Intermission!

I have a sore shoulder that was acting up today, and since I plan to do a lot of painting over the 4th of July weekend I wanted to rest it today. So, I did not paint at all. However, I still did some hobby stuff that's worth mentioning.

For starters, I prepped my ReaperCon class minis.

I also spent some time doing some mock layout for the diorama I'm going to start up sometime soon. I'm pretty bad at scene composition, so one of the things that helps me in the early planning stages is to do a mock layout. It helps me size the piece correctly, and plan out what will go where, what the viewing angles will be, and so on. It's not perfect, but it gives me better results than if I'd tried to build it on the fly.

The idea here is that most of the dragon is hidden in a big pile of treasure, a la the Hobbit. That's the dragon head stuck to the blue blob. His eye and some of the jaw should be showing. The adventurer is moving along, but the dragon's tail has draw his attention...which the dragon is using as a lure to attract and distract prey, like an anglerfish.

I don't expect to make real fast progress on this right now - this is an 'I'd like to get it done by ReaperCon', whereas I have other things that are 'I must get this done by ReaperCon'. But it's something I can putter with on and off for now.

11!

Finished up the little yellow dog today, pending approval from the client.

I will note that between the quick GW contrast paint figures last weekend and this little guy, I'm back on track for 20+ figures this year. Yay! I really want to get back to some large scale stuff, but I have more commission and ReaperCon prep work to get done before I can do that, I think.

Chihuahua: Cloth, Leather

Continued on the adventuring chihuahua today. I finished the cloth, and base coated the leather. Probably the leather will need another layer of the base color.

He's coming along pretty quickly. The steps left are finishing the leather, doing the metal (of which there is not a lot), and then the base. I'm guessing it'll be done Saturday or Sunday at the latest.

Chihuahua: Fur, suit

I focused on the chihuahua today, finishing his fur, detailing his face, and then base coating the suit thing he's wearing. Hopefully he's a little more visible now.

He's quite small, so the pictures tend to get a little fuzzy.

On his ears, I started out using a flesh color for the pink areas inside the ears. However, it didn't really show up at all, so I went to a more saturated pink. It's much better.

Zahra: Skin Highlights.Chihuahua: Fur base.

I started with a base coat on the chihuahua's fur. It's still hard to see any detail on him. He's going to have some white areas in his fur as well; I'm going to lay those in over the base. I think next I'm going to work on the details of his face.

I also started the highlights on Zahra's skin. This is a first round of highlights. I'll do another round of highlight on the skin, and then go on to face details, which for her is really just the eyes.

9! 10!

For starters today, I finished off Jana, as I expected. At least, she's done pending approval from the client.

I also continued my experiments with GW Contrast paints. This is the paints over zenithal priming. I'd seen reviews indicating that this doesn't work, and I was curious as to why.

In my opinion, it's a little more complicated than that. The blue and red contrast paint are helped somewhat by the underpainting, but they tended not to darken up when pooled up. The browns and skin tones, which tended to darken better in the pools, aren't really helped by it. The texture of the white primer also showed through more than I am happy with.

In any case, I don't think it totally doesn't work over the zenithal priming. I do think that you lose the advantage of the contrast paints by using them that way, except possibly the reds and blues.

I also tried the white contrast paint. It's not really white, it's more of a pale bluish gray. It doesn't really read as white to me. I need to try it over the intended primer and see if it makes a difference.

I got a little farther along with Zahra, adding another set of shadows to her skin.

And last, I started up my next commission. It's hard to see much detail on this Dungeons and Doggies figure with just the primer layer.

I have a diorama I want to get done before ReaperCon so I'd kind of like to start that, but I think I'm going to spend this week trying to get Zahra done quickly. She's been on my table for far too long.

8!

So, a bit of a quick diversion. GW recently released their new Contrast paint line. It's meant to be for people who want to get figures on the table that are painted well enough to look decent, but don't want to spend a ton of time on it. They're like a heavily pigmented wash, where the intention is that you put on a heavy coat over your primer and it will self-shade by settling into recesses.

I'm curious about these paints. Not because I'm the intended market for this product, but because while many companies have put out many new paints in the last couple of years, this is the first one I know of that's supposed to work differently. So, I bought a few to experiment with.

Today I started experimenting. I wanted to start by seeing how they worked when used as intended. This is the result.

It's not really up to my standard of table-top quality. However, if I was not an experienced painter, didn't want to spend much time on it, and just wanted something that looked reasonable for my game, I think this would be a perfectly reasonable way to go. This figure took me about an hour, which is far faster than my fastest speed paint.

I intend to do more experimenting with these paints, though I'll be looking for other things you can do with them.

Anyway, after I finished this guy, I went back to Jana. I finished off the light colored leather bits and did the metals - sword, helmet, etc. She's mostly done now. I just have to finish up her base.

Jana: Clothes

Added highlighting on the fur and glazed the base color back in. After that, I was concerned that the brown of the leather was going to blend in too much, so I changed the base coat to a much redder brown. Then I shaded that and started the highlights.

Jana: Hair, Clothes

Finished Jana's hair today, and base coated her clothing. Since I was planning to make all the clothing various shades of brown, I base coated all of it to make sure all the colors were going to place nicely together. Once I was happy with that, I started shading and highlighting the fur sections.

The first highlight on the fur has made it read lighter than I wanted - it was originally the darkest brown on there. To fix it, I plan to put on the brighter rounds of highlights, and then glaze it over with the base color to get that back in there. Getting the highlights and shadows on the other browns will also help.

Jana: Skin, Face, Hair

I finished Jana's skin and face, and got a base coat on her hair. I'd hoped to finish her hair today as well, but that didn't happen. Boo!

While I'm pretty happy with the skin, I'm struggling a bit with my deepest shadow color. I used Reaper Bruised Purple, which is a lovely shadow color for skin. The problem is that it doesn't seem to like going on evenly. It kinda clumps up and ends up looking rough, like there's texture where there isn't (and shouldn't be). However, the close up pictures look OK, so maybe it's only a problem when you're looking at it close up and with magnification.

Zahra, Jana: Skin & Shading

I got in another round of shading on Zahra's skin. I actually did this yesterday but didn't get a chance to post.

I also started on Jana today. This is a base coat on her skin and a first round of shadow.

I'm probably going to focus on her for the next few days. I want to get as far along as I can before I travel next week.

7!

As expected, finished off Kalee today.

Once she was done, I continued prepping my next commission piece. Here's Jana Frostwind:

And then, since I had to wait for glue to dry on her, I got a little bit of shading in on Zahra. She's one I started quite a long time ago.

Kalee: Sword, shield, base.

Today I made a good bit of progress on Kalee. I did the highlights on her sword and other steel bits, painted and attached her shield, and got pretty far on the base. I have a little more work to finish the base, but I should get that wrapped up next time.

I also started some prep on the next piece. It's another commission, but since this one has already been released I've been given permission to post the WIP here. Today, I created the base:

This will be a figure from Reaper's Dungeon Dwellers line. ReaperRon wants all the studio models to have similar basing, so he specified the round base with the dungeon floor.