Elegance in the West

When I first got this figure from Reaper Miniatures, I thought it was a neat miniature, and it would make a great civilian when I start playing my Warrior Nation posse in Wild West Exodus.

I didn't expect to enjoy painting it so much, or to get such an interesting result!

Since I want to introduce this greenish color to my official Warrior Nation figures, I was very pleased to see how the warmer 'kelly' green juxtaposed with the warm tans, umbers and siennas.

If I can continue these sets of colors on my hired hands Braves and Scalpers, I think I will have a very interesting looking posse!  Stay tuned.

Seeing the world in Miniature

That would be Miniature 13.  They recently launched a successful kickstarter, and they have been hard at work producing all the miniature since!

Here are two of the first miniatures, which were very nice casts!

You can see that having great concept art can lead to very nice figures to paint.

And here she is in miniature.  I made a base which I thought would continue the setting which was established by the sculpt itself.  I am going to paint her in these colors, which means we will have a very fun set of side by side images coming!!

It was very easy to get these figures assembled, which is always a plus.

And now a look at the other figure.  He is standing on a 40mm base.

You can even leave the cloak off the figure, so that you get to see all the work on the tail and back plates.

Another sculpt that will join the previous figures.  I love the lines on this!  There's a fantastic flow to the chest and arm details that will make them very easy to paint.

So, check out Miniature 13, and see what they are all about:

https://www.facebook.com/miniature13/timeline

Hoof and axe

Today we have the beastman champion from Mierce Miniatures.

It was fun getting to paint mass amounts of blood effects on the weapons of this group!

Three down, seven to go!

A surprise in every corner

While I do remember starting this sculpt years ago, I quite literally bumped into it the other day when I was looking for something else!

I never finished it, but it probably had as much to do with lack of a finishing material, such as Apoxy Sculpt.  What you see in these images is a number of layers of sculpey over an armature.

I would approach this very differently now.  It would have been made mostly of tin foil as a solid armature, and wrapped in thinner layers of Apoxy Sculpt.  This would certainly have kept the weight down!

As it is, this is pretty heavy.  You can see that the back of this piece still has a number of layers to go.

Sculpey can be baked multiple times, as long as you are careful about it.

I was going to sculpt some fairy wings on the back of it, but I may or may not follow up on that.  Perhaps I could even make them out of a transparent material, as I won't be baking this any more.

Whatever additional sculpting to be done will be completed with Apoxy Sculpt and green stuff.

I will also be adding a lot of intertwining vines around the tree branches.

You will get a kick out of this... until I started taking pictures of these angles, I didn't even realize I had sculpted a face into the tree!

My guess is that I stopped working on this over ten years ago, so I think I can be excused for the memory lapse. :-)

The Apoxy Sculpt is a great material on larger scale pieces like this, since it is very easy to smooth it out by adding water to your finger or sculpting tool.  This breaks down the top layers a bit, and the surface becomes like a liquid.

So, it ends up with a very thin layer of 'slime', which dries very smooth.

It's also very strong, and it will lend additional strength and support to the sculpey sections.

I have a lot more experience sculpting smaller details now, so, I am looking forward to completing this at some point!

I have some of the "color shaper" tools which I tested last summer at Convergence.  Those will be very handy!!

I will be sculpting a lot of filligre on the dress and other areas, adding jewelry and possibly some leaf patterns.

The DVD gives you a sense of how large this is.

I will be sure to take lots of images of this when I do finally get around to completing it!

Stay tuned...

Crushing the glass

Let's combine a couple of great things... a Dark Sword miniature, and Secret Weapon crushed glass.

This is a fun Dark Sword figure (don't forget that current kickstarter!!), which had lots of tiny little details.

For the base, I used the Secret Weapon crushed glass/water effects technique.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221799477343?

That's a mighty unusual flag you've got there

Another Mierce Miniatures beastman for you!

These skin or hide style banners are always an interesting challenge.

You have to come up with an array of similar colors that do stand out a little bit from each other.

Covering new ground

Here's another one of the Dark Sword miniatures that was used in the "How to cover a broccoli base" series of posts.

It was a fun exercise in muted colors, and balancing the browns vs greens.  Grey was used as a "go between" color, to make it easier in blending those two together.

Also, this was my first chance to try out the new foliage that I brought back from Reapercon.  I really loved it!  Not only did it mimic the colors I painted on the figure, the leaves were light enough to stand out against the shadow areas of the cloak!

The individual leaves are very nice... actually shaped like real leaves, with a touch of the veins in the lighter ones.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221798815146?