Killing You With Ugly

To quoth the good book:

      This nightmare creature is loathsome beyond description and has no redeeming features. Its body resembles that of a huge, bloated buffalo. . . (its) neck is long and thin, and perched atop it is a big head uglier than that of a warthog. Its legs are thick and stumpy, much like a hippopotamus. . .In any case, the most horrid aspect of the catoblepas is its bloodshot eyes.
                                                                                 -Gary Gygax, Monster Manual, 1977

Ral Partha Catoblepas, vintage 1988

Ugly is right. Although this Ral Partha sculpt misses out on a few of the nicer details from D.A. Trampier's original art, like the fleshy bits 'round the eyes and the clubby tail, I think it hits a home run in the straight-up ugliness game. More importantly to me, it gave me the golden opportunity to really work on wet blending techniques. Serpent neck blending into hippopotamus armored flesh into hairy warthog bristles. I am very happy with the grey-to-flesh blending on the abdomen. I think I could probably have gone a little warmer with the greens, but I like the "natural" look I have now and I don't want to do anything that might screw that up.

It was a very productive week hobby-wise, as I also managed to prep all of the Otherworld Adventurers and Hirelings that I still have in my queue, along with the first batch of Redbox Games Kickstarter rewards. I finished off this OW ranger mid-week, and he will probably end up replacing the thief mini that my older son uses as his character in Barrowmaze. He's a big fan of the bow here.

And finally, I (admittedly) rushed the paint job on this (honestly) iffy sculpt of an undead dog from Grenadier just to get it off my desk. It's a Cthuhlu mini titled "Hound of Tindalos" and looking it up online, it appears mine is missing a big long tongue. Dunno, but I don't think a big long tongue would improve it much. Maybe a zombie in Barrowmaze will make this his Ol' Yeller. Woof woof.

Hope your own leaden pursuits are ticking along smartly. Take care, brethren.

Undead. . .tober

Seems like every different WHFB race and their mothers are being celebrated this October. I just happen to be in "I really need to start getting stuff done before the end of the year" mode right now, and the undead minions we need for Barrowmaze just happens to be my own lucky chosen project du jour.

Zombies from Otherworld, a "Doombringer" from Studio 2 (he'll play the role of Revenant for us), a couple of wights from OW, and a quite-nice-if-a-tad-smallish wraith from Dark Sword.

Happy trick or treating next week, leadheads.

Back in Black. . . err, Bleached Bone

Whew. It's been a while. Three months can really fly by in blogland, eh?

It was quite a summer of discontent for me, hobby-wise at least. I spent nearly all of my free time from June through early September working on these doors and portals for my commission painting client:

This project was enough to break me- I have hung up my mercenary brushes for the time being, as there is simply not enough time anymore in my life to paint for someone else. I have way too many projects of my own that I really want to get through, and having the feeling of commitment to painting someone else's stuff has turned my hobby into another job.

But no more.

In a flurry of excitement after I mailed the doors back to their owner, I dove headlong into my own minis and just put the final touches on the wonderful armored skeletons from (who else?) Otherworld. Sculpted by the one and only Kev Adams, these fellers are insanely characterful, old school, and really fun to paint. My admiration for that company grows with each batch of their minis I finish.

Attack of the stripy shield brigade

I was so sick and tired of painting brown and stone after all those portals that I had to paint these guys in a riot of color, at least for me. Ochre, brick red, Prussian blue, and dark green are my four go-to colors, so that's where these ended up. Again, this was so fun and so reinvigorating to do.

I hope to continue getting through my projects. I used the proceeds from the portal job to buy one long-term dream mini of mine. What is it? Stay tuned!

Happy hunting, brothers in Pb.

Bring Out Yer Dead

Just a quick update from the hobby table for me tonight. Put a very quick paintjobby on this batch of zombies from Redbox Games over the weekend. Certainly nothing to crow about, but since these guys are destined to be mowed down in droves over and over again in Barrowmaze, I figure they'll forgive me. I've become pretty enamored to the glowing-eyes-means-scary-undead concept- this time it's a nice eerie green shade to go with their green-grey skin.

Hope your own leaden acquisitions are going swimmingly. 

