Lion Rampant - Fierce Foot (Nick)

It's like buses... nothing for months and then 3 posts come along at once - ding, ding!

Here we have more figures that have been waiting ages for static grass and tufts etc, this time my 3rd unit for Lion Rampant and only 11 months after the last one rather than 2 1/2 years... things are improving?

Again the figures are from Curtey's Miniatures, javelin men that I intended to represent Fierce Foot - however they could easily be divided into two more units of Bidowers, or added to some WIP Foot Yeomen as a mixed unit or two.

The figures are actually supplied with small shields/bucklers but haven't decided whether I want to add them or not, so I'm calling them finished for now and will come back to them later if necessary - with shields they could even be an alternative unit of Foot Yeomen themselves.

They have been painted exactly the same way as the previous Bidowers so I won't repeat the process here except to emphasise those brighter green and yellow spot colours making an appearance again.

So a few days of not actually 'painting' and already another 13 figures moved onto the done pile... I'm sure the paint brush will be out again soon, but so far it's looking promising for a strong finish to the year - here's hoping it is.

Age of Sigmar - Crypt Ghoul (Nick)

Well we're not even into December yet and here we are, with the first finish of the new relaxed regime - just static grass added to a figure I'd been working on for a while.

This is a Crypt Ghoul from Games Workshop, the test piece from a potential Flesh Eater Courts army for Age of Sigmar:

Mostly Citadel Contrast Paints over a Black/White zenithal prime to provide extra depth and shadow, I'm hoping they prove fairly quick to churn out if I proceed and the dark red (Flesh Tearers Red) you can't quite see on the loincloth, as well as the leathery brown (Snakebite Leather), will provide great contrasting spot colours against the icy blue (Gryph-Charger Grey).

Also my first time using Green Stuff World's Coagulated Blood effect as befits the background theme of these creatures, but definitely went for the less is more approach rather than too much gore which I'm not a great fan of.

Day 365 - a year of paint-on-brush (Nick)

Saturday marked a full year of Carl & I trying to put 'paint on a brush' every day, with mixed results.

I myself, have somehow managed to put paint on a brush (and actually on to some part of a model) every day for all 365 days with only two misses which couldn't be avoided - not always much to show for it, but even hotel stays and our holiday were accompanied by a brush, a single pot of paint, and something simple like a few shield rims to paint.

Carl on the other hand, has 'fallen off the horse' on numerous occasions but managed to complete about twice as many models as me - so who is the winner I'm not sure... maybe we both are, or perhaps just our hobby in general.

I have now discussed with Carl that going forward I have decided to relax my self-imposed rule that it must be some sort of painting, and just do 'something' at my workstation every day - be it varnishing, base texture, static grass etc. or even just prepping and assembling more miniatures.
I have quite a chunk of models that are 'nearly' there from the last 12 months, but as those last stages aren't strictly painting they haven't crossed the finish line yet - the hope is this will give them that much needed push... tbh even the painting has been very minimal on many days just to put a tick in the box, and the hope is this will end up more productive and ironically probably lead to an increased volume of painting too.

 - let's see what the last month of 2021 brings and hopefully up the tally of finishes?

Pond Wars Frog (Carl)

Something a bit different this time!

This is a model from a growing group of swamp warbands I'm working on for Open Combat. This is a Frog from the Pond Wars range at Eureka Miniatures . How or why a frog is armed with a musket is not a question any sane person would ask, they should be asking where's that frog with a musket pointing it?!

Loved working on this model, loads of character and it'll be another fun little warband for Open Combat when I've finished them all. Yes there are more on the way!

Blood Bowl Goblins (Carl)

I've finally finished the final few players for my Goblin Blood Bowl team. I've still got a few extras to do like reroll models, biased Ref, mascot etc. But as far as the actual players in the pitch. They're finally finished and ready for action!

Have to admit I'm pretty pleased with how it's all come together. Looking forward to getting up to some Goblin shenanigans on the field when the league starts.

And finally, the whole team shot:

Goblin Pirate (Carl)

This one was a quick 'get it finished' job on a Black Scorpion goblin pirate model that has sat in the Work In Progress pile for ages.

I think it went through several colourways along the route to finish and ended up being a murky concoction of browns. I never really had a clear picture in my head of what I was working towards. So, in the end I just decided to go with it and finish it off no matter what state the colour combination was in - just get it done.

I've got another Black Scorpion goblin pirate in a similar position (multiple attempted and abandoned colour combinations) which I'll just get done soon too. Sometimes just not having a clear picture in head when I start a mini goes awry. What is odd is my other goblin pirates were easy and came together really well but they were very colourful so perhaps that's where I went wrong, attempting to apply more realistic colours on a Goblin's outfit!

ECW Irish Drummer (Carl)

Another addition to the Irish brigade for my English Civil War Montrose force.

This time the drummer for the Eureka Miniatures Pike block I'm putting together.