So I got back out to the field, and started painting like crazy. The BrushFu minis had come in, then Black Star, plus a friend asked me to paint his Auril the Frostmaiden minis... I'd even put together a post with pics of the stuff that I'd painted but... yeah. Just wasn't happy with them. Very flat and just blah, ya know? Really uninspired so I just set the blog aside for a bit to think about things.
I realized that I was pushing to get the painting done so I could post pictures of what I'd painted, but they were just meh. Honestly I thought about just putting the blog on hold for December while I figured things out. Once I stopped focusing on the blog and just painted... well, it seemed to go better. So for a while, I'm just going to switch to posting on the weekends and do more of a recap. Just feels like it will be a better fit, so let's look at what happened this week!
BrushFu For Core Space
At the beginning of the week, my BrushFu minis came in. Huzzah!!! With the first order, some of them came with bases as part of the print but this time they were all loose. I kind of wondered if that might be the case so I ordered ten cyberpunk bases so I could keep that basing scheme going through these minis. Not only did I get the ten that I ordered, but they also included enough extra bases for the minis that bought with this order, which I thought was very cool!
As for the prints themselves, they all looked very clean and crisp again. I was a little worried because one of the minis didn't have a head, but then I found it in a ziplock by itself. With that panic sorted, I grabbed the glue and got to basing.
The first two minis that I painted were the droid waitress and the techie. The initial paint scheme... yeah, they just didn't work.
The color combo on the techie wasn't bad but she just needed more, and I wasn't sure where to go with it. The droid on the other hand... yeah, she was a failed experiment. My initial thought was to go for a tarnished and worn look for her since she's a droid out on the frontier. Maybe she wasn't serviced as often as she should be? Maybe it's a lack of supplies? Either way, she was just way too dark.
It was pretty disappointing because I thought that things were flowing better and these were just... well, crap to be honest. I set them aside and decided to come back to them later in the week. As I thought about it, part of the challenge that I was facing was the details are almost too fine. Might be time to grab some magnifiers but for now I just decided to pull up the images from Etsy and enlarge them. Man, did that make a difference! This helped me identify some of the details that just wasn't seeing, and I decided to hit them for round two.
This time, I'm a lot happier with the results. On the techie, I painted some of the base colors on her skin, top, and coveralls to add a bit more depth. I'd initially only done the base followed by a shade, but I think that the extra base helped pull out the details more. Looking at the enlarged pictures, I noticed the trim and belt on the overalls so I painted these up as well and I really think this helped. No, it's not display quality but I feel like its perfect for gaming.
For the waitress, I tried to pick out her body panels with a bright gold that I have, but it seemed to thin to give good coverage, kind of like you usually find with yellow paint. I could have built it up but decided to grab the cold steel instead since that has better color density. A short time later, I had the raised and more shapely panels painted up and I like how they contrasted with the recessed spaces. Her calves and feet are far more industrial in appearance, so I left those the original color. Overall, I'm much happier with how these two ended up, and I think that stepping away for a day really helped clear my head and refocus.
Trollbloods Of Erehwon
In between the other projects this week, I also grabbed by impaler to get some more work on him. Initially, I wasn't too pleased with him but then I started to pick out some of the contrasting colors and it really helped bring him to life!
There is still more to do with him (the bases, the tree trucks aka spears) but just adding the touches of the cloth wraps and the bronze trim add so much life to the figure. I also love the two chickens hanging from his belt! Just an example of the fun little details that the Trollbloods have. This guy is gonna look great on the board with his two "crewmates" and I might have to paint up the other one just because!
Auril the Frostmaiden for D&D
A friend of mine is running the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure for one of his many D&D groups, and he asked me if I could paint up his Auril minis for him. "Sure!" I said, and then realized that I had no idea what I'd agreed to. Thank God for the internet, right?
It took a few weeks for us to actually exchange the minis but he was finally able to get them to me last weekend. I'd hoped to be able to get through all three this week, but the cyberpunk bump that I had really through things off. Even so, I was able to rally and push through two of the three forms.
Her first form is known as the Cold Crone. This was an interesting one to paint because of all of the rich details that are sculpted into it. The ridges in the horns, the texture to the fur, the drape of the robe... all of these are very pronounced details so they just came screaming out of the mini when I painted it. Love it when they make things easy like that! The fur was done with three different shades which let me keep around the eyes darker so they could really pop when I painted them. I do still need to give the claws a touch of black but overall I'm really happy with it.
The second form is the Brittle Maiden. Again, the details on this mini are nice and crisp so washes and drybrushing were my friends. I ended this with a thinned white that I painted onto the ends of the crystals to make the edges pops. I like how the figure ended up but I've got to admit that I'm not that big a fan of the sculpt. I get what they were going for but... I guess it just seems really clunky. Not that I could have done better, it's just that compared to some of the other collector series minis GF9 has released, this one seems to be on the lower end of the quality scale.
I still have yet to tackle the third form, the Winter's Womb, but since it's the smallest of the three I will be able to knock it out this week. Heck, I could have done it today if my supplies weren't down south but I really don't want to get into hauling all of my painting stuff back and forth every week.
And there we have it, the week in review! Think I'll start calling this segment that in the future but I'll stick with Random Updates for this one. There might be the odd post that I throw up during the week, but for now I am going to shift my focus and just be posting on the weekends. Until next time...
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