Working in Seclusion

Coming up for a breath of air, and to share the works I've completed.  Work is starting to lighten up a bit and be less tiring with the hire of additional help.  As a result I hope to be able to start posting more frequently in the near future.  I'm making a concentrated effort to paint during my, "downtime," and would like to share the fruits of my labor.  I've been busy focusing on more miniatures from the Hand of Fate kickstarter I mentioned previously, and I have picked up a couple of other pieces to paint while I wait for Robotech stuff, a commission as well as my own pledge,  to come in.

First up is the renowned Brother Silence (who is not an elf!):




After showing this miniature to a few of my friends I have always heard comments relating to his face.  It may be difficult to tell, but (to my eyes at least) the mini was sculpted such that he is performing a martial arts shout.  To a lot of people this looks off, but I happen to like it.  So many miniatures are stuck with their faces frozen in a very limited number of poses/expressions, and coming across a mini that has a very different expression can add a new layer to the piece.  Overall I'm happy with the mini.  I keep trying to work with the orange and yellows that I have, but I need to pick up some new ones as I feel limited whenever I have to paint anything near an orange tone.

Up next is Daphne, and a few issues start to emerge:




Again one of the first things commented on with this miniature is the face.  Poor Daphne looks like she took too many blows to the face, and is sporting a broken nose.  When I was prepping the mini to be primed I was a bit concerned about trying to touch up the nose.  I didn't want to leave it like it was, but I was also worried that trying to fix it would break it off.  I tried to work around it as best I could, and hope that it's just a defect in my piece and not the mold itself.  This is one of the first miniatures in the line that looks different from her movie counterpart.  The miniature actually has bracers on her arms, which the character doesn't wear at all during the movie.  To compensate I painted the sleeves completely black (like the movie), and just left the bindings painted on for artistic effect.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  The rest of the sculpt holds up pretty well, and that was my only real complaint.  The shirt and cape both turned out very well.  I mixed up some Reaper Master Series metallics with some of their normal paint in order to get a bit of shimmer working, and the effect was quite successful.  Painting blue is something I'm still working at getting.  The shading and highlighting is become much more gradual, but it still needs a bit of work to bring out the brighter areas.  That being said I'm still very excited to be getting my blending to work out smoother.

Ok, last one for today is a work in progress of Sir Osric:




There is a lot that I'm liking about my paint job, but a few issues I have with the miniature itself.  The character of Sir Osric the paladin is clean-shaven in the movie, but the miniature itself is sporting a goatee.  My guess is that the sculpter put it on because the person playing the character in the movie also has a goatee.  The character also carries a shield and wears a cape, neither of which this miniature has.  I was tempted to sculpt them myself, but as I haven't seen other miniatures painted up online I've decided to leave it as is for now.  Paint-wise I love how his hair has come out, along with his shirt.  I feel like I've been hitting the highlights and shading pretty well on this one, and it's been a lot of fun to paint.  I still need to hit the boots and shoulder pads with a wash, and then pick out highlights, followed by the gloves, boots, and belt.  After that it's just the base.  Speaking of bases almost all of the miniatures have a really small footprint, and I have plans to mount them on bases to help stabilize them.  Even Brother Silence, who has the biggest footprint out of them all, could stand (pun not intended) to be put on a base.  Sir Osric is the worst, and consistently falls over with the slightest provocation.

I hope to have Sir Osric finished up soon, and then it's on to Flynn The Fine (alive version)!