Wandering

Got my hands on some more Nightmare Legion. I wasn't specifically looking, nor expecting to get any more. At all. But put a low bid (at least compared to the ridiculous BIN prices usually listed) in on eBay and won. So since I am playing KoW in early November, I think I might try to paint the remaining minis I need to run a KoW horde of them! They need cleaned up a bit. Looks like no/minimal cleanup of flash & mold lines. Not sure how much time I will be able to put into that.

End of October/Early November is a busy time. Work stuff is about to explode. But on a more persona note, I've got some resin toy stuff I need to finish for an exhibit at Designer Con ...

And then there's the Halloween, Dia de Muertos, All Souls, etc. stuff to work on, attend, etc...

So the next few weeks I will be wandering all over the place...

Figures on the Table and Halloween

Some lousy photos of one of the next things on my table. A pair of old Marauder dwarf swivel guns. I bought them eBay ages ago, but the package arrived damaged and a few parts were missing. It's taken me years to finally get around to creating a few replacement parts (one and a half of the two frames) for the guns. My plan is to mount these on 40mm bases and use them to bolster my insufficient numbers (10) of Marauder dwarfs with handguns.

They're cast in a very soft, presumably lead-heavy alloy. You can print pretty clearly with them on paper.

My time the past few days, however, has been taken up with building a mask for my daughter. She has been changing her mind every few days as to what she wanted to be for Haloween. With just a couple days to go, she really wanted to be a dinosaur. I ran out of time for some of the details (and rest of the teeth). As it turns out, the poor kid is really sick and didn't wear the mask anyway -- though she did go trick-or-treating for just a bit, dressed as Super Girl.

At the end of the day, T-rex (shown here after my daughter had painted it earlier in the day) got into some of the left-over candy. It is a well accepted fact that T-rex was not just a predator, but was an opportunist not above scavenging.

Empire Standard (mini-swap) & Update on Previous Entry

Below is an Empire standard bearer that I painted for the annual surprise miniatures exchange at Warhammer-Empire.com. This year I drew the name of one of the forum's most prolific and imposing modelers. I was a bit intimidated, so decided to go with a "stock" figure rather than try to model something myself. I figured I would try to paint something a bit extra, though, so I went with a standard bearer. My recipient has multiple Empire armies, and I was actually trying (unsuccessfully) to come with a good idea for a Nuln or Engineer's College standard. Then one day my wife put Finding Nemo in the DVD player. The next day I flipped through the Empire Heraldry and Uniforms book and came across the imagery of the angler fish type creature that, according to the book, is sometimes used by Stirland troops in the region of the River Stir. I also liked the idea of bright colors lightening up the tone of an otherwise metal encased figure (metals are not my strong point.) So all those things came together for the idea below. I'll have some other Empire figures to show off in my next entry. So a bit of an follow-up to the previous entry.... First off, here's my Halloween Costume. I decided to go with a leathery look to the mask instead of the usual carnivale white look. I had already veered from "tradtion" with my lenses, so figured I'd just do my own thing. I incorporated some old prescription sunglass lenses into the eye-pieces, so I could actually see out of the mask! (At least when I wasn't overheating in it. I'm making a few adjustments to it this week and will probably wear it to a Dia de los Muertos celebration this coming weekend. I'm considering dying the robes a darker color too. And this is the watercolor ("Lost Snabbit") that I donated to the gallery benefit/fundraiser I mentioned previously. I can't seem to take decent pictures of watercolors, as the light end always gets horribly washed out. But this is the best I could do. I'll be attending the benefit later on the same day as the Dia de los Muertos parade & festivities. Busy weekend again.

Can't stay on track

No sooner than I sit down at the miniatures painting table for a day or two, than I'm distracted by other things.

One is the Spaces Gallery 10x10 Benefit, for which I donated a watercolor (which I hope makes some bidder/donor quite happy -- as I liked it and I'm actually a bit sad to see it go).

The other is Halloween! I always have such grand plans for costumes. One out of every ten years do I actually pursue them. The rest of the time it's just whatever I can pull together last minute.

So granted, this is still dragging out til last minute, but I've been working on it. Probably for an inappropriate amount of time.

Here's 3/4 of the way through tonight's painting. I wanted to try the top part of the costume on...



I've since added some further texture & darkness to the mask, plus gathered together the rest of the costume, added some details like the metalic color and patina to the lenses & associated structure (screw heads...)

A few friends have gone off to Fall In this weekend. I've sent a request to buy me a pack of the Perry WotR plastics plus one of the command packs. Perhaps more figures on the horizon. ;)

In truth, I've been working on some commission stuff in between mask-making & other scheming.