Crazy WIP Saturday

Lately, finding time during the week to paint miniatures has been tough.  I've been counting down the minutes until today all week so I could spend some time working on the plethora of models sitting on my workbench. Cthulu isn't that fun to paint, but hes easy, so last night I found myself wanting to do something else for a few hours.  Spent some time trying some new blending techniques for skin on my Dwarf Dragon Slayer model (the new one - which I love).  I got it through all of the stages and then completely destroyed the paint job trying to paint a tattoo...  Only having a couple hours to work last night, I put down my brush pretty frustrated, sure that I would have to start over with a new model.  But I learned.  

Today, I decided to go ahead and re-basecoat his skin so that I could just practice.  I have to say, I'm glad I did.  The colors for the skin are pretty simple - Bugmans Flesh, Cadian Fleshtone, and Kislev flesh, which I mixed with White for the last few layers, and then pure white.  I used blending and glazing techniques to shade and highlight the model and then glazed it very subtly with Bugman's flesh.  I also painted his hair, which I used the Reaper Master Triad for red hair (Red Shadow - with a touch of Rhinox hide for the darkest shadow, Carrot Top Red, and Red Highlight, plus white to mix and use as a final pure highlight).  Finally, right before jumping on to post before I head out to work for a bit, I painted up the stone on his base (I still have to paint the gold trim and other details.  I think this part still needs some work, but I'm liking the effects.  Its a bit difficult because of the miniature's pose - hard to tell where to highlight and where to put a shadow.  Here are the current WIP pics: 

I did also get a chance to work on some other things on my table.  For Cthulu, since I had broken out the airbrush, I started to work on the base, especially the stone with the runic etching on it.  I still have quite a bit to do with it, but its a start.  

The Wreck-Age Capybara Herder also got some more attention today.  They are fun, but I'm not used to (and still need to work on) painting fur.  Its one of those things that I find really hard to make look realistic - but a lot depends on figuring out which technique is best to use for the type of sculpt.  For these, I drybrushed a few colors and then used a couple washes and glazes to tone down the drybrush look.  Once I get some details picked out, I think they'll start to look much better.  I'm still trying to figure out what kind of color scheme to use on the herder.  

And... finally, I put some primer and zenithal lighting down on my newest project.  I finally decided on Pandora and her crew to start with in malifaux.  Can't wait to start painting these miniatures.  I have some resin bases coming in the mail from Dragonforge and the new Teddy miniature on the way (super-pumped about that one).  Have some great ideas for painting these, so hope to put those ideas to work soon, so I can get to playing the game.  I'll leave you with a pic of them.  Thanks for reading and happy painting!