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You'd think so, but that's how I ended up with literally hundreds of part-painted figures that I'd started and never bothered to finish.

Sadly, for way too many years, I've been in this situation:



Now, aside from wanting to get projects finished and miniatures done, my cat gets up on top of the bookshelf that is against the staircase, and "goes fishing" - which isn't good for figures. I need to move them out of that shelf, and while more sensible people might suggest putting them in a figure case, that just leads to more of the same. So my solution this time is to paint until as many of those suckers as possible are finished and moved out.

And on that note, here's what I got done last night on that queue-jumping Bronze Bull while watching John Oliver..

That bull does look really nice.

No progress whatsoever on the Goblins that I'm "supposed" to be working on. A little on the Bull. Mostly I've been playing games. Played some more Sniper Elite 3 co-op yesterday, and a long multi-scenario session of Zombicide with friends to follow-up until the early hours. We did all the A-series missions, and introduced Companion Dogs and Zombie Dogs, as well as 7 of the S3 Survivors. Though only 2 of them hit the table, because of random draw.

So here's some Bull WIP progression.

I do love the bull, so what is the next process to be used on him? Glad you watched Last Week Tonight as well, it is good that a lad from Birmingham has a truly global audience.

Next up is more highlighting of the scales into a brighter brass, and then probably turning the horns and hooves into a wrought iron/steel look. I'll paint up a Hoplon for base deco, and maybe a Kopis as well. I'll also give him the same "glowing bluish" eye effect I used on the Foundry bull. I've liked John Oliver for years and years now. Almost impossibly, the guy just keeps getting better.

What have you used on the base? Please feel to free to ignore me if you already explained the process. It looks great so far. Amazed at how much extra detail you manage to squeeze in when I would already call it done. Keep it up.

The base is just some shards of a slate tile glued down to the 50x75mm base. Used PVA to glue some sand around the edges of the slate pieces, and did the usual paint black and drybrush to both - shades of brown to the sand and shades of grey to the slate. This model really needs the silver-tone parts on it. It looks way too monochrome if left only bronze/brass.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some silver added on the horns and hooves (just a base so far) and some ink to give definition to the Brass. Tried photographing it with two types of lighting...

Well, the Bull and his slate base got completed today, and so while they're both outside drying from my spray varnish, I'm painting up a couple of the base deco elements. The Kopis will be simple and relatively unexciting, but today I decided to try my hand at freehanding a Greek Hoplon shield with a little more challenge than the others I've done recently - being core and rim with simple colours, finished with a transfer.

I decided to try a Greek "key" design, as well as a freehand device of a bird. Shield is a standard-sized 28mm Hoplon/Aspis from Wargames Factory. This is the WIP and result:



Tomorrow, it'll be glued down on the base, and the Bull will likely have one of his hooves resting in part on it.

Tidy! Well done on both the pattern and the iconography.

Nice work there, your hand must be nice and steady

Loving this Greek theme on your blog lately Azazel. Makes a change from all this grim darkness you usually see on Dakka lol.

Lovely freehanding there Azazel!

Thanks guys, it's actually a lot neater looking in reality. The photo being blown up to about 4x or 5x the size of the shield doesn't do the key pattern or the bird any particular favours. At that size it actually makes me feel a little embarrassed, since it looks quite sloppy. I'm sure I'll be able to put this Greek practice to good use when I eventually get around to painting Marouda's Minotaurs 40k army. For Grimdark!

That shield is actually quite stunning.

 Azazelx wrote:
Thanks guys, it's actually a lot neater looking in reality. The photo being blown up to about 4x or 5x the size of the shield doesn't do the key pattern or the bird any particular favours. At that size it actually makes me feel a little embarrassed, since it looks quite sloppy. I'm sure I'll be able to put this Greek practice to good use when I eventually get around to painting Marouda's Minotaurs 40k army. For Grimdark!

Too hard on yourself mate- looks awesome

He has a point though, I never like taking close-up pics of my own stuff either. Then again, I aim for tabletop quality, but I certainly get what he's aiming for.

Yeah, in hand I'm rapt with it. In photos... not so much. Funny how that works.

I think it looks very neat. But I can sympathise the camera shows everything. The number of times I take some photos for an update and notice things I have missed is countless.

Yeah, the camera is honest, and a bit of a dick.

That shield though, is quite nice

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks. Didn't get enthused for that second large batch of goblins, back to work after Easter, and allowed myself a break/some distraction by working on some other more random projects. So here we are, with the first of those to show off:

I received my Reaper Bones II Kickstarter stuff a few weeks ago, and while I had a little bit of Buyer's Remorse at not having purchased a few additional bits and pieces from the campaign, that's mostly due to having started new projects that things would have worked well for in the time since the campaign ended, and then finally delivered however many months late it was. I didn't even bother keeping track of that this time around. Overall it's a solid bunch of models for PVC, and I picked out a few that I thought would make nice, quick painting projects. The first was that Bronze Bull/Brass Bull/"Gorgon" which I asked about recently, have been working on, and just need to finish the final touches on (probably later this weekend). The second and third are these two ...thingies.





