Painting progress!

I have a dozen or so figures on the paint table, a rebasing project underway, and scenery making supplies piling up. With just a little over a month and half of the year remaining, I find myself contemplating how much I might get done before the new year. It doesn't matter of course, but I like those little personal challenges from time to time.

First up, the most recent figure in progress, a proof of concept paint job for a lizard warrior from the SCS Direct "Fantasy Creatures: Series 2" set.

The base and the weapon need painting still but otherwise they are done. I could not be happier with how it has turned out. The color scheme is based on a composite of many marine iguana pictures. Nature always has the best ideas about coloration. I have five more to  paint on hand - need to find seven more for the unit. They are just one of the tribes in the coalition of Venusian lizard folk.

One of their likely opponents will be the French Foreign Legion. My French have more than doubled their numbers, although one is already a casualty of a serious fall  (and thus not pictured) which chipped the paint/Mod Podge/varnish coverings!

That officer waves their hand around rather freely. Perhaps as a subtle jab to the famed Captain Danjou?

I have to touch up that one as mentioned, and then complete six more - three for this unit and three to man the Gatling.

B hooked me up with a HaT 1/32 Carthaginian elephant. I've made a few modifications with some air dry Sculpey clay.

This was taken early on in the sanding process.Once i was done, I filled in some gaps/dips with super glue and smoothed transitions with Mod Podge.

Primed and ready for next steps.

The elephant will be cloaked and bearing at least one Mythos symbol on its trunk. Elephant cultists. Literally. 

Venusian elephants have felt no compulsion to hide their intelligence from humans, who can barely comprehend the depths of emotional and intellectual ability they possess. They also have dabbled with the occult a little too freely and it has not left them unchanged.

Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles counts beasts as two units (and each side has 5-6 units plus a commander), so I probably won't ordinarily field more than one, unless I hamstring it and make it the commander.

Next up, another concept test and another attempt at the red-figure pottery inspired paint scheme. The color, if you look at examples of Greek red-figure pottery, isn't really red, but more orange. So:

3 seconds of research gave me a shield design i could reproduce. The symbol is that of Tanit - a goddess worshiped by, among others, the Carthaginians. I've dubbed my Venusian Carthaginians Tanitians in her honor.

OK. I may have gone too far to the orange but I love orange (My first car was an orange 1972 Chevy Chevelle with a white vinyl top and interior, a 350 V8 under the hood, and a "Did you hug your mom today?" bumper sticker. That was a lot of car for 16 year old me. My bedroom color when I was 6 or so until 15 was burnt orange.) 

This shade is called 'Pumpkin' and is from FolkArt. It has better coverage than 'Lava Orange" from Reaper that I had posted previously. I like the color a lot - although it's still not exactly what I had in mind. Also not sure how they will look when placed alongside their Mythos corrupted elephant allies. 

The black lining was done by a drunk monkey holding the brush in its mouth.

It took almost an hour to complete - despite only being two colors, because the orange paint coverage, though better, is not great and fixing black line errors is painful. I *may* acquire some Micron pens with .5 mm and 1mm tips - I have .25mm and while they worked for quickly lining the figure, they were not impactful the way I like black lines to be.

In the end, I may relegate this idea to "interesting for a one off figure" and just paint the flesh Lava or Pumpkin and the clothes and weapons more normally, but I let go of ideas like a bulldog willingly lets go of a soup bone.

The rebasing project pertains to my medieval collection - primary Deetails figures. I decided I wanted the units to have smaller foot prints - currently they are based on 4" squares for One Hour Wargames. I also figured that if I based them individually, they could fight my Carthaginians/Tanitians and Romans (who still need a name), or even lizard folk. 

Shades of Hyboria anyone?

If you look closely, you'll see one fellow has a rather excessive terra cotta plume. I made it from air dry clay to replace the one that was missing. It still needs paint. Clearly.

For One Hour Wargames, I can just put the foot on sabots and the horse side by side.

Finally, more scenery/terrain work is happening. I took home quite a haul of unnaturally colored lichen and plastic plants from the craft and dollar store this weekend. However, it's the paper-made ones that make me happiest:

You've seen the tree before. The bushy plant is new.

I'll post a tutorial of sorts for these shortly as I have about a dozen or so of each plant type to make!