War of the Roses

The colors on this Reaper figure are a huge change from most of what I have been doing lately, as I try to get myself into a different palette mode for upcoming projects.

Brighter, more saturated colors will be necessary, and I have been spending months of painting quite muted, natural earth tone colors.  I will also have to do a lot of complex freehand, so time to get a little extra practice there as well!

It was a lot of fun to return to this kind of palette, which was more my normal style for years.  I suppose that's why I was so comfortable with the Tzeentch figures!

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221915913666?

Digging In with Secret Weapon

 

Brand new from Secret Weapon miniatures, we have a sandbag terrain set!  The production set has seven pieces total.  They are all cast in resin, with the usual super fine quality.

 

These were sculpted by Dave Taylor, and he took great care to make sure they had that 'look', and were the correct height for miniature gaming.

 

You can see the variety of shapes and angles provided in the set, which will allow you to create all sorts of fantastic trenches in no time at all!

 

The possibilities are endless.  I really enjoyed the end pieces myself.  All too often I wished that I could close off the ends of my trenches in something other than a hard edge!

 

Some Victoria Miniatures Highland Moss Guard take advantage of this new cover!

 

Surrounding this ruined chapel didn't even require the whole set, which shows you how much coverage you can get!

 

I have two sets, and that darn near covers an entire 4 x 6 table!

 

These corner pieces are fantastic.  I'm really looking forward to using them with my Wild West Exodus Union army!

 

One more view from above, to hopefully give you that sense of scale.  Check them out here:

 

http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=52&products_id=781

 

A Gathering

The first of a series of group shots for you tonight.

This is a mixture of older metal figures, and the more recent plastics.

Ironically, the metal figures are easier to prep and deal with.

I think it has more to do with the combination plastic/resin mix, which can definitely pose more challenges than a hunk of pewter. :-)

Since I've been doing this for a while, I am very used to dealing with very heavy metal figures, as well as more dainty versions.  I think I have at least 4 pin vises, along with many drill bits.  

Also, the use of green stuff in the gluing process helps a lot.  Basically, a blob of green stuff is sandwiched between two layers of super glue.  This adds a lot more stability to  the joint, as the green stuff fills in the gaps which are bound to occur.

There is also a bit of a chemical reaction between them, which solidifies the green stuff into hard crystals.

This method is very handy when trying to attack two pieces that are too difficult or even impossible to pin.

The Mighty Quinn

From Siren Miniatures, we have the Mighty Quinn!  He's one of a series of dwarf characters.

These would make some excellent, unique dwarves for role playing adventures.

Here's the Siren home page, with much more!

http://sirenminiatures.com/store

Here comes the rain

This Reaper figure was originally going to be the figure for the Painting Green video, but the much larger Raging Heroes figure was used in the end.

There were a lot of fun elements to the figure, which is always the case with my Reaper favorites!!

The base was also a lot of fun.

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221914239066?

Forest Guardian

This figure is another fantastic sculpt from the Raging Heroes line.  She is Syl-Iriah.

She was the perfect miniature for the "Green With Envy" painting video.  It covered a huge range of colors within the 'green' range.  Not only more yellowish or blueish versions of green, but more and less saturated hues as well!

A link for you:

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/James-Wappel-Painting-Greens-p/jameswapgreen.htm

I sculpted the base from Apoxy sculpt.  In fact, I even crated a video on how to create this style of base.  They are very fun!  Apoxy sculpt is just the right material, as it is very strong, but easy to work with.  It holds edges very well!

Here's a link to the forest bases...

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/Forest-Bases-by-James-Wappel-p/jwppforestbases.htm

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221913857040?

The Boss

From Ork Warbosses to the Legion of Everblight, big guys with pointy sticks abound.

The greenish hues on the cloth surfaces and straps were a handy foil to the reddish browns of the fur lining, etc.

Both of those muted war colors still provide some contrast with the neutral grays and the slate blue of the snow base.