More Dragonbait Beauties and some Heraldry.

This week I'd fully intended to paint some knights and instead painted some other miniatures instead.

 

Dragon Bait Miniatures  (unfortunately, this link takes you to a place holder and contact link) have a bunch of beautiful miniatures. Can I rave enough about painting these? Probably not. They are great with my only complaint being the varying size of the bases from the teeny butler base to the humongous half-orc druid base. This is a minor quibble. Like wishing that your still unbelievably tasty burger had sesame seeds on top.

I definitely feel more confident in what I am doing with the brush. More in control of the effects that I am trying to achieve and the colours that I am using. I love the way that these miniatures have turned out. I don't know what has changed my perspective to my painting, only that I am certainly the more positive for it. 

She is a cautious one, this halfling. Sling at the ready she scans the nooks and crannies looking for advantage. Maybe financial, maybe tactical but always hers. This is Percivalia, and she is equipped for expertise. Candles, lockpicks, wire cutters and rope and grapple. No tripwire uncut, no chest unopened, no gem unsecreted into a sleeve. If anyone complains they can talk to the knife.

Percivalia has a lot of detail that I discovered while painting. What I thought was flash was a throwing knife tucked into a sleeve, cord tying a dagger to her wrist. Her hair is similar to the barbarians: a mix of bone and yellow. This gives a very dirty look when couple with a wash.

Her pants were supposed to have neat checks and it turned out to be more a little more onerous on my patience that I had expected. They are rough as guts up close, and one leg is neater than the other. Percevalia needs to choose a better tailor.

The candle flame I spent more time on than I intended trying to get a pleasing blend from the 'hot' colour to the 'cooler' colour. I initially had white at the very base, which made the flame look far too hot. I eventually ended up swiping one colour on top of another quickly to get an uneven blend from yellow to red. A (very) small touch of black at the tip to suggest smoke and done.

The rear view. You can see all the equipment attached to her pack. The checks don't look too bad. I made an attempt (note: "attempt") to angle the checks as they crease behind the knee. I did two runs over the pants, as the wash turned the ivory a golden brown colour. The second run was more slap happy and evened the checks out a lot.

Kneenan, the barbarian. Driving his foes before him, treading the thrones of the world beneath his hairy feet, eating the foods of the world and listening to the lamentations of their chefs.

I need to get more pictures of this guy as this was the only one in focus that showed some of the detail.. The concept of this figure is incongruously funny, which is the best kind as far as I am concerned. A halfling barbarian? Like Conan? Hell, yeah. The sculpt is brilliance. From the turn of the mouth, to the spoon in the belt and the chicken leg in hand. I am not sure about the blue wristband- I'm thinking I might try to make it look slightly metallic. The colour does tie it to other halflings I have painted, but it doesn't fit in with the other colours yet.

Oh, and this is the first topless miniature I have painted. To the best of my knowledge.

 

Another detail laden miniature. This was pretty straight forward and another one of these miniatures where my patience lasted through all of the details. 

The sausages falling out of his pack crack me up. Food motivated much? I don't have much to say about this mini except that there is a lot of detail. I am pleased with how the shield turned out.

This is the start of my non-entry for Chico's biweekly painty thing. The crest is actually for one of my clans: Wallis. A white lion rampant on a red field, I think is how it's described.

I spent 45 minutes squinting and sketching in in black, and swiping with white and edging in red and then rinsing and repeating trying to get the details right. I have to admit that I could spend so much more time on this making it neater and fuller and neater and fuller etc etc

It does look good from a distance and is certainly a step up on the yellow sign I daubed on my chaos warrior's shields a couple of months back.  I plan on doing two more shields like this (for clan Carlyle and for house Dale).

I tip my hat to anyone who can paint beautiful detail on a shield.

Bugger, this thing is tiny. I like it from a distance :)

I won a (small, non-competition) competition :0)

To my surprise, my barbarian won Chico's painting challenge which finished Monday. I will provide no caveats or undermining of myself or my abilities and instead bask in the warm ego-boosting glow of this success.

Chico's Challenge-week-alternative-companies-Results

There was a wonderful array of miniatures in this round from all over. I would have chosen Richard Legg's Samurai with it's bold colours and careful patterning on the arms.

My reward is to choose the next round's theme. I'm toying with 'ethereal' or 'sinuous' or 'gravity defying.'  I've got a week to decide on a suitably open theme.

Thursday painting: Dragonbait Barbarian

More pretty from Dragon bait, sculpted by Kevin Adams.

Care taken by myself to try and get some different browns on her. The belt, the wrapping around the wrist, the cords on the boots were undercoated in orange and worked up with tan.

My first thought was that her face was sculpted too flat. It's a subjective thing, which definitely changed as I painted her flesh.  This will be a theme as I paint all of these miniatures, I'm sure.

Her eyes are light blue with black pupil. I'm not sure if solid blue works too well on the brown on her face. 

The stoat poking it's snout out of her sack was a sod. I had difficulty making out the detail. From this angle you can see it fine, but from the front and the top? That's a different story. I do need better lighting at night and that was an issue here.

Her fur shawl/cloak was a muddle of black, gray and some white highlights. It works okay-ish. Something for me to work on.

Lots of pretty details and textures to differentiate. The waterskin was a mix of oak brown and red. The sack and pouch were orange based with highlights of varying tans. The leather skirt was oak brown with highlights of leather.

