Cleaning out the Closet, Part II

My challenge to myself this winter is to clean up the huge backlog of minis I have to paint, finish painting or base properly. To this end I created the Cleaning out the Closet Challenge.

I quickly boshed together a logo for this too that you can see above, so if anyone wants to join in with this challenge, you are more than welcome. I find that one of the best things about the painting/gaming community is how these challenges to ourselves and others can act as inspiration to get things finished.

After quite a productive week of this challenge, the list is currently as follows:

Frostgrave Ranger: Complete.

Dystopian Legions French Legionnaires: HMG complete and will be posted soon, with the Legionnaires to follow.

Urban War Triad Retainers: Complete.

Urban War Viridian Special Forces and Sniper: Complete.

Urban War Triad Boss and Kabuki Doll: To be continued...

Urban War Sumotori: Not yet at the front of the queue.

Urban War Viridian HMG: I stuck some paint on this guy, but he is not yet complete.

Menoth Army: Ok, as this one approaches, I really will have to break it down into some component parts. That will be a post unto itself.

As winter moves on, I'll be sure to need to add to this list. I don't need to go deep into my closet to find things that are half painted and looking for some love. So, to continue the list and keep things rolling:

Effincool Halflings.

I backed the Effincool Kickstarter for Classic Oldhammer Halflings. They arrived quite quickly after the Kickstarter was funded, and I started painting them straight away, then I got sidetracked. I have since then backed the Midlam Miniatures Kickstarter for Halfling Wizards and Apprentices, so I suppose I'd better get one batch finished before starting another. This lot carries into the next...

Reaper Halfling Rangers

When I got the above Halflings in the post, I picked up a couple of Reaper ranger/thief type Halflings to go with them. Added to the Wizards mentioned above, it doesn't take a genius to see this all goes together to make a nice Warband for Frostgrave, or the startings of a Dragon Rampant army.

Captain, my Captain

In a comparative flurry of activity (comparative to the last few months at least) I have finished off another member of my Frostgrave warband. This time it is my Captain.

Meet Kristof. Yes, familiar name, maybe you've heard it somewhere before, but I assure you, it's a common name up here in the Northern Wastes. 

I tried to take a little more time over this one, and I'm very happy with the face and hair, but I admit, I rushed him at the end, and the trews and boots are just lazily finished.

Finishing this fig leaves me with just one more to do to complete the 10 person warband I run in the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign at my FLGS. I am one ranger away from the challenge I set myself back in April, that is until I get the commission piece that le Zonion is working on for me, which by all accounts shouldn't be too long now.

More for the Frostgrave Warband

The Frostgrave campaign at my FLGS is in ful swing. We're heading on to scenario 6. I'm also almost fully painted too.

Yesterday evening I completed this second Treasure Hunter and Rangifer, leaving me just my Captain and Ranger to finish.

The Treasure Hunter is a reaper fig, and the Rangifer is from the official Frostgrave line by North Star,

There is a second Rangifer who is almost complete too, but I need to finish the ribbons round his antlers, and I only have one in my Warband, so he'll wait till I finish my Captain before being done.

Then we'll get a pic of the whole warband (with the new addition previewed here) at completion. Hopefully before the end of the campaign!

Frostgrave Skeletons

Other than the small warband required for Frostgrave, most players need to find a range of creatures that are either part of a scenario, or just wander into the battlefield from time to time.

Many players have lots of random creatures from their time playing D&D, however, in all my years as a gamer, I have never really partaken of that particular game, so I do not have a bunch of random skeletons and ghouls kicking around the gaming cupboard.

Enter Reaper bones. I picked up a packet of plastic skeletons, based them on pennies for weight, and drybrushed them to get these quick and dirty table-ready skeletons.

Armoured version and Lich Lord to follow (those are all metal Northstar minis, so not so quick and dirty with them!).

Frostgrave Warband

I've gotten in three games of this now, and there's quite a buzz in the local meta over it too, so we look like we're heading towards a campaign.

With that in mind, I finished off a few of my minis. One of the things I love about this game is that it is the perfect use for my Oldhammer and Reaper minis, that never see the daylight often enough. These go well with the Wizards I have already painted.

Treasure Hunter
The sole recent purchase for this game. This is a Reaper mini, and by that token, a touch taller than the others, with the others being classic Citadel minis, and therefore much nearer to actual 25mm. He is also not on a slotta base, so that too adds a bit of height.
In game, I do like these guys as they are fast, but can also handle themselves in melee.

Knight
This is another old skool Warhammer mini, from a pack of knights. I'm not sure if they were originally labelled as Bretonnians, or something else, as I bought them a good 20 years ago, if not more. I've had a look for him on the various Citadel collectors sites, but I can't find him, so if anyone has any more info, I'd be happy to hear it!

This guy is the tank of the group. With a shield spell on him, he really can take a beating, although he takes his time to get where he needs to go.

Archer
This one is a Bretonnian. As a Perry brothers sculpt, it would of course work for Medieval armies too. Perfect for Frostgrave and WFB too of course! I may have to go over the face again, as the white of the right eye seems to be smudged. Bloody cameras! As you can see, he is from teh same retinue as the Knight above, although I do not really intend for the whole warband to have one colour scheme, it does help if I want to field them in other games later.

I have two of these guys in my warband for now, and they have a magic bow each now, so they'll be sticking around for the forseeable.

