Saturday, October 19, 2019

Bones Raptors part 2

I decided that the brown wasn't flashy enough for the raptors. I wanted something brighter, more interesting looking... so I added color! And took some obvious inspiration from Jurassic World.



I wasn't feeling too worried about trying to make them look like reap raptors, because what would that even look like? We don't actually know. And since these are very much gaming pieces, I don't really care that they don't match each other.



And since I was happy with that, it was time to flock the bases.



I still want to add some tall grass or something, but... Not sure what. They're good enough at this point though that I'm gonna call them done.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Stonehell: Hoot-enanny

Session 109 was played on 9/28

Joho, Mystic 5 (Chris)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief 5 (Josh)
Kili, Cleric of Cthulhu 5 (Matt)

Gathering their supplies the troublesome trio heads to the side dungeon alone. Making their way through the cleared halls, down to the 8th level, they return to the bear’s cave. The bear grunts at them, but looks generally disinterested in getting up out of its corner. The party decides to try to draw it out to let Borumar get behind it. The plan worked, but the bear rounded on Borumar, mauling him before Kili and Joho could stop it. Kili applied some much needed healing magic, and then the party moved deeper into the caves.

They next came to a large, still, dark pond. Skirting away from it, making sure not to disturb the water, they continued on. Their torchlight caught a hulking form coming toward them. It’s massive bulk quickly came into view, the head of a massive owl on a great bear’s body. With an angry hoot, it charged in mauling Borumar. Kili slams hard into the beast’s bulk, knocking it off of Borumar and down to the ground. Behind it reared up a second owlbear that tore into Joho and Kili before being dispatched.

Taking a few seconds to catch their breaths they spy what little remains of the beasts most recent meal, including the backpack of the poor explorer. Just as they bend down to examine the bag, a third owlbear comes charging out of the darkness plowing into the party. They again manage to down their foe, but all were hurting. Grabbing the bag, the party flees the dungeon.

Gains: 4,000sp
Kills: Cave bear, 3 owlbears
Losses:

Monday, October 7, 2019

Drawlloween 2019 part 1

I decided to do the drawlloween challenge again this year. There are a couple of different prompt lists. I started with this one...



And decided to swap in some of the ones from this list.



Here's the first batch!













Thursday, October 3, 2019

Bones Raptors part 1

After finishing up the wolves from my last post, I wanted to work on something else, and settled on these raptors, the Bones Black Owlbear, and then stumbled on the Bloodwolf. Since I'd just painted a bunch of other big wolves, I figured I'd add him to the mix too. But first, the raptors. No link to the raptors as they're not available yet.

I checked out a bunch of pictures from Jurassic Park/World before getting started. Not sure how much that impacted how I ended up painting them, but I was keeping them in mind. I also looked at a bunch of reptile pics. They'd have some impact a bit later.



After the usual hot water & dish soap scrub, I glued them onto Reaper's 60mm oval bases.

Then they were given a coat of Reaper's Brown liner, mixed with a bit of flow improver and clear coat. Then it was time to pick a base color. I first picked grass green, but that was way too bright. Then I tried Wilderness green, but that ended up too bright also. I then tried Troll Hide, and liked that a whole lot better. In the picture below, the Wilderness green is on the left, troll hide on the right.



Once settled, I painted the rest with Troll Hide, then added in a drop of Leather brown, and just splotched it on the skin. I then painted the eyes with NMM Gold Base, and used Pure Black for the eyes. The teeth were painted with Bone, and the mouths were painted with Redstone.



I then used wood glue to attach the base layer of coffee grounds for texture.



Then I went back and used the leather brown to add some markings to a few of them. Not sure how much I like it yet. We'll see.

More to come!

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Howling good time: Bones Wolves

In Curse of Strahd, we stumbled into a pack of dire wolves at the end of one session... so of course I had to immediately paint some up. Digging through my collection of minis I came up with 3 useful figures from the Bones line. The Winter Wolf, The Warg, and the Death Dog.

After the usual hot water and dish soap scrub with a toothbrush I glued them to 2" round reaper bases, and then gave them a quick coat of Reaper Brown Liner cut with a bit of flow improver, and clear coat.



After the liner layer, I painted their fur with Russet Brown mixed with a tiny bit of Brown Liner, and Dirty Bone and a tiny bit of Russet Brown for their undersides. Their teeth were also painted with Dirty Bone, followed by Linen White, then I cleaned up around the mouth with Pure Black, also hitting their noses and around the eyes.



I used NMM Gold for their eyes. Their fur was dry brushed with Russet Brown, then added in NMM Gold for successive highlights. The bases were then coated in wood glue, and covered with dry coffee grounds for depth and texture.



Once the glue dried, I then covered the bases with my mix of flock, as well as some assorted ground cover to make it look less uniform.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

September in Review

Yet another busy month at the tower. Took an unexpected vacation, spent some time babysitting my niece, and even got in some reading time.

Gaming
There was only one session of Stonehell this month. The party, now a little short handed, continues to explore the side delve.

Curse of Strahd has us out of the Weaver’s dream realm, and back into Barovia itself. Finally moving the storyline forward. *FINALLY*

Miniatures
I did a little work on some of the minis I brought back from ReaperCon, but the small project I actually finished was painting and basing 4 big wolf creatures. We needed them for the Curse of Strahd game, so I pulled out the big wolves I had, which included the 2 headed wolf, a dire wolf, warg, and the bloodwolf. Blog post on them later this week...

I also got started on the Bones 4 Raptors, and the Bones Black Owlbear mini. Should finish those off soon.

Media
Movies/TV Watched

Brooklyn 99 - almost caught up
Dark Matters - onto season 2
Jessica Jones - started season 3

Books Read

Alexander Kent’s
Richard Bolitho — Midshipman (Richard Bolitho, #1)
Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger (Richard Bolitho, #2)
Band of Brothers (Richard Bolitho, #3)

Goals
CPA study - taking the test in November
Finish the raptors and owlbear
Participate in Inktober/Drawlloween