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! 

Only months since my last painting blog! what's going on?
There was a sunny midweek break in the dismal downpours and so I took the opportunity to do some varnishing.

The 10 figures below are all from Crooked Dice's 'mushimen' range which are basically a stand in for D&D myconids.
They are nice sculpts without being overly detailed.

​It was pretty tricky to settle on a colour scheme for them since I found little to reference them off of and I did some weird things to get close to the result I wanted but otherwise, they were easy to paint.
They also represent my first attempts at blending, which I did on their 'caps' and limbs. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the results or not.

These 2 figures below are 'official' myconid figures from Wizkid's Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures range.

A different paint scheme was utilised on these 2, although it included lots more blending.

I have just realised this is not a particularly good photo of this elven bard which is also from Wizkid's Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures ​.

While I think it's a fairly good sculpt with a dynamic pose, that pose made it trickier (the face especially) to paint than I would have liked.
I shamelessly ripped off the colour scheme for Link from Breath of the Wild for this one! Nintendo know what they're doing when it comes to colour schemes!

I swore off getting more plastic D&D figures but I needed half-orcs for the next GameBlast project so I bought a bunch more from Wizkids and these represent the first of that batch.
The 2 on the left are barbarians and the last one is a warrior.

The barbarians a were a touch fiddly overall with some small detailing that needed working on but I think they have a pretty good presence on the table.

The figure on the left is a metal Reaper leprechaun while the one in the middle is a warlock from Wizkids. Both are for my next GameBlast project.

The final figure is an elven fighter, also from Wizkids and was just painted to get it off the table. For some reason, the face's definition didn't come out well during undercoating meaning the eyes look a bit strange.

These 5 giant worms are resin models from Ainsty Castings and have been sitting around for a while.
I've not painted anything like these before so decided to try them in 2 slightly different colours schemes. It was also done quickly as I thought I would need them in a hurry but ultimately didn't.

Again, these 3 were done to get them off the painting table. They're from Crooked Dice and they are very nice sculpts which were obviously inspired by The Indiana Jones films.
I'm happy with them and they more or less look like their source material.

The Henry Jones, Sr figure on the right is multi-part and the hand with the umbrella/suitcase had to be glued to the wrist and was a real pain to do, I nearly chucked it away! I'm glad I persevered.
​On close inspection that hand looks quite blobby from all the gluing.

All the figures below are from the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang range at Artizan Designs, they were the last of the figures meant to be painted for GameBlast25 but didn't get done in time. So I've painted them now to get them off the table.
​
Like all the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang figures I've painted so far, these are excellent sculpts with enough detail to give them character and make them interesting but not so much to make painting them fiddly. They were a lot of fun to work with. So much fun in fact that I'm tempted get more of them to paint, even though I have no need of them.

For the 2 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang figures below, I referenced photos.

The Richard Roundtree/Shaft figure was referenced directly from a photo of him in a similar outfit. I was concerned that so many shades of brown wouldn't work but am happy with the result.

The Black Panther activist was a bit trickier as it took a while to find a colour photo from that era. Eventually I found one of someone wearing a red shirt and opted for that as it made the figure pop a little more.
I also put a gloss varnish on the jacket to make it look like shiny black leather but I think instead, it ended up looking more like a PVC jacket! Or at least it does so in the photo.

Some more varnishing has been done!
Other than the last 2 figures, everything was painted by mid-February but a mixture of being busy and bad weather meant that I didn't get a chance to varnish anything until Thursday past.

The 12 skeletons below are all lead figures from Midlam Miniatures. They're pretty standard designs but there's nothing wrong with that, I thought they were perfectly acceptable and the sculpts were good, especially since I was looking to bulk up my skeleton count and they were reasonably priced.
They were undercoated with a Army Painter bone coloured spray to make the painting quicker. The simpler figures such as archer and two-handed sword skeleton were quick to paint but some had a lot more detailing that needed quite a bit of re-undercoating before painting. So in terms of quick painting turn around. it was a bit of a mixed bag.
Overall though, I'm happy with the results.

EDIT: So whilst looking for something completely different I discovered that these skeletons were originally produced by the now defunct Metal Magic Fantasy back in the 90's when I was starting out painting!

The next 4 figures are cavemen from the Reaper Bones Black range.
Since they're plastic, the sculpting for their fur clothing can be quite thick, luckily though, that isn't readily apparent and overall they look pretty good. I like how burly they are.

Finally, the last 2 figures are definitely not Lara Croft and Alice from Resident Evil - specifically not Alice from the Resident Evil: Extinction movie.
Both done for a friend, Tim.

They're both lead models, now produced by Hayland Terrain.
Initially from the now defunct Studio Miniatures, they're both good sculpts though.

However, they were triply stressful to paint.
Originally I thought they were out of production and if somehow damaged would be very hard to replace.
They were painted for 'somebody else' which is something I'm not used to doing.
They were referencing 'real' sources which I needed to replicate.

Having said that, I still enjoyed doing it and am happy with the outcome.

Been nearly a year since I posted on this blog, I haven't forgotten about it, promise!
I also haven't touched a paintbrush since February this year.

Got some undercoating done. This is going to be the first time I've painted fantasy figures for at least a couple of years.
Just done the undercoating on these, they're all Reaperminis.

Hopefully I'm going to varnish some of the stuff I've actually painted in the last year!

2 posts in 2 days!
What's the world coming to?

Despite being cold, today was sunny and good opportunity to do some varnishing.

That's all 30 of my Pulp Figures Melanesian figures now finished and varnished.

From Midlam Miniatures are 3 Red Hook Horrors, only one of which I painted red! However, I find the idea of flesh and poo coloured monsters appealing. These were painted earlier in the year and are now varnished.