#86 the Ice giant queen

I finished this ice giant queen a few weeks ago and finally decided to sit down and write about the process. It was a fun miniature to paint with lots good details. Reaper sure has set a high bar for affordable miniatures.

Step one: mainly blocking in the main areas. Black for the metal parts, leather for her clothing, a light grey for the skin and white for the club and hair.

#85 Ice trolls and...

A frost giant queen! The trolls turned out pretty good. The skin tone came out like I had hoped it would. Initially after the base coat I thought I might have to redo something since the skin was looking darker than I wanted. Once I put the highlights on and blended them some then the skin turned out how I hoped. The rest was pretty standard detailing. Leather bracers, metal cuffs, red eyes, the pelts and such nothing too unusual. On the bars I put some darker blue on since these are quite a bit bigger than the bars the bears had and I think it was a good decision.

#84 Dwarf cleric and 3 polar bears

I finished my dwarf cleric for a new dnd campaign and today I finished some polar bears. The bears are from the dnd board game Wrath of Ashardalon. After a light coat of primer they painted up quite nicely.

The dwarf wasn't quite armed how I wanted her so I purchased another miniature that had the right weapon and did a quick conversion to give her a hammer. I think it makes the right impression. The color scheme came together pretty well considering the only thing I knew I wanted was for her to have a purple tunic. The armor of course is the standard metal and then I hit her gloves and boots with a leather color and washed those brown. Some little details on her neck and the hammer rounded out how detailed I wanted to get. I also left her eyes white since I figured she was full of divine energy. The skin tone came out exactly how I wanted, I didn't think it was going to look that good honestly. She's the fourth or fifth model I've tried a darker skin tone with and I'm going to try to do more varied skin in the future.

#83 Griffon part 2

Continuing on I've added more color and done some washes on the larger color areas and I've also figured on simplifying the wing pattern by painting half the feathers black on the under side. On the top of the wings I only painted the larger feathers half black and did some highlighting on the front areas. The beak got some detail with the main areas getting black (like a real hawk) and then getting the interior fleshy and putting some yellow on small parts.

#82 Griffon start

Figured I would write this up real quick while I give the paint time to dry. Thus griffon is the largest miniature I've painted in awhile. I've blocked the main colors and plan to do some washes with darker colors and then highlights. Nothing incredibly fancy until I get to the wing patterns! That was my biggest reason paint this creature. I looked at a lot of hawk wings (the one request when painting this was to use a hawk as reference instead of an eagle) and found a couple I plan to use as a base for the wing patterns.

I will be dry brushing the black on as I didn't see anything in any of the photos that lead me to believe any of the feathers should be solid black. With such a simple pallet of colors I'm really hoping the washes and highlights will make the colors pop while not making the figure look too busy. One particular picture I saw showed the under wing feather tips being black and I plan to use that particular detail for this figure. Other than that the rest of the wings will probably follow the standard pattern I have seen in midday of the pictures.

#81 Spectator and succubus done

Won't be taking up to much time with this post. Short and sweet. A matte coat on the succubus toned down some of the shading on the hair and smoothed out the skin so I think that's a win. I finished all the details, shading and highlights on the Spectator and I really like how the eyes came out. I decided to add pupils to the small eyes otherwise they just looked like little blobs of green. Not much else to add, enjoy the pics!
Oh, also made the daredevil fig bald per the owners request. Not the cleanest paint job, I think it works though. 

#80 Succubus and Spectator progress

I didn't manage to get too much done during the week on either figure. Last night and this morning though I got wire a but done! I've finished the succubus and am pleased with most I'd it her. The hair especially since my friend wanted to be like Morrigan's from Dark Stalkers. Some light dry brushing of grey on the ends worked better than I thought and picked o out the small details.

The spectator got dark blue tentacle tips and some bright green on them to make the details pop. The inside of its mouth got a good coat of liche purple and I might follow this up with some dry brushing of a lighter purple. Then it's eyes will be a bright green. The central eye will get some pupil details, something a little alien possibly.

Finally I managed to squeeze in a little side project for another friend. A heroclix daredevil figure with some modifications. Turned out ok, nothing too fancy just sime block painting and washes.

#79 Hellhounds & mouthers done; spectator, succubus next!

Love how these turned out, the partial skeleton on the inside is a great touch.

Ok so I finished the Hellhounds and gibbering mouthers. My friend was quite pleased with how they turned out and I have to say that I am as well. The mouthers in particular I was very happy with the skin color's contrast to the internal areas.

#78 Some demons, aberrations and a Griffin?

Well none of those have much in common except that those are the next group of mini's I'm painting. I managed to finish the Hellhounds and get the mouthers halfway complete. I plan to finish the mouthers off and start the spectator tomorrow. Who knows maybe I well finish the little floating eye freak?

On a different note I should probably take pics on something that is a different color. 

More pics after the jump.

#77 First commission complete!

Ok so not much to add to what I've been working on. The purple wrym went pretty much exactly as planned and I put some bling on it by painting a few of the stones as gems, ok a lot of the stones. The bat swarms came out good, I added sime highlights to the tombstones and the bats themselves to make this tiny details pop. The oxidation beats all came out great, some really nice coloring came out of the shading, highlights and washes i out on them. If only my camera phone could take really good pics...

Slight tangent: I finished these last week. In the future I plan to post more of the work I do on a regular basis. 

More pics after the jump.

#76 A slightly different direction

I was approached by a friend of mine recently about painting some miniatures for him. He told how many and showed me what they were: 4 oxidation beats, 3 bat swarms and one big worm from the Reaper bones line. 

#75 Lego movie set: Bad Cop's Pursuit

Another set bought another set assembled! Bad Cop's pursuit took me about as long as the Ultra Agents Infearno set to complete and I didn't find it any more difficult than that set. The instructions were pretty easy to follow and some alternate views of some parts were provided which made some sections a little easier. Total build time was around 46 minutes. 

I really like the collapsing bridge section and it was fun to build. It's nice to get a set with some scenery in it as most of the sets I've gotten recently are pretty much just vehicles.

Bad Cop's car is a solid build with some neat moving parts. It's the biggest part of the build and takes two of the three bags in the set. The interior is a tight fit and putting a minifig in with a weapon in hand is tough, I'm pretty sure I was making it more difficult than necessary and will more than likely just put in minifigs sans weapons. Only negative is the bottom of the car is pretty blank but it is supposed to fly so I can overlook that part or possibly just add some greeble to it later.

#74 My renewed Lego hobby

Wow. It's been awhile since I last made an entry and it's also been quite some time since I put together a Lego set. Figured I get two birds with one stone in this post. I recently began purchasing Star Wars Lego sets and while I haven't made a post about any of that yet I figured I would start wIth a set I bought yesterday:
#70162 Infearno Interception

#73 Firestorm: Armada - Sorylians

I was almost completely done with the base set of Sedition Wars and thought it was a fine time to start a different project: Firestorm Armada! (I'll get back to sedition wars later)