There has never been a time without unicorns

Unicorn
28 mm scale

A long time ago when the earth was green,
And there was more kinds of animals than you've ever seen,
They'd run around free while the earth was being born,
But the loveliest of them all was the Unicorn.

This lovely unicorn was one of the offerings in Bears Head miniatures' last kickstarter, and I knew I had to have one.  I love its real feeling of bulk and power; it's not a gracile, vulnerable
"The Last Unicorn" style creature but a lot more like a war horse.

To me the unicorn represents hope...  I didn't know how thematic that'd be when I ordered it late last year... sure do now.

I recently picked up a bottle of metallic medium and lightly applied that to the unicorn's back, mane and tail to give it a bit of enchanted sparkle.  It didn't really work that well for photos, but in person it definitely adds something extra :)  I'm also pretty happy with this nature base.  It had some growing pains as I had to scrape off a really bad static grass attempt, but the second try with a mixture of flock, foam foliage, and Italian seasoning along with some Gamers Grass clumps worked a lot better.

(Idyllic setting courtesy of the Oxfam Canada calendar)

The magic of nature

Forest witch and her familiars

28 mm

Colors swirl in spiral skies
The trees stare back with willful eyes
The night doesn't frighten me
Cast a stone cast an eye
Water mirrors never lie
The earth is firm beneath your feet

This Bears Head figure took a while to grow on me once I had it in hand - I liked it, but didn't know exactly what to do with it. Luckily, I'd also bought an assortment of Philip Hynes' amazing animal figures, including this adorable little rabbit and squirrel!

 

I won't lie, I was watching a lot of "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" while painting this, but its vision of witches who by and large behave like Christians and just add "Satanic" in front of everything ("Satanic blessing", "dark baptism"... "evil church camp?") obviously didn't move me so much. So here she is, a crone in touch with nature and the living things of the deep woods. She may have her own morality, but I don't think she's hosting any Dark Baptisms or roasting any babies...

"You're outnumbered, witch!"
"You think death has any power here?  In my world, surrounded by life?

Happy little trees
28 mm scale

I also made my first trees! I used the basic method from this video (including homemade clump foliage), but there are lots of other good foliage and tree tutorials out there.  They're a bit sparse, but I think I achieved a somewhat natural look.

Definitely little.  Perhaps happy.

"I hope that's not releasing some kind of fumes" - my wife

Return of the Shoggoth Masters

Elder Thing
28 mm scale

Unlike many of H. P. Lovecraft's horrors, the Elder Things were not supernatural or truly malicious in any way.  They were aliens who traveled to earth in the Cambrian era, founding a strange civilization and bio-engineering the dreaded Shoggoths as their servants.  Though hinted at in various eldritch volumes of the past, their existence was only truly discovered by Antarctic explorers from Miskatonic University in the 1930s, precipitating the loss of most of the expedition.

This alien from H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness is actually a figure I sculpted myself about 5 years ago... I primed it and everything, but I think what stalled me then was that I couldn't decide on a reasonable colour scheme.  If you look at fan art of Elder Things online, people seem to go with everything from "grim grey" to "tropical parrot with tentacles".  I finally decided to go with a bit of colour, but I tried to keep it muted or a bit desaturated... I don't think Elder Things are specifically "evil", but I didn't want it looking goofy either.

I made this piece out of greenstuff over a wooden bead and wire; the results were pretty detailed, but when I revisited it it was obvious the wings are not nearly as robust as they should be... one had broken off.  It definitely wouldn't do well as a gaming figure.  I think that if I made it today I'd also use a very different wing design, this one is a little too simple/static.  Oh well.  I still like that weird tool it's carrying.

He didn't remotely recognize the species, but he
figured politeness couldn't hurt.

Exobiology Major

First Contact

15mm scale

Dr. Phan watched in amazement as the roiling mass of spheroids churned this way and that, finally elevating itself to over two meters off the ground.  The individual globules seemed to grow and shrink smoothly, matter flowing between them in a faintly discernible phosphorescent process.  As she peered at the entity, it slowly arched forward, several large spheres taking up position an arm's length from her faceplate. Particles seemed to travel through its body, coalescing in a constellation of bright spots in the sphere closest to her. "Hello," she said, "Who are you?"

