Fiama Work in Progress

I've recently been working on Fiama, from Cool Mini or Not, and have build a basic base that I'll later add Milliput to, prime, and paint. In the meantime, I'm working on painting her leather garments and focusing on her lighter skin highlights. I'm liking the fiery, golden hair. Her hair is sculpted like a flame, and almost beckons to be painted in a hot hue. I believe "Fiamma" in Italian means ""flame", which makes her name perfect :) I'm playing with the idea of giving her freckles too.

More to come soon!

 

 

Pokemon Go

I came, I saw, I caught them all.

Actually, no, not yet. I'm only Level 11 and everyone who has captured gyms is way beyond my level. However, I've found Pokemon Go is a great excuse to get out of the house, go on evening walks, and enjoy the community even more! I've learned to get out and enjoy life and not stay cooped up in my little bubble. It's been a great ice breaker! As someone who enjoyed the original Pokemon TV series, Nintendo Gameboy, and Pokemon Snap on the Nintendo 64– I'm fairly attached to the original 150 Pokemon.

I've enjoyed exploring the (somewhat limited) app, and while I know at least until we will eventually be able to battle each other and trade, I hope the server issues are fixed soon. I enjoy hunting down Pokestops and finding the weird art murals and statues around the city, like ripped zombie Jesus statue below (I went to Catholic school for 9 years and I've never seen a crucifix that creepy). However, I'd like to be able to go on hunts without the app crashing. We went on a hunt at a historical park and drove to different parts of the city, only to find our adventure wasn't as satisfying since the servers were down most of the day. Oh well, it still got us out of the house and gave us a reason to explore!

Other than that, I've started a new project, Fiama from Cool Mini or Not. Unfortunately, 15 minutes into painting her, I came down with a violent case of the hiccups. I had 7 seconds in between each jolting hiccup and I wet blended furiously in between. I'm working on a more rugged skintone and practicing blending all the way up to white. I blocked out her skin with a grey primer to make it easier to apply the skin base coats. I'm working with Reaper paints and it's nice to practice my wet blending, though I find the end result is a bit thicker than I'd like. Either way, I'm enjoying this painterly approach and I look forward to seeing how it evolves. I ended up having to quit painting after 30 minutes since the hiccups were so frustrating. I tried holding my breath, sitting with my head between my legs, calming breathing techniques– nothing helped. I finally got in bed and they subsided eventually once I truly calmed down.

Later, I worked on my newest anthropomorphic figure project– "Cheetah Girl" from Reaper Miniatures. I'm going to paint her as a mountain lion and begin with a dark base coat and work my way up to a light khaki– probably "Terran Khaki" from the MSP paint line. I'm going to give her yellow eyes and I haven't yet decided on her jerkin color and overall color scheme. The musculature on this miniature is fun to paint and I look forward to blending and using a light feathering brush stroke to hint at the idea of fur on the highlights. We'll see how she turns out!

Until next time– happy painting and good hunting in Pokemon Go!

New Reaper Paints & More

As many of you may know, I prefer matte paints. I like the Reaper paint series for the great variety of colors and, for the climate I'm in, they blend nicely on the wet palette I use. While I have plenty of paint, I get really excited about new releases and trying out new colors. In mid-June, Reaper released this batch of paint (see right image) and I bought a good portion of them. I'm most excited about colors like Catseye Green, Dungeon Slime, and Spectral Glow. As you can see, I bought a most of the brighter colors, since I have a lot of the neutrals and subdued colors already. I started out painting muted colors, I've found that I truly enjoy the brighter colors– they give lots of style and character to miniatures. As soon as I took them out of the package shipment, my cat was all over them. He fancies himself the keeper of paints and if I tried to touch them, he'd paw at my hand, as if he's saying "No! Mine!". I suppose he'll allow me to occasionally borrow from his collection to paint. What a benevolent fuzzy overlord :)

Other than that, I've been working on cleaning up my paint room. It's been awhile, and I'm finally unpacking boxes of miniatures I've hoarded with a good portion of my paycheck. I call them "investments" :) I now have a circular shelf dedicated to Kingdom Death miniatures. As I paint them, they'll sit in their places in front of the boxes. I now have quite a bit of art and I'm thinking about buying cheap IKEA frames to display them. Remember back when I said I wouldn't choose to display some of the art in my home? Well, I've changed my mind– my hobby room is my personal haven and I think it would be fun to create a collage of my favorite examples of Kingdom Death concept art.

As far as actual painting goes, I'm about done with little miss Twilight Knight. Clint & Yeji bought me this little gal as a surprise last Halloween and I'm happy to say she's almost done! It's been a miniature that's sat on my shelf in between commissions and I'm happy to have her almost finished– so close! It's the first time I'm experimenting with OSL, Object Source Lighting. I'm using orange and yellow glazes on the underside of her sword, legs, and base. I want to create a controlled glow rather than a bright glow that illuminates the entire miniature. I think the orange and the purple offsets each other and gives quite a bit of colorful interest to the miniature. While I especially enjoy painting dark olive skin, I especially love the "gyaru" look this little chibi has with the platinum blonde hair and the warm skin tone.

As far as gaming goes, I haven't played much Overwatch lately (which is good, it means I've been painting). However, I did indulge in the Steam Summer Sale and have been playing more Amnesia: Memories, the first otome game I've ever played. This time, I'm playing through the game's Diamond World, which is interesting, to say the least. Toma is intense, loving, and protective– which is endearing until it takes a disturbingly dark turn. I've gotten two bad endings and a normal ending in the subsequent playthroughs of the same world, and I can't seem to land on the "Good Ending" (not that there truly is one). Still, I'm a completionist when it comes to video games, and I'll need to achieve that before I can move on.

And speaking of moving on, it's time to paint and I think I'll see if there's room in tonight's Hobby Hangout that started a few minutes ago. This is a rare occasion for me that I'm able to paint and join a Google Hang. See you around!