Hardboiled Detective and the Long Goodbye to the Painting Challenge

Well the Painting Challenge came to an end on back on Friday and I submitted my last entry just a bit earlier than that. I still needed to paint up an anti-hero to send to Curt as my entry fee. I knew going in that I wanted to do a Film Noir detective and to try to do him in greyscale. I found the perfect miniature in the Reaper chronoscope line and got him ordered in.

I've never painted a miniature in greyscale before but I thought back to my boyhood art classes that mostly consisted of two tasks; mixing colors to match paint chips and painting still-lives in monochrome. So I broke out all of my greys and off greys and set to work. I tried to keep each piece of clothing in a separate tone to break it apart and give it that look of colors translated to black and white.

I gave the end of the lit cigarette the only touch of color. From looking at other peoples work it seems like that touch of color is what really sells the grey scale. Plus I think it looks cool.
I'll be trying to ship him out this week. Hopefully the cross border postal system will be kind to him.

I've really enjoyed my time in the Painting Challenge. Its been the most fun I've had painting in years and a special thanks to Curt and all of the other participants for making it so. I got figures done for several projects that have been sitting idle. As fun as that was I think the highlight for me was the Bonus rounds. I got to work on a few figures that I probably never would have otherwise. I'm particularly happy with the pennyfarthing cyclist that I sculpted. He along with the Uhtred conversion I did each got me a second place finish in the voting. I do regret missing out on two of the rounds however, and hopefully better planning next year will see me in all 6 rounds.

As far as overall production I think the past months of the Challenge have seen me paint more figures than I did in the previous year and possibly two years.

35 15/18mm infantry
1 15mm vehicle
1 28mm/ 15mm giant monster
Martian Tripod and drone
19 28mm figures (3 with their diorama base)
1 54mm scratchbuilt Cyclist



After this I'm going to be taking a bit of break from painting. I actually have a few started miniatures that didn't quite get done for the Challenge so they'll probably be trickling in. But for the most part I'm going to concentrate on sculpting and getting some terrain done. At least that's the plan for now.