My First Hero Crate

My sister bought me a three month subscription to Hero Crate for Christmas. Surprisingly, I'd never heard of it before. Basically, Hero Crate is a monthly bundle of themed stuff centered around a mystery geeky icon– and you don't know what the theme will be until your crate arrives! Each box has an "Epic Shirt" and mystery items, which could be anything from buttons, stickers, mugs, action figures, comic books, etc. I love it! Here are a few examples of previous Hero Crates. While I'm not a fan of every themed hero (I think I'm the only one who doesn't like The Hulk), I love collecting stuff and hey, who doesn't love an awesome T-shirt, right? The January box is Hellboy-themed and came with a shirt, two comics, and a pack of 3 action figures:

Star Wars Legos

The fact that I like to collect geeky things is common knowledge in my family. While they're supportive of my hobbies, I know they think I'm downright weird sometimes. The geekiest thing anyone in my family owns is my dad's Collector's Edition boxed set of the original Star Wars Trilogy in VHS. Yep, VHS– which dates it back to the 80s. That being said, my sister finding Hero Crate is pretty awesome– especially since my sister and I are fairly opposite. She usually steps out the door with perfect hair and makeup with stylishly manicured nails wearing something from Nordstrom. I step out in cut off sweatpants and a Dr. Who shirt I bought on Teefury.com. In fact, the other week we were in a Lego store. Heads are turning in my sister's direction and she looks uncomfortable but is politely patient. I pick out a Star Wars X-Wing and a Tie Fighter kit and ask, "Which one should I get?" and she shrugs and says, "Um, I dunno. They're both cool I guess". So I bought both. I think this is a common problem with me– when faced with a decision, especially when choosing between miniatures, I'm like the little girl in the "Why Not Both?" meme. That would explain where all my money goes. 

Speaking of monetary investments, it's about time I started one of the Darksword Kickstarter miniatures. While I'll be finishing my experiment with gold NMM, I'd like to choose one to paint. I'll narrow it down in the next two days and do a #SurveySaturday on my @Mocha_Minis account in the morning before I start painting. Sometimes, I just need more opinions– especially when I've been staring at my choices for far too long! Ah, decisions, decisions.

Gold Non Metallic Metal

My Restart Day was a success– I painted for about 8 total hours this weekend! I made some great progress in prepping some new miniatures as well as tackling one of the biggest challenges that's plagued me for awhile: Gold Non-Metallic Metal (aka "NMM"). I've been experimenting with both True Metallic Metals in bronze & silver (Ursula and Lord Ironraven respectively). However, I've been dabbling very little with Non-Metallic Metals (in fact, my only real NMM attempt has been Gus's monochrome chains) so this weekend I attempted to paint a rich gold on the Janna the Wanderer Reaper Miniature. 

At first, I re-watched the NMM chapter Darksword's "Masterworks Miniatures Painting with Jessica Rich". I love Jessica's painting style and I've had the pleasure of meeting her in person and taking two of her classes at ReaperCon. She's an incredibly talented painter, a wonderful teacher, and a very nice person. While I don't own any of her go-to paint colors for gold (Terra Nova Tundra, anyone?), I attempted to find something similar. However, my color theory could use some work! At first, I made the mistake of thinking "Gold = Yellow". Well, yes and no. I chose a bright punch-you-in-the-face-yellow that didn't mix well with any of the browns that I used to darken it. I thought, "It's too yellow. It needs to be warmer and more orange" so I added a rusty brown. Nope, even worse. Now the metal just looked like an unnatural burnt orange. Finally I scrapped that idea, took a break, and went back to the drawing board. I looked up a few examples of gold and decided I wanted something with a green/brown tinge to it rather than something with a yellow/red rust color. After that, I landed on the right combination– just a small touch of yellow along with a yellowy-brown and an off-white for the highlights. I'm not saying it's the perfect combination, but it worked well enough for me for this first gold NMM attempt. I'll be sure to experiment with other colors– including the combination Jessica suggests for the rich, warm gold color she paints so well! Here was my original inspiration: 

Deathpact Angel painted by Jason Chan

Jason Chan has created some truly beautiful art for Magic The Gathering. I love this image of the Deathpact Angel– it's a wonderful example of a muted gold. While I chose to bump up the gold on my miniature with a bit more yellow, this image helped me identify where the light would fall on a metal bodice. I'd love to paint one of the Darksword winged miniatures I have in this muted gold paired with dark grey/purple wings. Without further ado, here's some Work-In-Progress pictures of Janna and my first attempt at gold non-metallic metals:

BASE COATS + SKIN + LINING

GOLD NMM: Work In pRogress

Right now, she's basically only skin color, outlines, and gold NMM. There's plenty of work left to do on her, but she's off to a great start! 

Restart Day

In January, I lost my momentum. I've been sick on-and-off since the last week of December and I'm finally feeling better. At first, I was ill with a really bad virus that had me coughing and choking for two weeks and then suffered through a sinus infection. The last three weeks have been cold and rainy and I've been traveling weekly in my new job that's based in another city– temporary but still taxing. I painted only once or twice during that time and I admit, I've fallen behind on prompt blog posts. I became a bit depressed and I just wasn't excited about anything I was painting. I left my desk messy and uninviting. I've spent the last few weekends curled up on the couch & binge-watched 3-4 complete series of anime. And today, the sun came out– both literally & figuratively. Today is my Restart Day.

What's a Restart Day? It's basically my time to shed my negative thinking and focus on my own happiness. These days start with me sipping a cup of hot coffee outside in the morning sunshine while I enjoy the peace & quiet. I like to set my intentions for the day so I don't get distracted or fall victim to laziness. Today, I've committed to cleaning my desk and making it once again an inviting place where I want to spend time. I just signed up for Spotify so I'll have no shortage of good music to listen to. I lit a clean-smelling aromatherapy candle (one of my favorite painting rituals) and I'm going to start a new miniature today. One thing I've noticed is that when I'm not excited about painting, it means I need to try something new. Eventually, I'll come back around and finish the miniature that I temporarily put aside– though sometimes it takes longer (like Ursula who sat on the "Shelf of Shame" for two years before having her metal armor painted). 

I expect I'll soon have some "after" pictures to show– both of my clean desk and my new miniature project!

Before

After