107!

Finished up the beetles. I put a coat of dark gray metallic over the carapaces, blotched on blue, green, and purple ink, then washed them with black wash.

And a little more on Lysette. Highlights on the dress, put in the purple bits, and gave her some lipstick and nail polish.I might put a freehand border on the dress. I might not.

Shadows and Eyebrows

I got a little farther along with Lysette. Finished the skin tones on her shoulders, gave her eyebrows, and shaded her dress.

And, started a couple of flats of beetles. I airbrushed them gray, and then black. Since they are scarabs, I'll finish them off by putting on some metallics to give them some iridescence.

Lysette

Finished her hair and started her dress. Hmm...I forgot her eyebrows. Need to do those, and maybe some makeup.I also found that she's supposed to have bare shoulders, so I put some more base skin color there and will shade and highlight that next time. Her dress will have purple detailing, making her my entry into the Cult of Purple and Teal. Her blouse will be linen.

One of the problems I'm having with Bones minis is that since the plastic is slightly translucent, it's hard to see some of the detail until you get paint on it. Except, if you don't see all the detail, it can be tough to decide how it should be painted...

Hair and Highlights

So, I did Lysette's eyes and base coated her hair. I went blonde instead of redhead, and lost a chunk of painting time tonight to re-thinking my intended color scheme for her. Apart from the hair color, I came to no conclusions. I'll put shading and highlights on her hair, then go to her dress. Maybe red...I dunno. I also have a teal I could go with.That's a color I don't use much, so it might be good to practice.

And, a first round of highlights on the lizard men. Here's a close up of one of them. I'll do a few more layers of highlights, up pretty close to yellow. There's not a lot of highlight area on these guys.

103!

Finished the rats. I think putting in their eyes helped, even though some of the catch lights are too big.

And, did shading and highlights on Lysette's skin. Next for her will be eyes and hair.

Lastly, here's a close up of one of the lizard men. I smoothed the transitions on the shadows today. Next will be putting on highlights.

Rats

Did not get quite as far with these as I wanted. I expected to be able to finish them, but didn't quite make it. I need to put the beady little rat eyes in, then they'll be done. I've found that these casts are not great - there's a lot of badly formed little rat faces and some oddly blobby tails in there. At least, I think they're tails That being said, for gaming they'll do fine.

Busy Day

I started a bunch of projects today, which means I'll probably end up with all of them taking way too long to finish. Though, I did make some progress on previously started stuff, too.

First, I spent some time with the air brush. Put a base coat on these rat swarms:

And started a Bones dragon. Things went down hill fast here. I did the middle chest and belly plates first, and then tried covering them with painter's tape when I did the main body. Not so successful - the tape didn't want to stick and I couldn't get it to sit along the edges as sharply as I wanted. Eventually I just ditched the tape and will plan on painting the middle bits in by hand when the rest is done. If you want sharp lines, the airbrush is just not the right tool.

So, it's going to be a red dragon. I gave it a base coat of dark, saturated blue, hoping that when I subsequently went over it with red in a lighter coat, the red would not get into the crevasses, and leave my shadows showing there. Oh, the membranes, like the wings, are just supposed to be red - no blue undercoat. My results here were mixed. The blue went on just fine. Once I got to the red, the airbrush kept clogging on me. I'm not sure if it's because I'd been using it for a while or if it's because it's an older bottle of paint. It's thicker, and may have had some chunky bits. There were definitely solid flakes that were making the airbrush clog. So, I quit with the red before I was actually finished. I'm not sure if I can get the effect I want with the blue sticking in the cracks or not.I did the same thing on the front edges of the wings, and they don't seem to show blue the way I was hoping. Still, I'm going to get another bottle of red that will hopefully not be so cloggy and see what happens with that. Which means it'll be at least a few days before I get back to him.

Then I did some sculpting. I'm making another practice dummy, and did the sticks today. I don't like them as much as the last set. They're too thick and kind of lumpy. I'll finish this out anyway...that's why it's 'practice'.