This piece was a "quick" (2 days) response to a friend; I asked for a prompt for my next piece and she offered "first interplanetary meeting".  The astronaut figure is from Ground Zero Games, the alien is my own design. I tried to come up with a truly unique concept for an intelligent alien: a sort of syncytial giant slime-mold-like entity that's not formless, but doesn't have a fixed skeleton or appendages either.  I wanted to hint at sensory structures that float free in the body and are recruited to whatever part is proximal to the object or direction of interest. 

On a technical level, the alien is just a collection of balls of greenstuff, stuck together as haphazardly as possible.  The blue life form on the ground is a mixture of blue paint, acrylic gel medium, and sand.  The photo backdrop was hastily painted today, I've never done that before!

Watcher of the sandy sea

Desert dweller and solar droid

15 mm

Perhaps they're a roamer, seeking salvage or hidden wisdom in the deep desert.  A moisture farmer gleaning a living selling water pulled from the dry air.  Or a reclusive hermit, anxious to remain alone.  Whoever they are, along with their trusty but worn droid, repaired and rebuilt a dozen times, they probably know the ways of the desert as well as anyone ever has.

I've had these figures kicking around for a while... the human is from Alternative Armies HOF sci-fi range while the droid is from Ground Zero Games.  They're both converted a bit; I added the respirator pack and the antenna to the human (a definite improvement to a fairly generic sculpt!), the solar array to the droid. The human's attire is inspired by real life desert people - the Berbers of North Africa.  The colour coordination with the droid's solar array was unintentional, but looks pretty good.

"Sss-sss-sss, how are things huuuuman? All quiet out here?"
"You're the first visitors in weeks. Will you share water?"
"Sss... it would be an honour."

Indigenous spirit of greed

Wendigo

28mm scale

Blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'...
But I'm goin' hungry

Even if this wendigo figure from Bears Head Miniatures has more in common with recent horror movie depictions than traditional Anishnaabe legends, it's still a terrifying beast. It lurches through the snow, ravenous mouth forever hungry, its distinctly human forelimbs betraying its origins as an utterly corrupted soul.

In addition to reinforcing taboos against cannibalism, it's not hard to understand why a society living on the land, who relied on each other's cooperation every day, would believe that greed and selfishness could literally make you a monster.  The wendigo can also be understood as a symbol for rapacious acquisitiveness that throws an individual out of harmony with their community and environment... probably a metaphor worth paying attention to in our time.

On a technical note, I based this figure on a craft plywood disc covered in Fimo.  It's metal so I was able to sculpt the stump and rocks, and bake it, figure and all, before adding the skull and a stick as a taller tree trunk.  I used Golden acrylic gel medium mixed with bluish-white paint, sprinkled with baking soda when still wet, as the snow. Hopefully this will avoid it yellowing in the future.

A more traditional depiction of the wendigo,

by Ojibwe artist Norval Morrisseau

Nec-romance on the Nile

Mummy Couple

28 mm

My boyfriend's back

and you're gonna be in trouble

I recently picked up this charming pair of mummies from Bears Head Miniatures' latest Kickstarter.  I've enjoyed painting mummies in the past; they're usually a quick job because it's hard to fuss over something that's basically a bundle of leathery skin and brittle rags.  That said, I really like these lurching, malevolent sculpts, so make them a bit special I gave them some hieroglyphic bases:

I'll admit, I don't think these say anything in particular, I just picked some symbols that weren't too hard to make. The one on the right does contain part of the cartouche of Thutmose III, so perhaps that's who the male here is (prior to his final rest in the Cairo Museum)...

Exploring a newly-unearthed tomb, Lord Smedley-Smythe
was sure the rustling he heard was just the wind...

Arashikage Clan ninja brothers

Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow
15mm

The stars are burning bright 
like some mystery uncovered
I'll keep moving through the dark
with you in my heart
My blood brother

Working on the somewhat lacklustre ninjas featured in my last post gave me a few pretty decent ideas for follow-up projects. This is definitely the best of the lot.

Like a lot of people my age, I had a substantial collection of GI Joe toys as the child in the 80s. And these were by far the coolest. These two mysterious characters, one Joe and one Cobra, were created to tie in with the contemporary ninja craze. I was never familiar with a lot of the extensive background presented in the comic books, but the Coles' Notes version is that Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were both adopted and trained by a clan of ninjas called the Arashikage. Storm Shadow was implicated in their master's murder and fled, joining Cobra, while Snake Eyes was recruited by GI Joe.

