Draconis: Spring Clean 2023 and onward

Having extended their tour so that they didn’t have too much flying in one go the Witches returned home today.

On the way, to recharge their magical energies (via tea and cake of course) they stopped by the ancient sites of Avebury,  Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow

With them safely back home now I have a few things I would change…

I would varnish them, weight the bases down for better balance, magnetise them,  take a small strip of metal so they could ‘fly’ wherever.

Alternatively,  I would just take one mini if I were to do it again ?  maybe a gobbo….

Normal service will now be resumed. Likely my Star Wars Legion project.

7th June 2023

Just a very quick post.

I am still working through my SW Legion clones currently, but next up on here will probably be one or more of these…..

A mix of things, but they have all been sitting on the desk for quite some time.

**please note that this post contains spoilers for the Level 5 secret boxes for Voidwarden and Red Guard**

23rd June 2023

Last year my wife and I played through Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion.

I painted all four characters but we ended up using Hatchet and Demolitionist.

At level 5 you get to open up a secret box with an extra piece for your character.  So I painted up those for our two characters.

However,  I realised that I hadn’t painted the remaining two pieces – so, another spring clean up job  ?

They are relatively basic minis. There is a ward staff for the Voidwarden and a Sand Devil for the Red Guard.

I started out with a brown base coat for the Sand devil, then dry brushed up through several Sand colours, and a final small few highlights.  I gave it a matt varnish to seal it and to make it look more ‘dry’.

Then it was onto the staff.

I painted it as dark metal, and made the ground a dark earth shade.

I then painted the ‘flames’ white and gave it a green wash to make it llook otherworldly.

There are cracks on the ground where the staff is struck in, so I mixed white into the green wash and ran it into those cracks, and into the glyphs at the top of the staff.

A quick job on these, but I think they came out OK.

25th June 2023

One that has been sat on my paint area for far too long is Ironclad Man, from Ironclad miniatures.

Basically a Victorian sci-fi version of Iron Man.

I got as far as painting it red over silver.

The red didn’t look rich or vibrant enough, so in my spring clean resurrection I decided to take it back a stage.

I drybrushed it silver in two shades, leaving some red in the recesses still.

Next step was to apply some red contrast over the metal, to give a metallic red sheen.

Then to give it that iron man feel I picked out joints and facial features with gold, washed with a touch of brown and highlighted up with gold and a touch of silver.

Some blue in the eye slots, and some work on the backpack boiler, and it was pretty much done.

28th June 2023

Another mini that has been on the side for far too long is this old metal knight.
I can’t recall what company it is from, but I picked it up to paint as my wife’s character she used in the Pendragon rpg.

I knew I wouldn’t have the skill to freehand the horse for the shield design, so I printed it off in various sizes,  found the best fit and glued it to the shield.

As it gets smaller the quality dropped though,  but still better than what I could do.

To match the shield livery I went for halved red and white on the tabard.

The red was contrast with minor highlights, and a second application of contrast to the shadowed areas.

The white was standard highlighting.

To get the paper bit of shield to look more a part of the model I sanded the bottom edge, built it up with a bit if varnish, sanded again the painted red and white over both sections.

Then I painted up the gloves, the base etc over a few steps.

This was partly because I wasn’t sure what colour to paint the cloak, and partly because doing the base often makes it seem closer to completion.

I was trying to decide between blue, green or grey for the cloak. So I used my phone to very roughly mock up each colour on a picture of the mini and polled some friends. The concensus was green…. so that’s what I went for.

Finishing touches etc, plus some highlights that I enjoyed doing due to the sculpting of the fabric, and its another spring clean mini finished ?

(I may try to rework the horse though)

Forgot to post up a few things that I will be working on.

Spring clean may be over, but this is the ‘onward’ part

26th July 2023

This is a 3d print (printed by a friend) of a design I made on heroforge a few years back now.

Picked my colours, and started to lay them down as neatly as possible.

Thinned Contrast flesh for the skin, standard painting for the shirt.

I won’t waffle on too long here….  I added details, used washes and highlights and cracked on with things.

Then I added some base details, and we are done.

28th July 2023

Up next was another 3d print.

This one was the Vault Tec Poster Girl from Fallout.

I decided to use contrast blue for the jumpsuit to make it vibrant and punchy.

I have other fallout minis, and for those I will use normal blue paint and weather it, but for the poster girl I wanted it to be brighter than the reality  ?

Next up I worked on the base. Giving it a slightly rusted and oil stained feel, but giving it some warmth by painting the perforated plates in a warm yellow.

I also printed out a Vault Boy / Pip Boy image for the lunch box on the base.  Detail is lost a little when it’s that small, but I think it works.

Next up I worked on the hair and other details….. including trying to replicate the ‘wink’ from the poster image.  Had a couple of attempts (old eyes and hands…) and finally got one that ‘would do’  ?

Finally it was a few more details. Weathering on the lunch box, picking out the bottle caps, some green lines on the pip boy, some washes to smooth things out.

Another mini finished  ?

For various reasons I have had a blip in motivation,  meaning no hobby occurred for a couple of weeks.

