#3MMRPC: Bones Animal Companions & Barrow Rats

My number of minis painted this year is pretty miserable. Sure, I've been focusing a lot on terrain, but still... I can do better. So to pad my numbers some, I decided to paint up the wolf, wolverine, and bear from the Animal Companions set from Reaper, as well as a couple of Barrow Rats to round out both the year and the 3 Month Mountain Reduction Painting Challenge.

After washing them with soapy water and scrubbing them down with a toothbrush, I glued them to a craft stick with a drop of superglue each. I then slathered them with Brown Liner.


I looked up pictures of wolves, and decided I'd try a timber wolf color scheme. It didn't work out, but the results are still kind of interesting. I started with a base of bone, and then used very thinned down tanned leather and walnut brown for the markings.



Rich Leather was used to paint the wolf's eyes, finishing it off.

The bear and the wolverine were base coated with walnut brown, and then got some ruddy flesh details.

I then gave both a light dry brush of Rich Leather to bring out a bit of the fur texture.




I then gave them a light drybrush of dirty bone to really give that final touch to the tips of the fur.

The barrow rats really vexed me. After lining them, I went with moldy flesh figuring that their disease infected skin would be looking pretty unhealthy. I brought it up with a mix of spectral white and the moldy flesh. I then went over the fur that was still on them with the same browns I used on the bear above. Their eyes and mouths are fresh blood red, whiles the tails, ears, and boils were painted with brains pink and breast cancer awareness pink.

At this point I thought that this was one of the ugliest sloppiest paint jobs I'd ever done. I hated it, and the mini, and myself for doing such a terrible job.  Because of this, there are no work in progress shots.

I then gave the whole mini a wash of Bloodhowl's Heavy Sepia wash, and like magic it all came together. I'm trying to get away from using washes like this, but sometimes it really works better than it should, and makes my efforts look way better then they deserve.

Also, these are seriously large ROUS...

#3MMRPC Time lords and Teddy Bears

This is it, the penultimate post for the challenge. I've done a terrible job posting weekly to update on the challenge, but I've actually been decently productive. Since my last update, I built and painted 35 bookshelves for Frostgrave, and have mostly finished the bear, wolverine, and wolf from the Bones Animal Companions set. I've also concurrently been working on the Bones Barrow Rats.

Oh, and I also finished the TARDIS! Finally!

For the next Frostgrave campaign, I've started working on a pair of chronomancers and a barbarian with a teddy bear. Of course as I just gave away the TARDIS, I'll now need to paint another one...

 Lastly, I've pushed a bit of putty on a giant ice toad. Mostly just the central mass of the body and one leg.

For this last week, I'm hoping to finish up the animal companions and barrow rats.

#MMRPC Terrain

Okay, so I actually painted a WHOLE LOT of minis this week. I painted them black, dark grey, and then lighter grey. I also painted the temple, and built and painted the second set of stairs for the temple.




I started it out by painting it with a light grey housepaint. Great for coverage, but the color did not match any of the other terrain I've done, so I mixed together the dregs of several bottles of craft paint (black, navy blue, and greys) and gave it a quick re-primer.


The minis all got spray primed with black, and then touched up so no silver or bones was showing through. Then drybrushed with dark grey, and then lighter grey.


I used craft sticks and hot glue to keep my fingers from having more paint than the minis.


Here I'm checking the color of the temple against the stairs I already built for it.


And here's the second set of stairs drying.

Sadly this does very little to chip away at my mountain, since all of the figures under 28mm scale were given to me for this project, and the bones guys are doubles that I had... In fact, I think only the wizard in the middle was a unique mini from my collection.

#3MMRPC Catching up? HA!

Okay, so I'm failing pretty miserably at the challenge. My last update was a month ago, which makes this week 7? 8? Anyway, I've actually managed to get a little painting done in that time. I finished Nathavarr and earned Bronze for him at ReaperCon. And while at the con I also painted up a CAV mech.

However, since I acquired him at the Con, that didn't reduce my mountain any...

After the con, around Halloween, I decided that I needed to try to do something thematic with the season, so I painted up Judas Bloodspire and a ghast from Bones I.

Given that they were both painted very quickly (for me at least) I'm really pleased with how they came out. I even managed to put a bit of what I learned in the expressive faces and eyes to use with Judas here. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm pleased.




The ghast was actually just a paint catcher for a long while. Anytime I had red or purple on my pallet leftover, it got slapped onto this guy. I finally finished base coating him, and then just brought the color up using the vampire skin triad mixed with the imperial purple I used on the cloak above.

My current projects are statues for the Frostgrave temple I'm building.

#3MMRPC Week 4: #ReaperCon Prep

I don't have a whole lot of progress to show off this week. I'm still slowly plugging away at Nathavarr the White, scale buy scale... Down to one leg, both arms, and the top sides of the wings to finish detailing.

I've been spending a bit of time most evenings hanging out on Google Hangouts with some other folks from the Reaper Forums to keep me motivated. 

Warfare Wombat is just about done too. This is the most recent picture, but I've done a little more cleaning up of the red piping and the buttons.

I don't expect to win anything beyond the "You Participated" ribbon, but if I can get some feedback and suggestions on HOW to improve my skill, then, hopefully, all this effort will have been worth it.

Next week this time I'll actually be at ReaperCon! My first time attending, and I can already tell that I don't want it to be my last. Expect lots of pictures!

#3MMRPC Week 3

Work continues on the Warfare Wombat and the treasure token.


The Wombat is almost done, and I think I'm done with the crate... aside from cleaning up the edge of the base, anyway.

I've also been working away on Nathavarr!

But he deserves a post of his own...

#3MMRPC Weeks 1 & 2

If you've been following the blog for a while, you know that I've participated in an online event known as the 6 Month Mountain Reduction and Painting Challenge hosted over at facebook, and have been mostly successful at it. Well, I apparently missed that a new round started up this month, though it's a 3 month challenge this time. Despite being a couple of weeks late, I'm sort of tossing my hat into the ring. Why only sort of? Because ReaperCon falls right in the middle of the challenge, and I know that I'll be picking up stuff there, so I'll fail at the first part of the challenge guaranteed.

Here are the rules...

The 3 Month Challenge runs from 15 Sept to 15 Dec.

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker. You get three jokers to use on a figure purchase. Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge. The only exception to this rule is if you need bitz or A FIGURE (Singular) to complete a unit/warband etc.

1.1 - There is an opportunity to "earn" additional jokers. If you complete an entire project (whole unit/army/warband etc.) with pictures of starting, WIP, and completion, you earn yourself a Joker.

2. Gifts do not count against you. Holidays, birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise.

3. Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.

4. At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week. If you instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #3MMRPC

5. Zombtober will be part of the 3 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff during October is ENCOURAGED. Other theme suggestions are welcomed.

And to show what I've been working on...

This week I've been blocking in the base colors for Warfare Wombat, treasure token, and Tetsu Ko.


Last week I painted up these teleport pads for my monthly Frostgrave game.