Hey, that doesn't suck...

Desert Ruin
9" x 12"



All done. Doing the fiddly little stones on the ground was a bit tedious but it definitely made a difference. A WIP shot from about a week ago is below:



Edit: I reshot the completed painting, the first pic is much closer to the actual colours.

Dog Soldier

Canid
25 mm



Just a quick mini to get me painting. It's another old one, "Grenadier 1985" is imprinted on the base.

Learning to Paint?!

Desert(ed) Village
9"x12"




I'm taking a canvas painting class, two lessons so far, and this is what I started working on yesterday. It's from a Nat. Geo. photo (top) of a village built for Bedouins in Yemen, kind of the Arab equivalent of making Indians live on reservations. They didn't go for it and this ruin was the result. I like the quasi- abstract, geometric and haunting look of the image, though mixing the odd palette has been a bit of a challenge.

Weird Reich

These just arrived in the mail from Dream Pod 9:

Loki and Valkyrie German Walkers
15 mm scale





DP9 minis seem overpriced to me, but since I can't sculpt/scratchbuild my way out of a paper bag, what choice do I really have to satisfy those World War 2 stompy robot cravings?

'Tis the Season

Untitled
10" x 14"



This painting was a Christmas gift to my fiancee; she liked it :) I collected the tiny driftwood from a beach on Lake Huron (if I recall correctly) on one of our visits there. I kept it for quite a while before the inspiration for this piece came to me... I wish I had inspiration for a title now.




These I received, from my brother. They're Reaper's "Monstrous Snowmen". Now I know why he was asking me for tips on painting snow... And he did a great job! They look... cold.

Back in the saddle...

Space Marine 1988
25mm



A blast from the past to get me painting again after so many months. This is the sort of miniature that was hot and new back when I first started painting, in high school... Now mine, thanks to the miracle of eBay.

Abdul-Qadir
28 mm



I never really got into painting this guy, but maybe I should finish him...

Mini Exchange #20

I decided to participate in this CoolMiniOrNot tradition once again. Sent to "ghetti" in Manitoba:



Giant barbarian (Confrontation), Asian gong and striker (Pulp Figures), Golgoth the Ancient (Reaper), and some small stuff.

Received from UnDave in the UK:




LOLWUT? Yeah... it's a giant dragon, and a giant motorcycle-chaos-looking-guy. So much for shrinking my collection.

Weird War 2, again...

Gepanzerte Truppen
15 mm





Another World War 2 that (thankfully) never was... Wehrmacht space marines :P These finely-sculpted little 15 mm figures are from Eureka in Australia.

Don't look a gift elf in the mouth

Caelon, Half-Elf Warlock
28mm



Well he's done. I really enjoy painting things green, it seems...

I originally planned for the base to look a lot like these from Micro Art Studios, but ended up being more inspired by a friend's photos of the Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat, overgrown with trees and vines.

Canned Meat

Barrel Zombie
28 mm



This canned meat tends to eat you instead.

---

Also, some progress on Caelon, the elf. I like how the green is turning out.

Character project

Half-Elf Warlock
28 mm



This is a Reaper mini, chosen to be as close as possible to my friend David's Dungeons and Dragons character "Caelón". I thought he might appreciate his alter ego in tiny form :) I'll convert the staff to hold an orb, as per his description.

Barrel Zombie
28 mm



A fun and gruesome mini from Eureka. It's a pickled zombie, escaping from a 40 gallon drum.

Yith Master

Yithian
80 mm





Well, I think this thing came out looking pretty much the way I wanted it to look - alien but not garish. I considered making the colours a lot darker/grungier, but this pretty much is how HPL described the Yithians, for once something that wasn't shadowy and ichorous.

- - -
In response to javi's comment: the grey parts are just grey, except where they blend into coloured areas. As for the base, I didn't even really want to have one - it's a free-standing creature - but I think it worked out all right, and it'll save me from a bunch of CoolMiniOrNot comments saying "if this had a base I'd like it better" so I made it out of card stock and foamcore. The plain octagonal floor slabs are as described in the original text.

Beginnings

Home for Easter, I found a few things I painted a long time ago. I think these were done around 1990-1992, when I was in high school. They actually don't look too bad to me now, but I think that's probably more an indication of how little I've developed in the intervening time, rather than any precocious show of talent.

What's available to paint has come a long way too... back then the range of characters to choose from tended a lot more towards basic sci-fi and fantasy tropes. There was some unusual stuff, but if it wasn't available at a local store... it wasn't available. No eBay, of course: what a grim and joyless world, I don't know how I survived.

Wehrmacht H39 gun
15 mm scale





Just finished one more WW2 mini, another gift from my brother. Very kind of him. This is an assault gun Germany made from a captured French tank. I'm happy to say my results with static grass were much better here than in the past. It looks vaguely like grass.

Got some painting time, yay...

I decided to go with a mostly yellow-green scheme for the Yithian. Lovecraft describes the body cone as "iridescent", and I was tempted to buy some sort of iridescent paint, but that would have probably looked like a My Little Pony version of the bizarre alien. DO NOT WANT.

A shadow out of time

Yithian
80 mm



Their actions, though harmless, horrified me even more than their appearance - for it is not wholesome to watch monstrous objects doing what one had known only human beings to do. These objects moved intelligently about the great rooms, getting books from the shelves and taking them to the great tables, or vice versa, and sometimes writing diligently with a peculiar rod gripped in the greenish head tentacles. The huge nippers were used in carrying books and in conversation-speech consisting of a kind of clicking and scraping. - H.P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

The "Great Race" of Yith explore the universe by swapping minds with other creatures existing in the future. The Yithian visits the future world inside the (unwilling) donor's body, while the donor's mind resides safely in the Yithian's body, a billion years in Earth's past. They are free to explore and travel there, but their memories of Yith are largely erased before their eventual return to their own time. The Yithians are locked in perpetual war with the Flying Polyps, eventually leading to the destruction of their civilization.

Tank, and canvas

Stuart Tank
15 mm scale



Could be titled "The Goose Thieves" :)

Hopefully there'll be more updates coming in the next while, and some non-WW2 minis, since I know it's sort of a weird kick to be on :) In the meantime, here's a canvas:

Untitled Green 2009
12" x 12"

Monkey Demon
20 mm



All done... no water reflections anymore since I'm not feeling very masochistic right now.

Reflections

So this doesn't look much like a reflection of fire on water, does it?



In fact, it looks more like sugar-tripping schoolchildren threw craft paints at a moving target as some kind of demented performance art project. Pity, that. Oh well, try, try again.

New projects

Monkey Demon
20 mm



This came all the way from Italy, so I'll try and paint it well. He kind of reminds me of the art from Hellboy, for some reason.

M3A1 Stuart tank
15 mm scale



An American tank of WW2. My brother, who loves these little tanks, got me this for Christmas. As usual I've added some extras to make it look lived-in. Soldiers in the field tend to accumulate useful things if they can, because the only thing worse than being shot at, is being shot at when you're cold, wet and hungry.