Fungi Man-ia

The second fungi man that I sculpted. Well actually I sculpted him first, but painted him second. This rounds out all of the miniatures that I sculpted myself.

Please excuse the picture quality. I ran down the battery on my new camera taking pictures of snowy owls and had to resort to an old back up pocket camera.

 
I painted him up similar to the other one with a dull greenish skin tone but I also tried out using more washes and glazes to mottle out the coloration. While I'm happy with most of him the back just didn't turn out the way I wanted. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I sculpted him but his back ended up looking like a dried shiitake mushroom. Not a very inspiring surface to paint. I tried to make it look like a honey mushroom cap but even after repainting it three times it still doesn't look the way I want. Oh well, in the future I'll have to remember to either make slightly more interesting features in the sculpting or to leave it more of a blank canvas. It really pays off at the painting stage. Sometimes when you don't have a clear concept of what your are going for it turns out a little muddled.

Try as I might the back still ended up looking like a turtle shell.

I have a couple more miniatures on the table so hopefully I'll be able to knock them out this month and get a couple more notches on the paintbrushes before the year ends.

The fungi patrol cruising the streets!

Nano-Painto

Inspired by November being NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I decided to do my own Nano-Painto. Now I'm focusing more on the nano part as my goal is instead of writing a novel in a month is just to sit down and do some painting everyday. Even if it is just five minutes.

 I've found that it takes me about a hour and half to paint a typical 15mm figure but at least half of that time is taken up waiting for ink washes or glazes to dry. I usually don't use that time productively and just get distracted looking at the Internet or what not. So instead if I just do a little bit of painting and then walk away I can at least make some progress.

My first Nano-painto finished. He's actually a transformed Fungi guy that I sculpted a long time ago.

Actually I like him a lot better now that I painted him up. The details in the ripped clothes painted up pretty nicely. 

I never found a good name for them though, Fungoid just doesn't sound right to me but I haven't been able to think of anything better.

I have my last fungus goliath sculpt on the painting table as well. Hopefully to join these guys sometime soon.  

"We Dig In Dirt And Hide From Birds!"

... "That's a Life of a Lowly Worm!"

Of course this particular worm would require a rather large bird to hide from!

This is the finished repaint of the Crawling One from Arkham Horror. I was trying to get a look similar to the blobfish. I really wanted that translucent skin but that was a little beyond me. Instead I used a combination of inks and my usual flesh-tone mixed with grays. I like the final effect and intend to use it on a couple more figures. In order that I actually remember the combination I included it below. 

Basecoat with Beige Red/ Violet
Highlighted up with Beige Red mixed with Dark Sea Grey, then mixed with Medium Sea Grey. 

 Wash with mixes of orange and blue ink and spots of purple ink

 Final highlights with thin Beige Red/ Sky Grey.

Worm thing versus Colossus!

"What could of eaten all of my cabbages?"

 Ten bonus points to anyone who can give me the next stanza of the fight song of Learnmore High.

Building Plans

 
More new buildings in Lower Fickleham, a cottage with walled garden and two more outbuildings. (I'm a big fan of outbuildings.) This is the penultimate group of the ones I bought. I still have the largest of them, the manor, on the worktable but it should be done fairly soon as well as I pretty much have my painting technique down on them.

The AirCaptain looks around a small cottage he is thinking of renting.

It does have a nice enclosed garden and a small shed in the back.

The other outbuilding hangs precariously over the edge of town.

I want to continue to expand the town and I'm currently trying to figure out exactly how I want to go about it. I have a laundry list of ideas, most of which I'm going to need to scratchbuild so it might take some time to get through it. I'd like to start making some more urban and industrial style buildings. These would allow me to stretch Lower Fickleham into the suburbs of a city or at least give me a transition into one.

With the possible entertainment of a domestic squabble in the back alley?

In the short term I'm going to try to knock out some smaller projects for the town. I have some ideas for stone walls, plowed fields, and wheat fields to try to dress up the surroundings. I'd also like to make some smaller pieces to throw around and add some life. Maybe some market stalls or something similar. I also want to make some gas streetlights but I'm still on the lookout for some parts to construct them out of.

Just another sleepy day in Lower Fickleham.

Shove off Shoggoth!

After a rather promising start to September I managed to slip back into my usual September doldrums. I'm not sure what it is but September has always been a slow hobby month for me. But I have managed some dribs and drabs here and there that have advanced a couple of projects.

First off I finished off the second Shoggoth the one that I sculpted myself last month. I painted him up to match the other and all and all I'm happy with the way he turned out.

Charles and Rowsdower have perhaps bit off more than they can chew this time around!

"Chuck! My pistols are having no effect on this beast!"



Luckily, reinforcements aren't far behind.

" Aim for the green parts! I think they are vulnerable!"

Clash of the Titans!



But it's not alone!

Battle in the streets of Lower Fickleham!

Looking over the pictures I think I need to do up some cultists to go along with them. I'll have to look around for anyone who sells some nice ones in 15mm or else I might resort to sculpting them myself.

Also the next set of buildings are almost done so hopefully I'll be able to post them up later this week.

"Zap" Rowsdower

"Zap" is another figure from the Highlander Studios adventurers pack. I'm thinking he's either suppose to be Wild Bill Hickok or maybe Custer. Either way as soon as I saw that mane of hair I knew I had found my Rowsdower.

Looking down the business end of those Conflagration Beam pistols.

 
For those that haven't seen Final Sacrifice, Rowsdower is the action hero of a low budget, Canadian  B-movie. Here is a good review of it at Canuxploitation. Canada's answer to Chuck Norris is of course dressed in a denim jacket, white pants and sports some great hockey hair. I tried to paint a VSF version of the same outfit.

Jacket and hair make the man my Grand-pappy always said.

The movie version sports a shotgun and a smelly jacket as his weapons of choice. The jacket looks just as smelly but I decided to not mess with the sculpts twin blaster pistols. I think the hardest part was trying to make a denim look to his jacket. It's really suppose to be buckskin but I've seen plenty of denim jackets with the same fringe on them when I was growing up, although they usually had some sort of band logo ironed onto the back. I tried to keep the denim look but keep it a more muted blue.

Zap and Charles Allen investigate a mysterious shed. Chuck is sorta my version of Troy from the film.

And finally a picture of the man himself in his original form. 

The Good Professor

Here is one more of my sculpts painted up. Professor Emil debuted on the blog quite some time ago. He actually has a back story worked out in my Steamworks setting but for now I'm just going to use him as a pretty standard mad scientist.

With him done I think I only have two of my sculpts still to paint. However, I've just started work on sculpting some new ones so that tally might not last too long.

I tried giving him a patterned scarf but I'm not sure how well it came out. Painting plaid in 15mm is some what challenging!

I made sure his lab coat had the required dirt and grime stains from previous experiments.

Here are my favorites so far that I have sculpted. All together they kind of look like they should be in a League of More or Less Ordinary Gentleman.

I doubt that I've ever mentioned this on here before but my wife and I have both recently taken up bird watching. She has decided to start a new blog chronicling our misadventures of trying to see the local wildlife an hopefully take their picture. If you would like to read what we've been up to please visit or you can just stop by and take a look at all of the nice pictures she takes of birds, bugs, and the rest of nature. You can find it here: A Bird on a Blog is Worth Two in a Bush.