C'mon . . . Gimme a Quickie

I'm finding that the last few rounds of commission jobs have really sapped my hobby ambition. I told my client I needed a wee break, thinking that I could take a couple weeks and make some serious hay on my collection, but I am having a hard time finding the desire to head back into my paint cave. I keep telling myself that this is a hobby, this is my free time, so I am not going to fight it- but those damn little lead men keep looking at me with those sad eyes making me feel guilty for not providing the gentle caress of my Windsor & Newton #2 . . . sigh.

I did find a few hours earlier this week when my blood was up and I banged out a couple of "quickie" projects: first were some more undead for my Barrowmaze / Otherworld D&D project. These ghouls arrived from OW a few weeks back. Painting them was a very simple matter; over my standard grey undercoat which I pre-shade with Army Painter Dark Tone and then give two highlight dry brush shades of light grey and lighter grey, I gave these fellers a bluish-grey base coat which had been mixed heavily with water and matte medium; I'd guess probably about 1 part paint to 1 part medium to 2 parts water, giving me a nice grey milk on the palette. Using very thin coats, I hit each of them twice; just enough for the pigment to give the basic color to the mini while allowing the shaded undercoat to shine through. I gave them each two highlight coats, adding increasing amounts of bone-white to the mix, first hitting all the raised areas and then for the final highlight pass, I just concentrated on giving the minis a highlight coming from a light source directly overhead. I used dark red to outline the blood, and then highlighted that with a fire-engine red color just in the center of the red, to hopefully give the impression of blood drying on the ghouls. A quick, heavy wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, and then gloss-then-matte varnishes, and done. Probably an hour and a half total painting time for three more fell fiends of undeath:

Who's been eating the nail polish again?

The second mini was even easier. I picked up this Rogue Trader-era Sensei from Steve a few weeks back, and he was already painted. From the pics Steve had on his eBay listing, I figured I would probably strip and repaint him, but I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw him in person. The details were nice, the base coats were very neatly applied- so I decided a simple re-base and mild augmentation were all that was needed. After taking him off of his old skool grit base and clipping off his slotta (gasp! the horror!), I refitted him on a modern lipped resin base with a sweet diamond deck finish, and then added a couple of quick highlight layers to his base coat. Two or three glazes to deepen his armor and cape colors, and viola! Sensei Fonzarelli is ready to smite a galaxy near you.

OK- hold that pose, and on three, say, "Cheese!"

I should probably, some day, try to do something with that face. That grin is. . . very disturbing. The face sculpt doesn't appear to be all that detailed, though, so I think the original painter did what he/she could, and I am not about to strip off all those cool checks just to find out that that grin is gonna be there regardless of how many times it gets repainted.

Cool mini, though. Definitely a needed addition to my RT Adventurers.

Sweet dreams, lead brethren.

Just Keep Leading That Horse to Water

How to not maintain momentum? Blog about it, I reckon. . .

As soon as I finished that last post, I started a new commission project- "Dead and Dying" is how my client marked the box. Forty-three (!) figures of deceased adventurers. I won't be sharing those until I reach the family portrait stage- I have managed to get through about half of them at this point, with lots and lots of bloody corpses still on the queue.

As for my own collection, I have managed to squeeze out another three Otherworld minis:

Lantern Bearer, Female Ranger, and Meat Shield (AKA Linkboy) checking in

The fantastic Mr. Zhu convinced me recently to check out the amazing Barrowmaze for Labyrinth Lord/original D&D. Although I decided not to back the crowd fund they recently held, I did spring for a pdf of the first module, and boy- it is good. I mean really, really good. So I am now targeting the Christmas holiday 2014 to start a new rpg campaign with the family. I have about had it with all of the bookkeeping that is required to play Pathfinder, so getting back to basics with an ol' skool dungeon crawl through crypts and barrows should be fun.

That leads us to this weekend, wherein I banged out the first batch of skeletons speed painting style. This box from GW was just sitting around my leadpile waiting to be painted up. I would have preferred a few more unarmed skeletons rather than ones bearing swords and spears, but beggars can't be choosers. Wifey was nice enough to sculpt up the broken flagstone bases for me as she is far more handy with the modeling clay and knife than I am. . .

Speed Painting Techniques, Ho!

I'll slowly work in a few more adventurers in the coming weeks/months, along with some OW undead I have been slowly acquiring. Like I said, I have several months still to get them all done before the Barrowmaze Complete book comes out, and then it will be time for the dice to hit the table.

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.