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Beware the Jabberhorde, my son

When i re-started my comic project with 1991, i intended to stop painting miniatures. But with all the miniatures i've been painting i've developed some new techniques, and i wanted to try one of them on some older minis that i have. In addition to the Bones minis that i got from the Kickstarter, i have pile of very basic plastic miniatures from an old game. Just some generic skeletons, orcs, and one-eyed lizard men. I've already painted a lot of them and at this point they are kind of boring to do, so i force myself to do a couple every so often. But this time i thought it would be interesting to try that new technique. So i took three skeletons and painted them black, and then drybrushed them. I did a white one and also just for a fun a red one and a gold one. And i really like how they came out.

So with that, i did the same thing with a lizard man, painting him black and then using a hideous florescent green that was in my pack of paints but which i never thought i'd use with swords & sorcery miniatures. But dry-brushed on top of the black, it came out really well.

So then i decided to go a step further and, instead of base-coating in black, trying a dark red. I thought i could get some interesting shading with that. So i did that with an orc and a lizard man. But it didn't work out at all. The drybrushed paint ended up being barely visible until i used a color that was way too light, and i didn't like how that looked. So i ended up undoing the dry brushing and just painting them the traditional way.

But while i was painting them, i wound up spilling a lot of the red paint. Luckily it all landed on my palette. I wasn't going to get it back in the paint jar, but i could use it all right away and not let it go to waste. So i went to the Bones box, looking for a large figure that wanted to be base coated in red. I found the jabberwocky. I originally intended to "research" (i.e. google) and see if the jabberwocky is traditionally a certain color, but with the red paint sitting there i decided red would be fine. Luckily, red turns out to be a good choice.

One problem with the jabberwocky, like with a lot of the Bones, is that he's all flimsy and unstable. Normally i identify when that's a problem ahead of time, and (*sigh*) put the figure in boiling water, pose it so that it will stand, and then put it in a bowl of ice to stabilize it in that new position. But since my paint was drying up i didn't have time to do any of that. So after i painted him, he just kept falling over. I left some stuff laying on him over night, hoping that would bend him in a better position, but no dice. So i ended up microwaving him in 15 second intervals until he was malleable (but before he melted/exploded). Then i positioned him and stuck him in the freezer. Madness, but it seems to have worked. He's still kind of wobbly but he doesn't fall unless you bang on the table pretty hard.

By fnord12 | September 16, 2015, 4:07 PM | D&D


Comments

I'm colorblind, and it's kinda funny to see all this talk about red paint when to me it looks like a sickly dark brown.

You may be color blind but i'm color illiterate. To me there are just the 8 colors in a pack of Crayola crayons and that's it. It is a very dark red, and there could be some brown in it. It's called "Gory Red" according to the jar.

The link by this sentence - " Luckily, red turns out to be a good choice." doesn't seem to work.

It works for me but it is a weird URL. How about this?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076221/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

That link worked. Thanks.

Fnord, wonderful work on the Jabberwocky! Little concerned that you had to microwave it though -- not sure how safe that would be in terms of the possibility of gaseous chemical waste being produced from heating the plastic. Some chemicals in their gaseous state have no odor or color in them, so it might be best to err on the side of caution in the future. Sorry if I sound like a worried parent here -- just want people to be healthy and safe.

Aaron, i only microwave it for 20 minutes a day and i make sure to always do it in a sealed room so none of the fumes can escape. So far aside from dizzy spells and headaches, i haven't noticed any ill effects. ;-)

No, you're right, but as i mentioned it was an unusual circumstance because of the spilled paint. Normally i'm able to adjust the figures beforehand if they are wobbly. Of course Min doesn't like me using our pots for that purpose either.

I figured you'd be careful, but I can appreciate Min's concern about the pots as well.

Yeah, wobbly figures can be a pain. I just try to glue them to larger, heavier bases in order to make them stand, by buying steel discs at the local hardware store. Then I put sculpting putty on the base, for really basic texture. After the putty dries and you paint the base, it looks as if it came with the mini, in most cases.

Reference from SuperMegaMonkey

So i while back i did this, and now they've arrived. Four months late but as far as Kickstarters go that's nothing. Ummm, painters wanted? I'm considering using them unpainted to start with so that they don't just sit in...    Read More: What have i gotten myself into?

Reference from SuperMegaMonkey

For most, i used the technique i stumbled upon at the end of my last painting session, base-coating in black and then applying the color with drybrush.    Read More: Vaguely Egyptian Horde

Reference from SuperMegaMonkey

This was going to just be the grey horde, because while painting the last batch i spilled a lot of grey paint and had to quickly grab a bunch of miniatures to base coat (again). And that worked out...    Read More: Formerly Grey Horde