I'm back!

Unlocks door, turns on lights, looks around...

Well, it's been a long time since I've been here. Which is a shame, as the last post, way back in September, was the first I actually promoted to some forums and thus the most views I ever got on the blog... Life got in the way, mostly an extremely busy time at work, which ended with your narrator getting laid off once the bulk of the work was done. C'est la vie.

Anyway, I find myself with lots of free time on my hands all of a sudden, so it's time to start posting again. When I was last here, I was working on my self-imposed challenge to paint 300 figures from the lead pile before the Reaper Bones Kickstarter loot arrives. I've fallen way behind, due to the same craziness that kept me from blogging, but here's what I did accomplish... 

I don't know where the orc came from, but it's a figure I've owned since the mid-eighties or earlier. The sorceress is from Reaper.

Reaper Bones dwarf and ogre – I figured it would be a good idea to paint some Bones figures before all the loot arrives, and the process wasn't any different from what I do with metal or plastic figures. I cut off the dwarf's chunky integral base and glued him to a US nickel, while the ogre is on a 40mm Citadel base.

More orcs – from left to right we have Grandpa, Aunt Peg, Gramma, and Cousin Louie... Various manufacturers.

The goblin on the left is from Der Kriegspielers/Custom Cast, from 1975 or so, and the other three are my own sculpts in an attempt to mimic the style.

Women warriors! I'm not sure about the blonde on the left, but the other three are Ral Partha from 1988-1990. I think this shot illustrates why I like mixing my own flesh tones – instead of all of these figures having identical skin tones, there's a realistic variation.

The fellow on the left is from Mega Miniatures, I think the knight in the center is Grenadier, and the blue wizard is from RAFM. I'm not thrilled with the paint job on the wizard, but I don't find the sculpt very inspiring either, so it's not worth repainting him.

The SF gal is from Mega Miniatures, the demon and zombie are eighties Grenadier.

Custom Cast hobbits from the 1970s. These guys will join the six I posted last year as a small (12 figures) warband in a “Defend the Shire” scenario I'm thinking about.

Finally, Ral Partha's superb Galactic Grenadiers 15mm figures. I've got the rest of the figures from the set painted as well, but haven't taken photos yet. So that's 37 figures (The set came with 38, but one of the grenadiers has gone missing), plus the 28 detailed in this post. I've also got four Reaper kobolds painted that I'll be posting once I finish up their bases and take photos.

I'll likely post more details about some of these figures in the future, but for now they're just getting added to the challenge total. Total: 90 figures painted, 210 to go...

I doubt I'm going to make it to 300 figures before the Reaper stuff gets here, but I'm still going to give it a shot. I have some small units of various figures that I'm going to try speed-painting assembly-line style to bring the number of completed models up.

Some old stuff from the lead pile... And a Martian white ape

Here are some more old figures - Custom Cast LOTR Hill Trolls from the mid-seventies. While I really like the figures, they don't have the height or mass to be convincing trolls at 25mm. Maybe 15mm would work... They usually saw use as goblins, bugbears or orcs in my games.

As you can see, the paint job on these guys is a pretty slapdash affair. They've been consigned to the jar of Simple Green on my kitchen counter to strip off the old paint, so these pictures count as the before shot of a forthcoming before-and-after post.

Another old model; a medusa from Superior, which I painted with Testors enamels in the mid-eighties. The mid-eighties to the early nineties was my most productive miniature painting and gaming time, but the years and poor treatment have taken their toll on a lot of my figures from back then, and I'm currently stripping and repainting scores of old miniatures. Most of them will probably turn up on this blog sooner or later.

Into the Simple Green with her! She's sharing the jar with the hill trolls, a bunch of Citadel dwarves, some Citadel Nightmare Legion skeletons, and a handful of other old figures. 

And now, for something completely different...

This white ape was sculpted by my brother Tom, at my request. Tom usually sculpts larger, fine art type things - You can see some of his work at http://tommonsees.com (Watch it though - His subject matter tends towards the bizarre, and some of the images are definitely not safe for work).

Tom sculpted the original in Super Sculpey, his medium of choice. I can't stand the stuff, personally... It's like sculpting with bubblegum, and I don't like having to bake the pieces to harden them, but lots of people swear by it, and I suppose the non-hardening aspect becomes important when working on larger pieces.

Anyway, once the master was done, he had a few cast in bronze, his usual casting material, and gave me one to paint up. This is the first time I've worked with a bronze miniature, and it took some time to get the figure ready to paint. 

As supplied, the ape had no base, tabs or anything to attach him to a base, just rather small areas of his feet filed flat. Bronze is heavier than white metal, and with the figure so top-heavy, i didn't trust glue alone to hold him to a base. Pinning was the obvious answer, but in addition to being heavier than white metal, bronze is harder as well. Out came the Dremel tool, and two drill bits (and a lot of patience) later, I had two holes drilled deep enough into his feet to accept some heavy wire. 

The base was built up on a commemorative coin I got in the mail from a charity I donated a few dollars to, using a mixture of Milliput and green stuff. I stuck the pins into the soft putty, then removed them and let the stuff dry before attaching the ape with five-minute epoxy.

He's currently undercoated in black gesso, and I hope to get him painted this week.

Some old hobbits

I'm not sure about the little guy in the blue cloak, but the other two are Custom Cast LOTR figures from the mid-seventies. These guys were all painted about a year or so ago.

Three more of the Custom Cast hobbits. All of these figures are based on US pennies, and were painted with cheap craft paints... I painted them just before ordering the Coat d'Arms paints I'm using now.

I have six or eight more of these little guys in the unpainted lead pile, which I'll probably get painted up soon. A hobbit warband might be fun for a skirmish game...