Now, my nerd-background is solidly on the Warhammer/LotR side rather than the D&D side, so when I saw the 77228: "Chthon " and 77229: "Mind Eater ", I saw silly-weird Rogue-Trader-esque space aliens, rather than D&D critters, and decided to paint them up in that spirit - somewhat inspired by Cheetor's Alien Flora and Fauna project (and the fact that they looked like they'd be quick and easy enough). So in the spirit of all that, I thought I'd paint these suckers up.





Knowing that of course, the things must be some kind of D&D or Pathfinder ripoff, I also asked Tarmor if he knew what these things actually not-are. He informed me that the 03603 "Cython" looks a lot like a Grick from 3rd edition D&D and that 03582 "Mind Eater" is a direct "copy" (ripoff) of an Intellect Devourer from all editions! Tarmor also kindly provided me with a couple of pictures that I then used as paint references. Now that I've done the photography, I'll be adding some Gloss Varnish to the Brain Diner, and these two will be done and dusted.



Since I rarely play D&D/Pathfinder (every few months I play the occasional session run by Orez. I think we're level 3 or so?) I don't know when or if these will ever see the table in their "proper" form, much like that not-Purple Worm of theirs (Wow! I just googled "Reaper Purple Worm" and my pic is the first thing in the image search above the actual link to Reaper!)

Anyway, both figures were reasonably quick and easy to paint, and the various blending of tones was fun and turned out pretty decently as well. Now it's back to those bloody goblins!

Having quite a background in D&D (although I wish I got more games) I am surprised just how close those models are to actual D&D creatures. Seems wizards of the Coast aren't as protective of their IP as some other model companies.

Paint jobs are top class as well. Some gloss varnish would really suit the brain devourer. The blending on the gricks mandibles is really good as well.

Some pretty fethed up looking beasties there Azazel! Nice work! Those large worm thingies kind of remind me of the ones from Peter Jackson's King Kong (when they get stuck in that canyon with all the gribbly bugs)

Really digging the brainbug, it's got a fun and zany look to it.

*insert theremin sound here*

Those are some really funky looking creatures. Good work on being top of the Google hit list for the purple worms.

The smaller gribblies look just like just plain odd beasts in the most wonderful traditions of sci-fi, as BrookM says theremin music would suit them down to the ground.

Good luck getting back into the goblins.

I think Gricks are relatively lower leveled but something you might encounter several of, just kind of an unintelligent monster. The Intellect Devourer is probably a bit bigger than your party, not sure if its by a lot though.

You could always encounter a purple worm at your level... you'd just want to run away really fast


The new gribblies look good, solid work. Keep it up!

I love how the monsters turned out. I can only flatter you by stealing your technique on the shield.

Yoink.

It'd be funny if old TSR/WotC were more protective in the old days. They might have Vrocked GW's world at one stage in much the same way as GW dickishly Lammasu'ed Raging Heroes. The D&D stuff is mostly online-generated dungeons hung on a simple "swept away to a pocket dimension and you must run dungeons to escape" premise. Which serves as almost a CRPG hub - played like you used to play D&D in high school - more of a combat generation system - so not the most in-depth world. Having said that, that nature of the campaign means literally almost any "level appropriate" D&D monster is possible, I guess.

Theremin is perfect for the Brain Bug thing. It's very 1950's sci-fi. But then I guess that's where D&D's roots lie. Tolkien, Howard, etc - plus any interesting thing they could throw in.

Just took some more pics. So look for an append to this post soon unless someone else comments while I photochop!

Photochop ninjaed!

Something from 1988, this Bolt Thrower sat around part painted for more than a decade. Recently I noticed it on the paint desk and decided to get rid of it - doing so in my current fashion by finishing the bloody thing. The crew had already been painted several years ago, so it was really a no-brainer that somehow took me years to figure out. What does that say about me, then?


Ahem.

So anyway, I finally got it done. Semi-interesting fact: The same bolt thrower was also packaged with Dwarf Crew for a time as a Dwarf Bolt Thrower - sometime after they discontinued the cool-looking (and much more Dwarfy) Imperial Dwarf Bolt Thrower. The thing about this Bolt Thrower is that uncrewed, it's generic enough to be used with pretty much any army at all. My plan for the time being is to use it (and the Goblin Stone Thrower I also fixed up recently) with the LotR Moria Goblins for the time being, as my 3rd Edition Orc and Goblin army is probably quite awhile away from becoming a force that can hit the tabletop.



It's far from an "exciting" paintjob, I'll admit. But then it's a simple thing made from metal and wood and wheels and spikes. Very utilitarian, and so I decided to reflect that with a very simple and straightforward paint job. I might string the bow one day down the line. But not today.



Here's the Bolt Thrower alongside the Stone Thrower I also recently repainted.

Loving what you did with the Bones II gribblies! It's very cool to see the little white lumps given some real form like that.

What bits did you skip on and regret? I have a sack of the pieces and a couple of dragons I don't want from my pledge, if there's anything in there you missed out on, you're welcome to it (I was just gonna throw them to a local kid to learn to paint on.