So Matakishi gave a me wet palette a 'little while ago' and by a little while ago, I mean more than SIX YEARS AGO!!

Six years, what the hell happened?

Anyway, I used it for a time and found it didn't quite work for me more or less for reasons mentioned in this blog. Plus, since it was A4, it was a bit too big for my painting area.
Basically, since I primarily paint stuff for RPGs other than anything else and especially when painting personalities, it means that I tend to use a wide variety of colours in small amounts each. This made the wet palette a little tricky to use.

I persevered for a while but ultimately abandoned it.

Why am I mentioning this now, earlier this year I invested in couple of these silicone 'speed' palettes from The Army Painter and at £6 each piece they won't break the bank.
Supposedly they're meant to be used with The Army Painter range of speed paints which I don't use but I was interested to see how they work with 'normal' paints.

How well does this work? Let's find out.

Pretty easy it turns out, albeit not quite perfectly.
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The simplest best way to clean a silicone palette is to wait for the paint to dry and 'pop' the well! Since the palette is flexible, a finger can be used to pop it upwards and the paint will generally just peel off the palette and can be thrown away!

There was a break in rainy June weather last weekend which allowed me to do some varnishing; meaning it's time for a painting blog - and only 3 months since the last one too, madness!

Let's start with the cultists!

In my experience, you can never have enough cultists for any genre of RPG. They fit everywhere! Who doesn't want the heroic PC to face of against some nefarious enemies.

​Below are some cultists (and a stone circle!) from the Dark Heaven Bones range at Reaper. Obviously they're plastic but they're straightforward sculpts that were easy to paint and they look suitably menacing.

Continuing with the nefarious theme: Next up we have 3 witches!

These are metal figures from Bad Squiddo Games and bear a uncanny resemblance to some famous witches from somewhere that's definitely not Kansas.
I used a green ink on the skin tones to give them a green hue as I didn't want them to look outright green, I think I might have over done it a touch. Otherwise, ​they are  nice sculpts that were very quick to paint.

Another nefarious foe for our heroes to face and this is a very traditional vampire fellow.

It's metal sculpt that I painted ages ago and has been patiently waiting to be varnished. I have no memory of what range the figure comes from as he was based even longer ago! Answers on a postcard I guess?

Next we have something a little less supernatural.... half-orcs!

These are plastic figures from Wizkids deep Cuts range. Like a lot of figures from that range, they can have a bit too much detail which slows down the painting process and can make it fiddly.
First up are two half-orc lady barbarians and the other two are half-orc paladins.

The next orc is a female half-orc fighter, again another plastic figure from Wizkids. She is one half of pack, the other figure was painted in a previous batch.

Finally we have a metal figure known only as 'Oberon' from the Dark Heaven Legends range from Reaper.

I also painted a bunch of classic D&D style troglodytes.

These come from Crooked Dice​, although ​I believe the sculpts originate from the now defunct Otherworld Miniatures which means they were multipart mayhem to construct which involved sticking my fingers together as much as the limbs to the bodies! I'm not sure how sturdy they'll be but I intend to avoid dropping them to find out!
The sculpts look very reptilian and seem to fit with the D&D aesthetic.

There's quite a lot of texture to the skin which felt fiddly, I'm not 100% happy with the end result.
It was hard to find a good source of artwork (Other than Crooked Dice's own photos.) to source for the colours but I went for a stony grey base colour for the skin with a 'strong' tone wash over it, both from The Army Painter. I also went with the red crests which is what is shown on the Crooked Dice photos as I quite liked that colour. Finally, the chieftain had a turtle shell shield which was a new thing to paint for me.

The 8 figures consist of 2 sets of 'warriors'; armed and unarmed, as well as a shaman and chieftain.

More trolodytes, only this time from Reaper Bones Black range from Reaper.

​Reaper's take on troglodytes is a little different and to me they look amphibian more than anything else - which is fine, they are of course fantastical creatures.
Like the Crooked Dice figures, these ones have a lot of texture to the skin. They also come with integrated bases styled to look rocky, this is something I generally like. However, these bases are so big, I had to mount them on 50x25mm bases instead of the usual 25x25.

Finally we have a 3d figure printed in resin I believe. This is, I think the first 3d printed figure I've painted - although I have painted some 3d printed scenery previously.

This is a healer/apothecarist/potion brewer and comes via We Print Miniatures although as I understand it, it was design by a studio called Vae Victis Miniatures.
I was impressed with print quality here, it's much better than what I've seen previous done with 3d printing. It's going to be interesting to see where 3d printing goes in the future.

I like the sculpt, it's a slightly unconventional pose with enough detail to be interesting to paint without going overboard. From the photo I saw on the website, I didn't realise the figure has a boxy case filled with potions as a backpack!