Then I threw a couple of rounds of brown was on the rats. This is going to be wash, dry brush, pick out details, done.

Started Lysette, another Bones. This is for the Reaper forum where someone started an impromptu 'beauty pageant' for this mini. I'm going to give her the same skin and hair tones I've been using on the vestals because...well, those paints are already out on my table. Then she'll probably get a green dress.

And last, I finally got back to the lizard men. I put some shading on their skin. It's kinda of chunky, so I may have to go back and do a bit of smoothing. We'll see...these guys are going to be a pain, and I'm not sure how much effort I want to spend on them. I'll have to do a closeup next time; it's hard to see the detail in the group shot.

99!

Finished the last of the beetles, and also finished the basing on the vestal.

Beetle first. He might be my favorite of the lot, even though he's the simplest.

And the vestal.

Next will be lizard men, some rat swarms, and sculpting!

97!

Finished the beetle. One more of these guys to go.

And, finished the vestal's swords are started basing her. Grabbed the wrong container of basing material - this stuff is chunkier than what I've used on the rest of them. It also hides part of her boots. Kind of a bummer. Not sure I can get it off without damaging her, though.In any case, she'll probably be done next time.

Focusing on the Vestal

So, I'm going to be making an effort to finish things that have been on my table half-done for a while. To that end, I focused on finishing the vestal's armor and starting her swords.

I think I put less area in the mid tones this time around. It's making her armor more high-contrast. Not sure if I like it or not. In any case, I should finish her swords next time, then it's just finishing the base. I've got two vestals left...in this batch, anyway. 

Back to the Vestal

OK, it's been a busy couple weeks, but I'm done with my travels and the house guests have left, so I'm back now. I started working on the vestal again, putting another layer of highlight on her arms. Also started another beetle. Beetle first:

And, the vestal. I slopped a big blob of the armor highlight I was working with on her stomach (luckily, it was thinned quite a bit). So, I had to fix that, and while I was at it I glazed over the blush on her cheeks to make it a bit less stark.

Some Prep Work

So, I got some minis prepped for primer over the last couple of days. One of these is Skaarlys, another Raging Heroes mini. Unfortunately, she came to me with some hefty pitting in the middle parts of her body. (Kind of disappointing for a $18 mini that I had shipped from France, but that's the way it goes some times.)

Anyway, I've tried to fix the issue. What I did was get some GW Liquid Green Stuff, thin it down, and put it on the pitty areas. Thin coats were enough for general roughness, but there were a few deeper pits that I used some of the same stuff, less thinned, to fill in. I won't really know how it worked out until I get at least some primer on there, maybe not until the base coat of paint. But I'm hopeful.

96 - Another Beetle

Yeah, it's been a while since an update - I've had house guests, traveled, had more house guests...it'll be a few more days, then I should be back to regular painting, and regular updates.

In the meantime, here's another beetle. This one is modeled on a Japanese beetle.

95!

(And there's vestal pictures below.) Finished the beetle. Well, close enough, anyway. After he's been varnished I'm going to hit the carapace with some gloss coat. I had to take a few liberties with the pattern to make it look better on the figure, but I think he's not too bad. I'll have to see if I can find the name of the beetle I based him on.

And I put the first layer of highlights on the rest of the vestal's armor.I gotta see what that strip on the right side of her neck is.

Back to the Vestal

Alrighty. So, I'm getting back to the vestal. (Warning: sort of naked mini at the bottom of this post.) Also working on some of the bugs and swarms from the Bones Kickstarter. I've got four beetles, and intend to do them in different styles based on various pictures i got off Google. I tried to stick with beetles with carapace shapes that were pretty close to the model, but they aren't all perfect matches.

So here's a start on one. He's going to end up with dark brown stripes and spots on the main body, and dark brown on the ends and joints of his legs, and his mandibles.

And, the vestal.I messed with her hair a bit, and put the first layer of highlights on her boots and g-string.