cartoonishly back by recoil. "Rocket's red glare," indeed. Eloise Covington is much more refined, all flounces and furbelows, bustle, ribbons, and lace. Still, she is one determined lady, and a mean shot! The pink-on-pink color scheme is admittedly rather tacky, but tacky in a recognizably Victorian way. Eyes didn't come out too badly on her either.

My first mini of 2019, she is part of a group I am painting for a steampunk/time travel game my group is playing. For inspiration I used this fashion plate, the figure on the right:

Greetings! Boys..... Get your guns. I'm a raisin' a posse! Yeeeehaaaw! Thanks for looking!!

On a whim I decided to do a quick paint job on some Artizan 7th cav figures I've had laying around for a while. We play a game called Dead Mans Hand and since it's a small scale skirmish game it takes just a few minis. Painted jackets and pants then did a wash on both. Also basecoated some leather. Also used Tanned Leather as a basecoat for yellow neckerchiefs. Decided to go with a few different hat colors just so it's easier to differentiate models on the table. Pretty much done. Need to do some rank markings on their sleeves once I'm reminded what the different ranks in the game are. Also need to finish the bases.

Painted the Texas Ranger at the paint and take at Tri-con in Sioux City, Iowa. Really quick paint job but I am happy with him.

Am I the only person that say this when I looked at this mini?

I'm pretty sure this figure must have come from Reaper's first Bones Kickstarter, because they had real trouble with facial features not filling out properly in the mould on a number of the miniatures. This is one such. In Reaper's catalogue, this is 80003: Ellen Stone, by Bob Ridolfi, but I always call her Jenny No-Nose because, well, she has no nose. Rather than try to fill in her missing features with paint, I've just painted her with a flat rag-doll face with no eyes or nose and just a gash for a mouth. She's a Weird West gun-babe.

Things have been a little rough for me lately and I haven't been painting, but last week my dear husband got some paints out and I started working on random stuff. This is the original Ellen Stone with no face, from the Vampire box. I'm pretty happy with how she came out.

Last August or so I helped TophDNA with his Summer Exchange (I think) and he was painting a cowboy for someone. At any rate, I decided to paint up this Gunslinger as Roland Deschain from the Dark Tower Series. I believe we did these in one evening, although I didn't complete mine. I'd put some crackle whatchamacallit on the base and left it to dry. However, I didn't get around to painting the base until a few days back while I was waiting for something to dry somewhere. I figured I should finish him as he'd been waiting around for quite some time. Really the only thing to note on this one is that I finished it in a record amount of short time as I tend to fuss over things for wayyyy too long. It took months to just finish the base, and oh, I did add a 5 O' Clock shadow while the base was drying. *Spoiler ALERT* Oh, this is Book 2 Roland as he's missing 2 fingers off his right hand... Here you go: Again, with the funky camera, I apologize! I'll figure it out eventually... Thanks for checking it out! -K

Edit: Since this is now complete, here are before and after photos, so those who don't want to read through the whole process can see the results: before: after: If you want to see exactly how I got from one to the other, read on! ------------ The Bones KS 1 version of "Ellen Stone, Cowgirl" had a badly deformed face. I'll attempt to repair it. It should have looked like this, as the metal version does: But what I got, even after working a bit to build up the nose and do a liner wash, is something so bad my camera can't even autofocus on it:

Well, I finished my first Bones 2 mini. He's pretty cool, and fun to paint, but not a particularly tidy paintjob which I think is largely due to inactivity on my part (plus some sub-par lighting, but it's a poor workman who blames his tools). Got to get a lot more practice in for the ReaperCon open! I'd really like to see more variants of undead gunslingers, too. A whole gang of these guys could be a lot of fun for a "Weird West" skirmish game!

The proportions of this figure strike me as a bit gawky and thin ... but then that's entirely in keeping with this guy being called "Slim." The figure practically begs for conversion; the neck and wrists are very clear, making this an ideal candidate for head or hand/weapon swaps, and even the delineation between the rim of the head and the bottom of the hat invites a pretty clean cut with hobby knife (so that some other hat could be substituted). What's more, with a bit of putty (and I'll likely be doing this the next time I pick up one of these figures), a fairly straightforward bandanna face mask could be made to clearly turn this into a bandit/robber/outlaw type. "Reach fer the SKY, pardner! This here's a ROBBERY!" That sort of thing. :) It might even improve the figure, as it might help to obscure the "pencil-neck" look of the figure right now. The integral round base has a very nice wooden plank texture that nicely conveys the notion of this figure standing on the front deck of a saloon, bank, or sheriff's office in an old "wild west" town, and it's small enough to fit into the recessed portion of one of the round 30mm lipped Chronoscope bases (although it's a bit on the thick side). My only real "innovation" for this particular figure was that I printed off a sheet of various posters and "wild-west"-era ads and signage (thank you, Google Images!) and in this case I opted to put an entire poster on the base to underscore that "wild west" connection. I used a hobby knife to tear out points at the corners, to give the idea that this had been tacked up at the corners but then pulled/ripped off, thus losing the corners in the process. In retrospect, I could have probably gotten by with just a mere portion of the poster plastered to the deck (so that more of the nice wooden plank texture could show), but I suppose that's something I can do for other western-themed figures. Detail on the gun belt, pants, and shirt is subtle but still distinct enough to bring out with washes or a little bit of brush highlighting. The guns themselves are more of a challenge, as the barrels seem bound and determined to bend back; I tried heating and straightening, which only seemed to give temporary relief, and once I started actually painting, I gave up on going back and hoping to get a different result. Further, the detail on the guns comes out a bit lumpy, perhaps too fine (and at too much of an extremity) to come out properly in "Bonesium," but at least it gets the rough idea across that he's got guns. If I hadn't already used up all my "hand holding pistol" pieces in my Deadlands accessory packs, I'd do a hand/weapon swap, pronto. (And getting a pricey pewter accessory pack just for a single cheap Bones mini seems like overkill. ;) Although I'd certainly go for it if I were trying to kitbash a PC mini.)