Storm Shadow's archery skill is a big part of his character so I was lucky the Rebel minis bow ninja is one of the best sculpts; I just added an arrow.  Snake Eyes is a conversion of a figure that I've painted before, I just gave him a sword and his signature mask and Uzi SMG.

And thanks to Doctor Merkury for always providing so, so much fantastic 80's toy theme inspiration :)

"I must complete Cobra's mission,
Snake Eyes.  Don't make me do this..."

Small Shadow Warriors

Ninjas and Torii Gate
15 mm scale

I've had a bunch of these Rebel Miniatures ninjas kicking around for ages; I was honestly disappointed when I got them.  Some dicey sculpts, but mainly, their hands are AWFUL, literally like Easter hams stuck on the ends of their arms.  Anyway I found these ones half-painted the other day, and decided to finish them up.  I may tackle some of the others at some point, the archers and naginatas aren't too bad.

In classic wag-the-dog fashion, I also decided to make a small terrain piece to go with them: a Torii gate, traditional boundary of sacred space at a Shinto shrine and iconic Japanese scenery item.  It's made of wooden odds and ends from my bitz box.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out!

"Ninjas! At a temple too, shameful! Well, tanuki, it looks like you'll have
to do that thing with your magic testicles."

Starry starry night

Vincent Van Gogh
28 mm

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

When I saw that Philip Hynes of Bears Head Miniatures had sculpted a Vincent van Gogh figure, I was so excited. Van Gogh is one of those artists who everybody has heard of, but who can never be overexposed or uninteresting. He was somebody who had a passion and a vast talent for art, but who was sadly so plagued by mental illness that he didn't last. Still, in his short life he painted over 900 canvases!

The particular painting I've depicted here is one of a series of four sunflower still lifes he did while working in Arles, France around 1888. The most famous of these hangs in the National Gallery in London, but there were three others. One is in a Belgian gallery and another was destroyed in Japan during WWII. This one has long been in a private collection and is not publicly displayed.

Something I was not aware of is that probably the only reason Van Gogh didn't slip into obscurity in death was that his brother's widow, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, inherited much of his work and devoted herself to raising its profile - and value - through an artful campaign of gallery showings and publicity. Without her, we'd never have enjoyed so many brilliant paintings, or a rather good episode of "Doctor Who".

"You should sign it 'For Amy' or something, just to confuse the art historians."

Sorcerous Spitfire

"Zeppelin Down"
Mixed scale

Beneath the starlight of the heavens
Unlikely heroes in the skies
Witches to attack, witches coming back...
As they appear on the horizon
The wind will whisper when the night witches come

1915, the Great War... England watches the skies in fear of bombing raids from the Kaiser's mighty Zeppelin force, striking with impunity from above the clouds. An ultra-secret arm of the War Office makes contact with a terrifying and reclusive group of mythical inhabitants of the British Isles. Unmoved by appeals to patriotism, they are however outraged  at the technological monstrosities raining destruction on "their" countryside, and respond accordingly...

I've toyed with the idea of using forced perspective in a miniature piece for ages, but never found a good subject.  The inspiration for this probably goes back to a similar composition I once saw on CoolMiniOrNot, of a 28mm Orc Stormboy launching off of an Epic vehicle "far" below. But this vignette ended up more like some things seen in traditional military modeling. And it has four different "scales" in it, which I'll admit was an ambitious first try.

While I'm hardly ashamed of my painting chops, I'll definitely admit my traditional modelmaking skills are pretty... rusty, in as much as I ever had them.  This project was a definite learning exercise: I had to completely redo the Zeppelin after a disastrous attempt to shade the underside, and getting the base to look remotely plausible took a lot of work.  On the upside, the clouds came out exactly the way I wanted them! And a near-monochrome palette with strong contrast really gave the witch a sinister look.

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”

What's that WHEEKing sound?

Mysterious Wasteland Character (Guinea Pig Mimic)
28mm

Crimson and clover
over and over...

As you sift the rubble for anything useful to add to your gear or trade for bottlecaps in town, you hear a sound.  Scrambling for a hiding spot, you see an odd figure approaching. Masked and shrouded, it's humanoid enough at first glance, but its movement is an odd combination of shuffling and lurching, with legs hidden under a long overcoat.  And you think you hear squeaking...

This is certainly one of the strangest and most unique figures I've ever seen, let alone painted!  Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games has a well-known obsession with guinea pigs, and this figure is clearly the oddball product of that.  I love it.