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This is a figure from the Goth set from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. Thanks to FishNJeeps for directing me to them when I needed miniatures of modern people in goth-punk wear for a World of Darkness game. I painted up the figure as a vampire. It didn't originally have any facial hair; that's all painted on. There isn't a WIP thread. So as a quick note, although I have seen people able to do wonderfully subtle and menacing vampires who still look like vampires, I find that unless I paint mine in stark black and white they look like regular people.

This figure is from a set of fun modern street fighters from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. (Many thanks to FishNJeeps for pointing them out to me at Adepticon.) This figure is from the "Murder Cult Girls Gang" (I had to remove a large knife from her right hand). I'm currently involved with a campaign of "Exalted" (2nd edition) set in the World of Darkness ("Vampire the Masquerade" (2nd edition), "Werewolf the Apocalypse" etc. etc.). One of the PCs is (and I'm sure this will sound like glossolalia) a member of a South Korean girl pop group who Exalted as a Sidereal of the Maiden of Serenity (Venus). She dresses fashionably, mostly in the color blue (the five Maidens have planets and colors associated with them and I swear they are totally cribbed from "Sailor Moon"). Her hair is dyed bright pink; her eyes are preternaturally blue with white pupils; and she has a "caste mark" of the sign of Venus (a.k.a. the symbol for "female") in glowing blue on her forehead (I wasn't able to paint that clearly; there's just a little interference blue under her bangs). The character has a hand-sized green spider familiar named Jadie. Since she had a slightly blobby hand (from removing an unwanted knife from the figure), I painted it up to look like a spider. There is a WIP thread here.

So there is this skirmish game, "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. Member FishNJeeps alerted me to it at Adepticon last month after I told him I was looking for minis of unarmed women in good street clothes for some friends. (Thanks, FishNJeeps!) I'm really grateful he did, because they had two sets of skirmishers that had a lot of promise. This figure is from the "Murder Cult Girls" set, which otherwise is a little goofy but has this one figure that really appealed to my friend. (I also got the "Goth" set which looks like it will prove mighty useful.) I just had to get rid of the big knife in her hand (the Goths are mostly unarmed, interestingly). I'm no expert with a knife, but I clipped and filed until ... well, until she had a sort of a clumsy mitt of a hand a little awkwardly held out. Hum. Not to worry because I had a brainstorm a little later. Here she is (left) primed with a thin layer of Titanium White and a wash of Burnt Umber. I've already started painting her skin in with mixes of Titanium White and Burnt Sienna with a little Yellow Oxide admixed because she is supposed to be Korean. With skin, at least for me, I add layers and add layers and it looks weird ... ... until it doesn't. I've painted a little transparent Quinacridone Crimson on her lips and her eyes are preternaturally blue and pupil-less on purpose. Her hair is only sketched in for the moment, but yes, it is supposed to be bubblegum pink. She is a wee bit of a Gothic Lolita. And then I worked out something about making her hand look okay. The character she represents has a green spider familiar. A big one, hand size. ... Hand size ... So I figured okay fine, I'm going to try to paint that lemon-shaped lump in her right hand as a big green spider. I'll work out how as I go along. To start with I painted it bright green. Phthalocyanine Green, my favorite green pigment, is completely transparent. It's great for color glazes but needs something opaque added to give it body. I decided to do a two step process to give it a really intense, glowing color. This is something I do a lot when I want a really eye-popping bright color: Paint a paler, solid version of the color underneath and then glaze over it with a more intense, transparent color. Here's my palette (Normally I use a wet palette but this was for a single quick effect): From left to right the colors are: Phthalo Green (looking super dark because of its transparency -- it's actually a brilliant peacock blue-green), Hansa Yellow Opaque (a brilliant warm yellow with only a little opacity, despite the name), and Titanium White. Above the Hansa Yellow is my mixed color with a ton of yellow, only a little green (it's a really strong green) and enough white to make it fairly opaque but not too washed out. Here's the first layer on her hand: Notice even "opaque" the color underneath shows through. I like this because it harmonizes the colors. There's something in fine art I've heard called "airlessness". It's when adjacent colors have nothing to do with each other, no reflections, no harmonics, just separate blocks of color. Maybe it's just a nice excuse for sloppiness, but I like colors bouncing off each other. Once the undergreen was dry I mixed a medium green with the yellow and no white in it, and glazed it lightly over the paler color. The under-color comes through and it's as close to a stained glass effect as regular paint can get. This is the state the figure was in for our first gaming session (Yeah, I'm slow.), and it was recognizable enough for the player to delightedly figure out that that was her spider. And yet there shall be more ...