I know there hasn't been a whole lot of action in Calamity of late, but I have been working on it. More miniatures are being added to the population and I have been slaving away on one of my "Hero" buildings as well. However, since that building has just about reached the assembly point I didn't want to haul it with me this weekend. Instead I grabbed four of my freight cars (kind of at random) and decided to do a little weathering work. You can follow the process on my blog at: http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-little-freight-car-weathering.html Here is the finished project if you don't want to see the start to finish progression:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/springboard/blackwater-gulch-rebels-and-reinforcements Project is a followup to the western themed Blackwater Gulch game campaign a couple months back. Here, we have large amounts of various gangs of minis. Sweet spots seem to be at between $100 and $150 (each one gives you different amounts of starter sets, but all give you every single unlocked solo mini) Points of interest: $25 add-on for 10 bottles of Army Painter paints. Essential colors. $10 for 10 scenic bases $50 for a Battlefoam C4 bag $60 for 2 Gamecraft buildings and 2 outhouses $60 for Battleflag bundle of a sheriff's office and a gallows My Personal Favorites These ones in particular, Tombstone is one of my favorite modern westerns.

I was looking for RAFM Mounties from the Riel Rebellion, but found this just a moment ago: There are more on this >>page<<

The is the first of three or four buildings that I'm scratchbuilding for my wild west town of Calamity. The driving concept behind Calamity is a display board to be used at conventions to promote my local miniatures gaming club (The League of Extraordinary Gamers or LEG). I want it to be the kind of board that really draws people in and gets them fired up to learn and play a game and get introduced to miniature games. With that in mind my builds tend to be a bit more involved than you would ordinarily put into a building meant for gaming. That goes for all of my laser cut buildings as well, all will be dressed up when I start building the boards themselves. I opted for styrene plastic as my main material. Its easy to work with, readily available and the core plastic I can pick up for free from one of my friends in the banner printing business. This also allows me to use commercially available doors and windows from the local model railroad store. The Calamity Newspaper Office (although it could serve as anything, even a saloon) is based on plans from one of my model railroad books "Structures of the Early West", 2nd edition 1994, Joseph Crea and Elwood Bell, and is still standing in Crested Butte Colorado (its a restaurant now, another friend has eaten there and says they have great burgers). I don't think that this book is in print anymore but if you can find a copy it has a lot of different buildings in it. This building is built to 1/56th scale, which is about as close to correct as we get for our miniatures. The doors are all O Scale, or 1/48th scale, from Grandt Line as are the windows. I found that the S Scale, or 1/64th scale, doors were a bit to small in most cases but the S Scale windows work quite well. But the building proportions themselves are all set to 1/56th. Here is a picture of the building as it stands right now before any, major, exterior painting has been started. There is some test color for my weathered undercoat on the back wall, which I rather like. I have been covering building the Newspaper Office, and my trials and tribulations, on my blog. Here are the links from prototype to completed model if you would like to see this building's journey from matt board to final assembly. These are in sequence from start to current: http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-prototype-building-newspaper.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-prototype-buildings-moving.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-newspaper-office-cutting-parts.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-newspaper-office-time-for-some.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-newspaper-office-doors-and-more.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/12/calamity-newspaper-office-interior-work.html http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2014/01/calamity-newspaper-office-final-assembly.html

MINIATURE...Hand from the grave...scratch built...all items are from my parts box...the cacti is real tiny cacti from the desert. PROTOTYPE...The request for this very unusual and weird piece came from a writer/artist; who wanted me to do a desert piece of a hanged cowboy coming back from the grave in skeleton form...with the hand reaching up for the hangman's noose. He wanted to do some comic type drawings and needed a visual reference to work by. This is the prototype I built and sent him...he really liked it...used it for his work...and I was nicely compensated. In my years...I have had some off-the-wall requests.

I finally finished the last 2 Tombstone gunmen from the Tombstone 2 set, I spent maybe 3 hours on each. And here is the group shot, they all got base treatments.

second one for the year, still on the western theme for the month (though I'm about to work on a cave girl)