The Genie is Out of the Bottle.

More minis from the box of shame.

This time a trader with his camel train and somen beastmen to waylay him.

I also made some table funishings and a table and painted some large pots for my palace tiles.

And did a little conversion, a Crom's Anvil bodyguard became a Genie.

The lamp is a bit oversized, but I can reason that away due to the magical effects of the genie emerging from the lamp so that's O.K.😉

I ordered a whole bunch of beads over on Ali Express to make wall decorations and colums and maybe even some more small knicknacks for the palace tiles but they'll take a while to arrive so that project may have to wait a bit.

No worries, I have plenty of orther things to keep me busy.

Cheers,

Stroezie. 

 

Yasmina's Secret.

Surely such a mighty warrior as you need not fear a soft female such as me.

Why don't you join me on the pillows and perhaps we can find a more pleasurable way to settle our differences.

Then when our brave hero's back is turned...

 

When I first saw the Hatun Yasmina figure it immediately made me think of the 5e D&D artwork for the Lamia. I still had some lion miniatures sticking in the leadpile so I decided to order two Yasmina's and see if I couldn't make something happen.

The terrain was a test to see if I could make a set of tiles and scatter that better represents the kind of opulent palace that conan likes to sneak into in search of oppertunities😇

I had fun making them so you may expect to see more like these in the future.

Cheers,

Stroezie.

Black Reavers.

Well, I just ordered a bunch of stuff from Croms Anvil, so I decided to open up the Box of Shame and see if I could maybe finish some minis I had already started before the new shinies arrived.

Here's the first group 

I'm thinking of using these as Conan (Crom's Anvil), Belit (Battle Valor) and her Black Reavers (Blue Moon).

More to come soon...          ...maybe😉

Cheers,

Stroezie.

Dwarves & Monsters.

 When I got back from the holidays I found a package from Battle Valor Games waiting for me.

There were a bunch of sculpts in his lines which I really liked but I was a bit hesitant as I kept running in to various forum posts saying the minis were really big for 15mm.

After much hemming and hawing I decided to just take the plunge and see and well, some of them are and some of them are not. 

As I paint them I'll include pictures with models from other manufacturers so you can judge for yourselves.

Here's the first ones, four dwarves from the dwarven character pack.

And here they are alongside some Demonworld dwarves.

I also painted my own sculpts from the previous posts.

The Grell 

and the Carrion Crawlers

And off course I couldn't resist throwing together a little scene,

It would seem my new dwarves have run into a little spot of trouble while exploring a newly discovered mushroom forest.

Luckily they brought along their steam golem to help clear the path.

Cheers,

Stroezie.

Meet the Grell.

Another day, another monster.

I'm starting to feel like an evil overlord or maybe a mad wizard cackling away in his laboratory😁

This one was fairly easy to make and if anyone were to tell me they wanted to have a go at sculpting a monster I think I'd recomend they try to make a Grell.

So...

Session one, take an aluminum foil ball, stick it on a paperclip, cover it with milliput and roughly sketch in where you want things to go.

Now I would also recomend you pause here to let the milliput harden but as I am an impatient gith...
... do as I say, not as I do...

...so I immediately added the beak.

I also decided to make the tentacles seperately as it's much simpler to form them ahead of time, and then attach them once they are fully cured, than to try and support them when they are dangling from a figure all soft and stretchy like.

Session two,

Stick a blob of putty on the bottom and jamm all those tentacles in then draw a bunch of lines on it with your sculpting tool to make the blob look like the hairs / frills on the bottom of the Grell's body.(see I told you it was much simpler this way.)

Next it was a simple matter of rolling up a bunch of tiny saussages and laying them down in a kind of brain looking pattern.

Et voila, Grell's your uncle!

And a quick pic with our helpfull friend the Splintered light beastman for size.

Another monster done, back to the Monster Manual for more! Muhahahahah!!!

Cheers,
Stroezie.

More Sculpting.

I seem to have caught the sculpting bug again.
Best to make the most use of it then.😉

I started of with a conversion of a splintered light Chimera.
Instead of glueing on the three heads I sculpted it a new one and gave it a spiked ball tail, turning it into a Manticore.
I was going for a blend of human and leonine features but it's been a long time since I've tried doing faces and I had forgotten how much I struggle with them.
Even so, I think he looks pretty good on the tabletop, so I am happy with it.

