Getting there…

It’s been a while!  All work and no play makes Andy a dull boy.  I’m trying to make some time every day to paint, but it’s been a bit tricky recently.  I’m slowly clearing all the half finished projects on my workbench – first up is the Reaper Assassin I started a while back.  The photos were taken quickly as I don’t have somewhere to set up properly at the moment

I wasn’t quite sure how to paint him, I didn’t want to do variations on black as it wouldn’t be much fun to paint, and I wanted to do something a little more colourful, but not gaudy.  so I tried the old “Charadon Granite as a basecoat for everything and wash it all with Badab Black” trick that I’ve used on Warhammer Fantasy models in the past.  I had somewhat mixed results with this - the cloak, the boots and the green elements worked really well with this method, but the purple really did not, so I had to re-base the purple.

I’m really, really happy with the dagger, particularly the blade, which came out fantastically (the pictures don’t do it justice to be honest) .  I also feel like I’m getting the hang of skin tones – for this chap I wanted a paler skin, so I tried a different method:

• Base:  Dheneb Stone
• Wash: Gryphonne Sepia
• 1st highlight: Dheneb Stone
• 2nd highlight: Dheneb Stone and Skull White

The cloak was a simply highlighting with Charadon Granite and more and more Dheneb Stone added, and finished up with a glaze of very diluted Badab Black to tie it all together.

Not a complicated paint job by any means, and he was pretty quick to paint.  He’s quite a classic fantasy type of miniature, feeling a bit “old school D&D”.  With my current love for Reaper miniatures, it would be nice to find a good set of universal fantasy skirmish rules to use these guys in – anyone know of any?

Work on the new lair continues, and I think most of the hard work is done, and the painting should be finished by next weekend.  I did the major job today and plastered the old fireplace:

I think it’s fair to say that I won’t be putting plasterers out of business any time soon, and it’s going to take some Polycell products to make it all smooth, but for my first attempt at plastering it’s not too bad.  It was a much easier process than I thought it would be – and once you get into the flow of it, it’s actually quite relaxing.

Miniatures wise, next up is Bikou (the Ninja from Bushido), another Reaper mini and stuff for my next Ancible article.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!