Not sure if mood added to lack of hobby, or lack of hobby added to mood….

But to try to alleviate things I thought I would clear and freshen my paint area last week.

It does look fresher, and tidier.

Which I hoped would help….. however, I do still have this to deal with  ?

13th August 2023

On Friday I decided that I just needed to grab a figure and get some paint down.

My low hobby mojo / mood initially made even choosing one a bit of a dither…

In the end I grabbed an old Mr Hyde mini that had sat undercoated black, with a zenithal spray, for a long time.

I gave it a drybrush grey, followed by painting the shirt in a bone colour, then drybrushing everything with white.

I tried a contrast flesh tone,  but wasn’t really happy with how it came out.

So I decided to just paint the flesh normally, layer up a bit, wash it then a few light highlights, going brightest on the knuckles and facial features.

I added highlights to the white shirt too, which came out better in person than can be seen in the pictures.

The trousers I also initially tried contrast,  but again I wasn’t happy with the result. So they were repainted, a soft drybrush of dark grey, an off black wash to finish off and tie it together.

To be fair, it’s not great.

But, I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. Mostly done on Friday evening, with the trousers re worked Saturday afternoon and the final skin highlights done then too.

I’m reasonably happy with the face – the thinned red wash adds some depth to it. The eyes…. I don’t think I will try to dot a pupil in, but will just leave as is.

So, another mini finished.

I am still lacking mojo, and don’t know what to work on next.

There is more Star Wars Legion to be done,  but I want to do something smaller first.  Hopefully I can decide soon.

20th August 2023

This week I finally managed to decide on what hobby to do next.

I plumped for working on my Nightstalkers Warband set for Kings of War Vanguard.

However, since there are 15 minis in this box, and I also have a Northern Alliance box and some scenery to do, I am going to pop them out as a project on their own.

The game may be dead, but the minis aren’t (although quite a few are restic…..)

As such, it may be a bit quiet on here for a while, as I will likely work on another Star Wars Legion faction after these fantasy minis. But, you never know.

20th December 2023

(Squeezing in just before the end of 2023)

A friend is running an Elder Scrolls themed narrative skirmish game between Christmas and new year. We each have our own characters and have sourced minis for them.

Mine is a Redguard ‘Spellsword’, a form of warrior mage.

I created the mini on Eldritch Foundry, and another friend printed it for me.

So, my hobby time for this past week has been towards this fellow.

I started off with a black undercoat, then drybrushed up the armour in a few stages.

Next up was the red cloak. I also drybrushed this up in a series of reds. However, this flagged up some printing artefacts that I had missed.

So, I sanded these down (couldn’t do much about the damage on the left – I will assume the cloak is a little torn there). I felt I could do more with the cloak, so re painted it. Started off with a mix of mephiston and black, then layered it up through pure mephiston, finally going to a mix of mephiston red and an orange for the final stages, applying this to the raised lower edges and the raised edges nearest the neck, but not on the raised edges in the middle. Quite happy with the final result (but some of the 3d printing artefacts still show though – not so much irl though)

For the white shirt and head covering I started off with pale sand. Gave it an agrax wash, then highlighted back up with pale sand, ivory and finally white.

The trousers were multiple stages of grey (look better irl again, honest ? )

The armour was given gold edging, one of the weapons was painted in a yellow tone with pale edges.

Finally the base was mostly Deneb stone.

This was finished off last night, and overall I am reasonably happy with the end result.

Another of the gamers is playing a Khajit (cat person) warrior. On Monday my friend asked me to paint this mini for the other player (my friend designed it for the other player, and it is a 3d print), which I agreed to do.

Cleaned it up a bit, stuck it together and a quick grey prime…. Away we go.

Didn’t have much direction on colours etc from the other player, so my friend said to go with black fur. I thought purple clothing may look nice against that, so I mixed up a couple of contrast paints (going for a reasonably quick job here) and slapped them down.

Added yellow piping to the purple, and went for a pale blue for the trousers to give it some lightness and to represent silk clothing.

A bit of tidy up, base work, metals and the weapon and it was finished. Quick job overall, not super neat in places (the camera can see more than my eyes….) but it is done, looks ok from play distance and is usable – more than it was a few days ago ?

Just a few pics of the Elder Scrolls set skirmish game from yesterday.

Five of us had a main character, and a number of NPCs on our side.

Against loads of imperial soldiers (roman minis) and some big boss bad guys.

Cooperative game, the heroes came out on top, defeating the imperials and capturing their target objective…. then beating a rapid ‘tactical withdrawal’ when a super powerful necromancer turned up.

1st January 2024

The turning of the year brings the end of this project.

It was originally set up for the Spring Clean challenge, and additionally covered any other small ‘bits and bobs’ that didn’t warrant a project of their own.

Overall, for me at least, the year has been pretty productive in hobby terms:

Completed my Deadzone project

Completed a clone force for Star wars Legion.

Took part in the Terrainfest.

This spring clean and other bits.

Completed two factions for Kings of War Vanguard.

Hopefully I can produce just as much, if not more, in 2024.

And perhaps try to improve the quality too.

Thanks to anyone that has been following this.