And here's the little fellow with some paint on him and his cousins flanking him so you can get an idea of what the original mini looks like.

The next two sculpts are going to be another D&D classic, the Carrion Crawler.
This was actually the first monster I ever ran back when I first started playing D&D as a kid, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it.

Now the Carrion Crawler has gone through quite a few desingn changes throughout the various editions and they all had things I liked about them and things I didn't, therefore mine will be an amalgamation of all of those plus whatever I think looks cool or I think I can pull of within my limited sculpting abilities.

Now, because a number of people have asked about my sculpting process I thought I'd post photos of these session by session.
Be warned ,I am a very unorganised, chaotic builder / sculpter so it might get rough sometimes.

So first session:
I made an armature out of aluminium foil and promptly forgot to photograph it (don't worry I'll get the next one)
Then I covered that in a thin layer of green stuff and roughly sketched in the belly plates and started on adding the legs.
That's it for the first session.

Second session.
I added the rest of the legs and started on the head, adding a little more bulk and starting to detail the eyes.
The teeth were also adde at this stage.

I used the left over putty to sculpt the first chitin plate and there ends session two.

Session three:

Here's that armature I promised you (see I told you it was going to be unplanned and chaotic ;-)

Not really much to see there so...
...back to the sculpting,

I added the mandibles and the euh...    ...lips I guess,

And did another plate of chitin on its back.

I also decided the rear end was to plain looking so I started adding some detail there too.

Session four,
more backplates, butt detail and starting to cover the second armature with the first layer of green stuff.

Session five, more backplates...

Session six,
finished the first crawler by adding the tentacles and made some serious headway on the second one.
I actually made the tentacles, legs and mandibles ahead of time and let them fully cure before attaching them with a teeny weeny ball of green stuff and some super glue, this greatly sped up the process.

Here's a picture of the finished crawler next to a Splintered Light beastman to give you an idea of the size.

Well that's it for now.
Next time we finish the second one and get some paint on them.

Cheers,
Stroezie.

How to Summon a Monster.

First we build a metal framework to hold the creature during the summoning process.

Then we mix the four basic elements together to form the sacred "Green Stuff" (50/50 mix milliput / kneadatite)

and with the hard and soft implements we alternately press, poke and caress the putty into a similitude of the creature we wish to conjure.

Slowly the creature takes form...

untill finally, after much patience and detailed work...       ...succes!!!

Now through the use of various mythic pigments, we bring our monster to life.
And lastly we give it a small offering of flock and bind it to this plane of existence with a final "Ard Coat".

Behold fellow practitionners of the arcane arts: "the Othyug!"
Never shall we have to worry about where to get rid of our excrement again!
Or worry about those pesky adventurers surprising us during number two for that matter.

Cheers,
Stroezie.

More Shrooms and Dark Elves.

I decided to experiment a little to see if I couldn't come up with an idea to make more mushrooms quickly.

After rummaging through the bits box I came up with these.

Different sizes of half beads and .177 and .22 airgun pellets => instant mushrooms.

Not as good looking as my fully sculpted ones  but way faster to make so I'll take 'em!

I decided to try doing a tree to.
It looks ok but I think I'll stick to making these  fully by hand as there  is much less of a time save.

On the  minis side of things, I decided that my dark elves lacked leadership so I painted up a priestess and her fiendish bodyguard.
(both are from Splintered light miniatures)
The figure on the ground was made from all the green stuff and milliput leftovers from other sculpting projects.

Well, that's it for now.

Next time we learn how to summon monsters...

Cheers,

Stroezie.

More D&D Baddies.

Just a simple update of the models I managed to paint these last few weeks.

They are all from Ral Partha's Demonworld line.

I did three more trolls, they are a bit darker then the two previous ones but then these are obviously more civilised and thats enough of an explanation for me. 😉

Another oger cause all good things come in threes.

A murder of harpies...

More death from above in the form of some savage gargoyles

And last but not least, a dark elf raiding party

More to come...        ...soonish...

Cheers,
Stroezie.