Picking the Bones, part I

A brief diversion from my usual line here--some time back, my dad bought in to the Reaper Bones Kickstarter and ended up with quite a large box of 28mm plastic fantasy figures. Despite the dubious noises I made at several points along the way, he's actually been making good progress at getting this pile of plastic painted (as you can see by his blog)--nonetheless, I was invited to select any that I cared to paint.

Though in the past I have generally steered clear of 28mm individually-based fantasy figures, and though a lot of the Reaper figures are a bit too... spiky... for my tastes, I did pick out a small band of adventurous-looking types. After sitting around on my work table for a month (luxuriating in a nice bath of soapy water) I have finally gotten the first of them painted--a rather fierce-looking woman in sensibly heavy (if perhaps somewhat impractical) armor. Some Googling tells me that she is "Seelah, Iconic Pathfinder Paladin," or something like that.

I started with the cloak, which I decided to paint yellow. After looking at her facial features (those which were discernible on a head only half an inch tall, anyway) I decided to go for something other than my standard "acorn brown" and went with burnt umber instead. Possibly subconsciously inspired by a number of V-shaped elements in her armor, I ended up using a zig-zag motif on much of her gear, including the cloak pattern and the stylized lightning bolt on her shield. I found her helmet to be the most difficult bit--the way the figure is sculpted with it held tucked at her waist, I couldn't really get a sense of what the thing was supposed to look like--is that a visor or a crest? is it open at the bottom?--so eventually I just winged it.

Anyway, all in all this one was reasonably entertaining to paint, and I got to play with some different techniques. The other three will be along at some point, though probably not until after I've done some more 20mm stuff and possibly some NQSYW figures.

Barbarians of Myboria

OK, yes, I'm still alive--August and September were busy months for me, and I didn't end up doing much bloggable stuff. However, painting has proceeded slowly--I've been adding to the nomadic hordes of Myboria, who are currently a little too dependent on their yakatheriums, and need some more actual cavalry. So in the last few months, I've added a couple units of light cavalry and a second unit of heavy cavalry to their ranks. These guys are a mix of Italeri and Zvezda figures, for the most part:

At some point, I took a break from the horse nomads to paint a different sort of barbarian--the strong-thewed heroic type. This guy from the Caesar Adventurers had been sitting on my painting desk in an unfinished state for many an age until some inspiration finally struck--what he really needed was a scantily-clad knee-hugger! Fortunately, the reclining woman from the old Atlantic Greek Life set seemed to fit the bill. (An Antediluvian priestess, perhaps?) These two were fun to paint--especially trying to suggest translucence on the woman's garment. (I did a bit of playing around with "Conam's" skin tone as well--at one point in the process he was an appalling fake-tan orange color...)

Anyway, hopefully it will be less than two months until the next update...