Life in Slow motion... some Dragon Bait... new job

The last couple of weeks have been in go slow mode. I have been painting (a gnome, a goblin, a samurai, a ninja) and I've repaired some skeletons, cleaned up a horde's beastie and constructed a few more knights.

I tidied up my work/miniatures area too. This process gave me a much better idea of what I have. Looks like I can chuck together an Empire army, an orc/goblin army and some skaven, chaos and dwarf/halfling allies.

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Joe Corsaro of Dragon Bait Miniatures saw the minis I'd painted and emailed me. He's a great guy with a great company and he has plans in the near future, and I was pinky sworn to keep my trap shut for a little while.

He also pointed me to concept artist Mike Burn's Dark Fable Miniatures which have a great selection of egyptian themed minis sculpted by Kevin Adams and others.

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The big disruption was changing jobs. I've moved from being a fairly loose in-home nanny looking after a toddler and an infant to being one of two lead teachers in a structured, curriculum-based classroom (gads, I have a classroom!) with 8 infants between us to wrangle! It's all part of a new preschool start-up within the church my family attends, it's based heavily in the local community and is aiming to be as diverse as possible. Exciting, stressful, new stuff.

On the plus side I have wrangled some packing foam that looks like it could make some keen ruins.

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As part of my Naghammahd gaming, I've been trying to locate some dungeon tiles. I've got some hidden in my RPGnow library, it's just a matter of finding them and making sure that they do what I want them to.

This week? I'm going to try and finish the gnome, start painting some hordes and get some more of the dark elves cleaned up and based.

Dragon Bait Minis: Half Orc Druid with Pig and Hats.

Harg likes trees. And Boars. They make him happy. Deep forests make him very happy. The trees sing to him. Nancy, the Boar, he likes Harg. Harg takes him places he wouldn't normally see. Like holes in the ground, and fields of the dead. Together they have seen forests across the wastes, and the fungal copses deep underground. They have learnt many songs. They like songs. What they don't like is questions about their hats.

Harg, the Druid and Nancy, the Boar

Ah, skin and fur and eyes. My bete noir. The bulk of the painting I'd done last night, and I wasn't satisfied then and didn't feel better with it this evening before beginning to paint again.

Yes, Harg is a very green half-orc. As with the frost giant I painted much earlier this year, I spent a lot of time trying to get the skin right. These are the steps: Dark green base, strong wash, dark green with bone overbrush, cursing and swearing; another dilute AP strong wash; a light brushing of apple green, more cursing, sleep, taking a 10/0 brush and lightly swiping dark green to delineate knees, ankles, calves and elbows. It looks much better.

The fur was a dark brown with a strong wash, which didn't work well against the boar which was a slate gray with strong wash. The solution was to use the blacker dark wash.

(Quick note because I'm probably confusing people. For washes I use predominantly the Army Painter (AP) range, so when I talk about a Strong Wash and Dark Wash I'm using rich brown ink and dark black inks.)

The boar's snout, tail and ears were built up from a bone base with highlights of bone and flesh.

There is a backpack that I need to paint and attach, though I think I'll varnish this before doing so. 

 

My wife looked at it and said "Whoever made this is fantastic, you can see all the teeth." Good job, Kevin Adams, you have the Carmen Meinhardi-Dale seal of approval!