Bones II Mouslings: 92743, 92744, 92745, 92746, 92747, 92749

[Pingo 109319]

So I'm painting up some of the Bones II Mouslings to be used as ship's crew and NPCs in a fairly weird game.

 

These aren't all of them. There's also a mouse king and queen (with pointy hat with veil), a samurai, and a classic wizard, all nice but not quite for my purposes.

 

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about the buxom little "girl" mice. I prefer to think of all Mouslings as something you'd have to be a mouse to tell the difference, like in real life. But gosh, they are cute.

 

At the moment I am referencing real mice for coloring. One Mousling is going to be black, one white, and four a kind of mousy brown. There will probably be some variation on this.

 

Here the six I'm doing are, cleaned up and washed with Reaper's Brown Liner, and a bit of paint added to the white mouse.

 

Here the basic colors of the fur are blocked in and I've painted their tails and ears pink. Black mice seem to have a slightly darker pink, but on the whole all mice seem to have delicate pink tails and ears.

 

Real mice have tiny, pink, handlike feet, while the Mouslings have more teddybear-like paws. I am compromising by painting their fingers and toes pink.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Pingo

[Glitterwolf 209046]

Go for it.

 

They deserve pink tails and ears.

[Dr.Bedlam 36114]

Oh, yass.

Do keep us informed. And pictured.

[Pingo 109319]

I took come cream and some white and lightened their snouts and bellies.  Some of them have spotting.

 

 

I also washed a bit of green over their bases and darkened up their eyes.

 

[Pingo 109319]

I painted some medium green clothes on the black mousling.  He doesn't really look this insouciant -- his fur is solid black but the pigment is a little shiny and that's all reflection.

 

I painted some yellow on these two and lime green on the cape of the bee-falconer on the right.

 

I highlighted the bee-falconer's cape and shaded the yellow of the bee.

 

I painted some black on them: an assassin or thief's cape ...

 

... an archer's jacket and trousers ...

 

... and more on the bee-falconer (the bee's wings are not yet painted).

 

Edited June 2, 2015 by Pingo

[Pingo 109319]

Hmm.  I wasn't sure what to make of the staff carried by that one Mousling.  Judging from the tags and the paint job in the store, there is supposed to be a tiny cartoony frog on top of that, like there is a cute little spherical bee on that other Mousling's wrist.

 

Can anyone else see that?  I'm still working out how to paint it.

[Talae 38459]

Nice start! I am thinking these might get paint this summer so my daughter and I can play with them. Thanks for the inspiration.

[Dr.Bedlam 36114]

I have found I don't like the look of solid black mice. Even with a gray brush to bring out fur texture.

 

Perhaps someone more skilled could do 'em justice, but I can't seem to pull it off.

[Pingo 109319]

I have found I don't like the look of solid black mice. Even with a gray brush to bring out fur texture.

 

Perhaps someone more skilled could do 'em justice, but I can't seem to pull it off.

Black mice tend to be glossy, like black horses  I may see about painting some shiny highlights on this one rather than just grey highlights.  Also, plain grey is kind of a dull color for highlights. 

 

Black mice sometimes have white bellies, and I've noticed that a lot of mice that are simply charcoal grey or deep brown get classified as black.  Their ears tend to be pinkish-grey, front and back (I need to fix that).

[Pingo 109319]

I added red to some of them.  The bee-falconer's cap, starting with an opaque pink underlayer and glazing true crimson over that.

 

 

The archer Mousling with the same technique.

 

For the thief Mousling I decided to leave the cape the underlying pink color.

[aku-chan 28659]

I love those sparkly bee eyes.

[Glitterwolf 209046]

They look good, I love the bee falconer.

[Pingo 109319]

More work.

 

I added mixed blues and greys, giving the bee-falconer a pale blue tunic and the bee soft pale blue wings, the thief a blue-grey hood, the assassin a blue-grey neckerchief, the druid a deep blue cape and a glowing blue orb, and some shading on the grey and black parts of their fur.

 

I also mixed some bright leaf-greens and soft olive-greens from Phthalo Green, Hansa Yellow Opaque, Yellow Oxide, Burnt Sienna and a touch of white and worked on the black archer and the falconer-beekeeper.  I painted the tiny blobby chibi frog on the druid's orb bright lime green.

 

Most of the blues were based on Ultramarine Blue, except the druid's orb was Phthalo Blue to get that preternatural glowing look.

 

The grey I used was mixed from Phthalo Green and Burnt Sienna and white.  I was concerned it would look to greenish, but it turned out to be a great, natural-looking mouse-brown.

 

 

 

 

 

Next I mixed up some purples from various mixes of Quinacridone Magenta, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and white and added them to the figures.  I also added highlights to the mouslings' eyes and to the druid's orb, and added more colors to the greens.

 

 

 

 

[Pingo 109319]

I primed the black archer's hat feather brown and washed brown over the ponytailed archer's hair.  I painted both their quivers various browns and their fletchings red and blue.  The ponytailed archer has a little leaf-and-berry decoration on her quiver which I painted as embossed and painted leather.

 

I painted the bows and the belts brown.  This is where I try to have every part of the models basically painted so I can play with colors and shadings.

 

I painted parts of the mouslings black where I was going to paint silver metallic (so mostly buckles and little blades and the ponytailed archer's arrow), and ochre where I was going to paint gold (only on the bee-falconer's cloak clasp).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly I painted metallics on the figures that had them (I decided to paint the thief's little heel-sticker like a thorn so that one isn't here).

 

[Pingo 109319]

I mixed up some warm greys from browns, blues, and greens.  I washed some over the lighter fur to bring out details and I brushed various different greys all over the Mouslings to subdue the colors and make them more realistic-looking.

 

 

 

 

Then I took some pure white and cleaned them up and brought the highlights up again.

 

Painting is often a lot like this:  Alternating darker colors with lighter, washes with highlights, tones with adjustments.