The hair clip is a very nice piece of character, something that fits while being out of sync with her torc and armband.

I am not satisfied by the yellow fringing on the scabbard and the boots- it's a little thin and greenish. A couple more coats probably won't hurt. I think that I will change it to a different colour, maybe a bright purple or red.

Painting Challenge: "Would Sir like some scorn with that drink?"

Chico comes through with another challenge (number 7)  that gives me a jolt of interest to paint. This time the theme is 'Other companies.' Which is just any other mini manufacturer than Citadel/GW.

Which means I now have an excuse to paint this supercillious little b'stard from Dragonbait miniatures.

 

This is the halfling butler which was an extra given to people who backed Dragonbait Miniature's indiegogo campaign. As I painted this, I was distracting my family with my giggling. I have never had this much fun painting a miniature. There is a lot of character in this sculpt that just thumped me in the funny bone, from the pose to the hair to the expression (the EXPRESSION!) I knew that Kevin Adams was a skilled sculptor but this was the first time that I had really, consciously experienced it.

The paint job was simple.
Base coats of pale green, red, slate gray (facial hair, foot hair and pony tail), white and pale blue.

A wash of army painter's strong wash.

And then touching up with the base coat again. 

"Would sir like some phlegm with sir's wine?" 

I spent the most time on the face. I wanted this guy to be a powdered fop stereotype. I worked up the colour on the face to a very pale flesh. Brushed as light as I could some red on the cheeks and drew a line of red on the bottom lip.

And 'Frederic, butler to the villainous' is born.

The kicker for me is that all the way through the campaign and right up until I got the miniatures in my hand, I HATED this miniature. Didn't think much of it at all.

I am glad to be 100% wrong.

Monday Night Painting at the Ceramics Shop: Dark Elf Warrior Women

Finally brought myself around to complete the half-painted Dark Elves I'd had lying in my travel case. These were the ladies that had become a millstone around my neck for the last three months. I'm been a little burnt out on Dark Elves. Still more to be done, but these seven are no longer on the list.

I didn't realise that white hair on dark elves was the trope for the Dungeons & Dragons Drow until recently. I must have absorbed it some time or other. I'm really thinking I may need to add in another colour. Electrics, perhaps?

Seven little dark elves all in a row. Rough as guts, and looking pretty all ranked up.

It took me a moment to work out why I couldn't get them to face the same direction. The mysteries of basing catch me again...

I love the poses on these two. The knock-knees on the mace-wielder and the tongue on the swordmaiden (which I need to pick out) are nice touches.

Another Chico's Challenge: Sci Fi

It feels like I haven't posted here for a while. Been what? 2 weeks or so. Not much painting done until the last week, and the planned construction and cleaning of hordes didn't happen at all. The Dragon Bait miniatures indiegogo campaign arrived which was like Christmas in June and I think I'll save that for when I am truly uninspired.

It was only with Chico's latest painting challenge (as here: http://oldhammeronabudget.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/challenge-week-sci-fi.html) that I got the brushes out and as I only had 4 miniatures that fit the bill (the other 2 being the Peter Davison Doctor and the Delgado Master) terminators it was.

I decided to try colours from opposite sides of the wheel. Blue and orange, and purple and yellow. I also decided that I would try not to use the quickwash to create shadow. I was semi-successful. On the Inquisitor the blue was blended (clumsily) from blue-black up to electric blue. I think the lesson here is that I need more inbetween tones to make the gradation smoother. The orange was three tones.

The Daemon hunter ended up being purple and bone with drucci purple and quickshade washes. The bone was worked up with increasing ivory added to the bone. The hood was given a wash of stong quickshade and then highlighted with a couple of shades of tan.

The 'metal' (bionic leg and gun barrels) was dark black-gray highlighted with slate gray. I'm kind of pleased with the lit buttons on the legs, they're just a simple thing that set the whole mini off. The force rod was bone, highlighted with ivory and then white.

The photos hide some of the scruffiness of the work!

Chico's Challenge: Finished Chaos. A rose between two thorns.

Three miniatures finished with bases, shields and as many highlights as I could fit in before the hysterical crying (between three and four).

Marigold with her two very protective friends.

It's only when I had all three miniatures together like this that I realised that they fit wonderfully. The idea insinuates that the reason Marigold is yellow isn't because she's a mixed up necromancer, it's because she's a Princess in Yellow, a follower of Hastur's King avatar. Clickity, clickity, click. I love it when something unintended surfaces.

 

The chaos warriors ranked up and with a look at their shields. The shields turned out well with a little careful work. I'd initially painted the design in a white/yellow mix over black. The step today was to sharpen the edges with black and then went over the design with the standard yellow. I'm pleased with the look and I'm glad that I have finally got the shield hurdle out of the way. I appreciate just how little space there are on these things now, and really have great admiration for the steady of hand who perform little masterworks on their shields. I'm aiming for stick figures.

The bases were beach sand glued on with watered down PVA. They were painted black with a 1:1 paint with water. This gave a near black with a hint of brown underneath. After I'd finished painting the minis I dabbed PVA patches onto the base and sprinkled HO scale coal clinkers on. These were drybrushed slate gray, washed with strong quickshade and finally patches of flock were stuck in opportune places. Voila, bases.

Different angled views of the three minis are below.