Rats!

Time to paint Bones!  I read up on peoples' experiences with them, and gave some rats a wash after cleaning the (very few) mold lines and flashing off them.  I decided to see how various paint mixtures went onto the plastic, as well.

The leftmost model had Undercoat Black with a drop of with alcohol thinners, the middle was thinned with water, and the right was paint straight from the bottle.  Well, from the bottle, onto the palette, onto the model, but close enough.  Overall I like the way that thinned paint goes over the plastic; it doesn't cover everything perfectly on the first coat, but it does leave all the details clear.

I followed up by mixing a little more thinned black and doing another layer over all of them.  This brought them all up to the same level.  Some mixed pink went onto the noses, ears and tails to give them a few details.

I shall call them blackie, blackie and blackie.

I decided to try do the fur and flagstones using my nemesis in the world of painting techniques: drybrushing.

I always manage to leave too much paint on the brush, and get a thick layer of paint on the details I want to highlight.  I had bought a flat synthetic brush recently though, which I was willing to abuse rather more than usual.  I took it slow, putting a mixed grey onto the flagstones, and a dark brown, followed by a lighter highlight of straight Calthan Brown on the fur.  I slopped too much grey onto the base of the middle rat, but everything else wasn't too awful.

A dab of magical Devlan Mud wash onto the bases to give them a bit of grime, and I called it a day.  It didn't hurt that it helped bring out the flagstones again after I'd painted between the cracks.

Is certainly isn't the prettiest of paint jobs, but they are rats.  Anything south of 10hp isn't going to be around for long enough for people to admire it.  I also took the last photo way too close, I need to look into trying to get better at taking pictures of my minis.

First Bones done!  They are just as easy to paint as advertised.  I admit that the detail isn't the best, but they certainly are worth the money, for models like these.  Looking at some of the other models, I think that the larger the mini the better detail comes out, but I shall see when I get there.  Next up, painting the other 9 of these little ratty bastards.

The fat loots

They're heeeeeeeeeeeere!

After many, many months of waiting, my Reaper Bones have been delivered.  Reaper ran this kickstarter last year, for their new Bones line- miniatures cast in polyvinyl plastic, rather than pewter or resin.  The base pledge reward grew as their total did, and eventually they almost made 3.5 million dollars.  This translated into quite a lot of miniatures.

They have been shipping the rewards for months, but finally I got mine.  South Africa seems to have been the last in the list for overseas shipping.  In any case, the haul:

There they are.  257 models, all told; I got the ones not in the top box as add-ons.  They are Cthulhu, Nethylmaul (a dragolich), Kaladrax (another dracolich), Wyrmgear the steampunk robot dragon, Here be dragons, the Pathfinder Red Dragon, an extra set of swamp things and the deep dwellers.

I've got my work cut out for me with painting them all!  I'll be taking them slowly, but I want to get though them..I'll get lots of practice on that many minis.  I still have another month before I'll be starting to paint my Cygnar, so I can get started on these!

It begins, part the end

On went some Chainmail paint.  I tried to mix it with thinners, but it did very odd things.  Beautiful, swirling, glittering things.  Luckily it went onto the model well, though.  I drybrushed the helmet, neck coif and sword, and painted the arm plates.  I also mixed some brown and black into a wash-type thing and went over the boots and scabbard, which made them look much better.

The arms look pretty glaring, but I'll fix that now.  The goblin paint box came with Devlan Mud wash, probably far better than my "drip some stuff in a palette and put thinners in it" wash.  That went over most of the mode, which made the arms look better, fixed the undershirt and pants and defined the face and sword.

Before that I'd put on some yellow for details, and tried to freehand the star on the helmet on the shield as well.  That didn't go so well.

Knight of the blobby star!

I cleaned it up with red again.  At this point I feel it is pretty much done.  All in all, better than I expected, and a nice learning experience with washes and thinning paints.  I'll paint the base and seal it once I get some matt sealant spray.  I could add detail from here, highlighting the armour and painting the sword hilt gold, but for a model like this I think there is an upper limit of useful detail, for middling painters, at least.  It looks decent, which is enough for this one.

Finished model:

It begins, part the second

I continued my attempt at slapping paint on a model.  Then I fiddled a bit with my phone, and took some pictures of it.

As it turns out, my lighting was weird in the second picture, the knight having somehow gained neon red armour.  On the other hand I put up a black backing, though that might be part of the issue.  Well, all part of the practice I suppose.

Painting the face went better and worse than expected; the eyes are clear, but I managed to eradicate any other shading around the edges and lines.

The pants and undershirt I painted in two layers of very thinned light bone paint.  It seemed to mostly gather in the cracks, which is the effect I want to get with a later wash, but its at least a new discovery.  Not much left to do, I think, though I shall add more layers on the red and brown.

It begins.

So with my Reaper Bones coming in the next few days, half my Warmachine Cygnar army ordered and the second half kind-of-ordered, I decided I had better actually start painting.  Or at least, try.  I've got a pile or minis I have had for years and never painted, mostly Iron Wind Metals and Reaper, and a couple of boxes of 40k Space Wolves, Tau and Eldar that are mostly broken at this stage, but I'll probably keep for roleplaying purposes.

I picked a generic knight-dude for my practicing, as he is pretty simple and not as detailed as lots of the rest.  The internet has revealed to me that a secret technique exists called "priming" and this would stop minis chipping like mad.  As all my metal minis have chipped, I decided to try this crazy idea.

A local store had Tamiya light grey primer.  It apparently may give me cancer if directly inhaled, but that isn't my intention.  I also picked up some Tamiya thinners, as I read thinning is the way to make things pretty, and some 1mm and 1.4mm steel wire for pinning.  The steel wire turned out to be a poor idea, it is so hard it dents my wire clippers.  Luckily its brittle so I can snap it to length, but I should have gone with brass rod instead.

I currently have a set of beginner GW paints, from the goblin painting start box.  The box was years old when I bought it and the paints have mostly separated, but its what I have.  I tried to lay down some basic colours , each mixed with a drop of thinner to make it flow better.

Turns out, the thinners did make the paint go on... thin.  Weird, that, but it seems to be nicer than chunky layers of paint.  The paint also accentuated his gigantic hands, feet and sword; I guess this model is ancient.  Oh well, this is a test after all and he was never going to be more than a RPG character mini anyway.

I then decided to try do the eyes, as I'd read a tutorial sometime online recently.  This has always been a weak spot for me, as I never got it right with my 40k models (most of them were helmeted marines anyway).  White, shadow grey and a messed-up mixture of separated carthan brown, black and thinners later:

THE EYES, THEY SEE ALL

Well, that looks fairly crappy but might be better with flesh tones over it.  The brown is intended to add depth to the creases of the face, like around the eyes and mouth.  Lets see how well that works out.