Under the circling vultures... [...lie the photos]

...a painter crawls across the blasted heath. Distracted by mice and shiny pieces of debris he inches slowly forward, box of paints tied to one leg and poorly kept brushes clutched in shaky fist. He opens his other hand and finds a smeared lump of metal and plastic.  How long has it been there? Was it the only one? He rolls over and slips the lump into his pocket. He squints in the light and brushes birds away. He does not know how long he has been in the wilderness fending off carrion eaters and being  scoured by the elements. Sighing, he rolls back over onto his stomach and begins his crawl again...

Yes, well, it's been an interesting year. I lost a job, had a pitch into a deep depression, was re-diagnosed, re-medicated, unemployed, denied employment, uninterviewed for 6 months and finally re-employed. All told I really had lost myself.

And that's enough of that.

In all of this I have been painting a little and I had started writing quite a number of blog posts in the year and a half since I last posted and they never seemed to eventuate.

Here are some photos in vague chronological order. 

A Citadel Samurai, sculpted by Aly Morrison. Painted October or November 2016

I painted this guy very quickly. A speed aided by the simplicity of the design with the uprights of the the robe and the scabbard and the vast open expanse of the sleeves. This is the first miniature I attempted black lining on- using a thinned down black paint. In photographing this today, I see areas where it needs to be neatened up on the fingers and on the cleavage. The eyes of this guy also needs a little neatening. Aly Morrison sculpts a very cartoony face which makes for a fairly straightforward set of lines. While the scruffiness of my eye lining looks like fierce eyebrows, it's just poor brushwork.

  

 

  

Skeleton hero (top) and Skeleton with Spear (bottom)

Skeletons made by Citadel in the mid to late 80s. I painted these for Christmas 2016. I need to go back and put another highlight on the bone and make the recesses darker. The colours run together a touch. The hero has a lot of stuff going on: odd helm, cutlass, goat feet, flintlock, and the awesome spaulder on the left shoulder (I thought it was a pauldron, it's not- that's what the other skeleton is wearing on it's shoulders.Thanks Google.)

Heroquest Adventurers painted in March of 2017. The eyes are shocking. I managed to mangle the same eye on both the wizard and the elf! I want to go back and add another highlight to pants and skin.The miniatures are plastic cast from metal dies for a boardgame. They are consequently a little rough where the two dies met.

   

Warrior Woman from the Last Chancers.

Painted in June or July 2017. Another one where I did something uncoordinated with the eyes. Something to work on. I did black and dark-brown lining on this one and I quite like the effect.

Nurgle Deathguard. Grotesque disciples of Disease.

Deathguard backsides. Just as beautifully ugly.

First painted minis of 2018: March. Deathguard suit my painting technique to a tee: scruffy, dark and muddled :0) Wonderfully, these were the easy-build miniatures and were simple to snap together. I avoided a headache with making these. Like most of the other minis they need one final highlight and one final shading. The tentacles, teeth and bones desperately need this. I based these before painting them and it made a real difference, psychologically, to be able to put the mini down after painting and say "done."

   

Yesterday I painted this little beauty. 'Rowena' from Reaper Miniature's Chronoscope range. I've had this miniature on my list for so long and it was only on a whim that I pulled her out of the box and painted her in two or three hours. I think that I need to paint either her shoes or her gaiters white to differentiate them a bit. The photo doesn't show it very well, but her bodice/overskirt, hat and bracers are a dark blue grey and her skirt is a slate gray. I need to find a way to brighten the green in the lens of her goggles (on the brim of her hat) and on the mask she carries in her right hand. I love how this turned out.

***

Other projects begun: basing and undercoating a whole bunch of miniatures across time, space and manufacturer. I've also continued constructing my Skitarii, those implacable cyborg martians. On the edges of my interest are matchbox car scale death racers, anthropomorphic adventurers and those darned space elves that I have started three or four blog posts about.

Til the next post, make sure you drink from the coffee mug and not the water cup.