Colore ton Monde: March, the Green Lady

I'm on a roll thi month, three minis done and posted, and more to follow. Here's my mini for this month's Colore ton monde painting challenge, which was to paint something green, for spring.

This is a Reaper mini, and was bought to act as a sorceress for my fledgling Bretonnian army. It is a beautiful Werner Klocke mini, and deserves a better paint job than this one, but it will do for now. I'd like to go over the eyes again, as the close up of the photography as always makes them look scrappy.

 

Traditional Oldhammer Goblin Green for the base, but with some very modern flowers, in-keeping with the spring theme.

Meg Maples Montreal Masterclass, Day 1

This weekend in Montreal saw the last Masterclass to be held by Meg Maples in North America before she moves over to Australia. As a Christmas gift to me from my family, I went along. This was my first painting class of any kind, and I didn't know what to expect in terms of how many minis I would need, how many minis I would get through.

We were given a list of things we would need to bring, and a list of techniques we would try to get through. The first day started off with two brush blending. Before the class, I was aware of the existence of this technique, but that was about all. After a day of doing pretty much nothing bu that (the techniques was explained first for the very good reason that it was the basis of the other parts of the class) I think I'm staring to get the hang of it.

The minis I put on the table at the start of the day. There was no way I would get through that many, but it was good to have a selection to work from.

Cloak on a Reaper Wood Elf King, my first attempt at two brush blending.

Black Wolf Raiding Party Leader, an attempt at the same technique on smaller areas.

Alexia. I love this mini, and I have had her for years, but have not had the courage to paint her, as I didn't have the skill to do so to the level I though she required. No time like the present!

This mini was one where I was using the two brush blending technique to work on the metalllics. Hence all the work on the sword. I am happy with the way it turned out,  but the pictures do not do it justice, I promise better pictures after the second par of the course tomorrow.

So, I am back home with sore shoulders from hunching over under my lamp all day, and a sore head from concentrating so hard. I have never spent such a long time in one sitting painting before, and it was hard work, but the time flew past very quickly indeed. I have learned a lot, including that I need to learn more about colour theory. In addition to the technique of two brush blending, which I will not go into here, as that's what youtube is for, I learned that to get proper shading, you need to go darker than you think. For example, with the elf king's cloak in the first image, I initially went with a darker green, as per normal colour triads, but it just didn't show up at all. I soon plumped for Coal Black (P3), a dark purple/green black, which turned out to be perfect. I used this as a means of darkening pretty much all the shadows from then on. Mixing the Coal Black with an Umbral Umber (P3) gave the darkest shading on the metals too, looking like a proper black at the deepest parts of the shadows, whilst still maintaining an natural looks. I think I'll be using much more of this colour.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, as there is a whole lot more to learn, and I'm really excited to get these minis finished.

Colore ton Monde, Aout: Damned Bugs!

The results are in for the July challenge. They can be found here. Some nice minis on display. I especially like the Iron Man paint job on Pulp City's Iron Train.  My entry can be found here.

This month's challenge is:

Satanées bébittes

Pour le mois d'août, nous vous invitons à peindre un truc nuisible, comme on en retrouve temps dans nos campagnes à ce temps-ci de l'année. Insectes, xénos, damnés: le thème est large et vôtre à interpréter.

Damned Bugs!

For the month of August, we invite you to paint a nuisance. Like we sometimes find in the countryside at this time of year. Insects, Xenos, damned: the theme is large and yours to interpret.

For this challenge I'm taking a very literal translation. I took this guy, from Reaper miniatures. I figured it would work for a swarm of scarab beetles. Why would I want a swarm of scarabs? Well, that's a question for another post (although one of the labels of this post may give a hint). However, by itself, it wasn't very swarm like. To which end, I sculpted a discarded pith helmet (another clue), and a few more beetles to add to the swarm. I was thankful the victim seems to be in rather modern clothes rather than fantasy gear, as that suits my purposes very well.

Horray for Instant Mold! 

Also, for those of you who are not yet followers of the blog Trouble At T'Mill, Mike's doing a prizedraw for his 50th birthday. Head on over and enter!

Sir Guy, the Red

The perfect mini for the "Paint it red" challenge is obviously this guy (pun intended). Anyway, he was mostly finished last week, but a painting session last night let me get him based (in a very simple manner, there's not much space to play with on a 20mm base) ready for use in a Bretonnian army (at some point).

I'm way ahead of schedule for this month's challenge, but I hope to get a couple of better pics before I sent off my entry.

I also all but finished off the section of 91st Highlanders, with only the tartan to do (what a surprise), so I hope to post them soon. They're good practice for the coming Black Watch section.

Paint it Red

A couple of shots from last night's Oldies session. WIP of sorts, as both minis are very close to completion. I was struggling to find the mini I wanted to paint for this month's Colore ton Monde, as most of the minis I started to paint at the beginning of the month were blue (more on those in a later post).

In the end I decided to take these two minis with me (and the rest of the Section for the Rifleman, but they were not completed to the same level). I had quite a productive evening, with the knight starting the evening as bare metal, and the rifleman having but a base-coat. I'm especially happy with the way the tartan turned out on the rifleman's trousers. That was mostly down to having good lighting. I may have to invest in a good lamp for painting at home. Of course, the imperfections the camera pick up at this level of zoom are not really all that noticeable to the naked eye, but for a first attempt, I'm happy.

You can read about the conversion and scheme of my 91st Highlander's Section here and  here. Of course the knight will likely find a home in my fledgling Brettonian army.