Bugbear

During the Easter weekend I visited a city with a hobby shop, and thought that it would be a good opportunity to go for the “finish a mini in 48 hours” square on the bingo card. As such, I picked up this Bugbear:

The model is a WizKids Pathfinder Deep Cuts Bugbear. It comes in a blister with another bugbear, a female mage(?) who is arguably the more interesting model. However, she has some trasparent flame effects modeled on her and I didn’t have a good way of doing those nicely, so I picked the more straightforward model to paint for the challenge. Quality-wise, they’re alright. The details are a bit soft but not terrible (I think the models’ larger size helps with that). The mold lines are unfortunate, but that’s what you get. These were also pre-primed, so I could get to work straight away!

I did bend the rules a bit by starting the timer only after I got home to my paints, a couple of days after purchasing the model, but I think we can still count this. There’s around three hours of actual painting time on this model; an hour spent basecoating the model with Contrast paints and metallics, and two hours or so for the detail work and the base. I knew that with the (to me) very limited painting time I couldn’t go “full ballsack” on the model, so I decided to focus on the face and the blood effects, and only highlight the upward-facing parts of the model. The lower bits are just Contrast, and additionally shaded down with some Athonian Camoshade.

I’m very happy with the model as a whole, as I think I succeeded in my goals. I got a good expression on the face and some nice tonal variation with glazes of red and blue. (I don’t know anything about bugbears or what color they should be, but I think the standard skintone works pretty well on the model.) The blood splatters are probably the best I’ve done so far. I’ve noticed that applying Blood for the Blood God convinsingly is really difficult if I try to paint it on with a brush, but flicking it on with the help of a paper clip gives you nice a splatter effect, and is surprisingly accurate as well. The model also worked as a test bed for different Contrast browns. I hadn’t really tried Snakebite Leather (armor plates) or Aggaros Dunes (pants) before, and found both very pleasing. Snakebite Leather gave a very nice look for the turtle shell-like armor, especially with some quick highlights and scratches applied. A recipe for future, methinks…

The part about the paintjob I don’t like is the hair/fur. The toes work, but otherwise it’s pretty nasty… The sculpt probably doesn’t help, but I’m sure it could look a bit better with better highlight placement. But in the end I’m not bothered as it’s not the focus of the model and it’s done. Another thing that came to mind after the model was finished was that I could’ve added some rust effects on the metals. It would’ve been very quick and simple, and added some further character to the model. Oh well, next time!

Finally, the current bingo card. I’m picking that speed up! As I said at the beginning of the post, I’ll claim the 48 hour square with this model. Interestingly, this year there’s a new, wholesome square: “paint a model for someone else”. I don’t think I’ve told you, but I gave the elf cleric I painted last summer to someone who actually plays D&D! If they have use for a bugbear, I’ll probably give this one to a better home as well. Perhaps I’ll paint the mage as well…

Elf Cleric

This little model was painted almost a month ago, but didn’t get photographed before now due to work starting again and me wanting to finish another model (coming up soonish…) before setting up the camera gear. When I dropped off my Dark Angel to the painting competition, I also decided to buy a small mini from the game store. I thought I’d have a chance to complete another square on the hobby bingo by finishing a mini in 48 hours after acquiring it. And while it took me a while to take the photos, I managed the painting in time!

Now, I knew that of the 48 hours, I’d only have maybe 4-5 hours to work on the mini, so I didn’t want to get a GW model that I’d obsess over, taking a couple of hours just to clean, build, base and prime. Good thing that the store had some cheap Wizkids D&D models. I picked up a “Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures: Female Elf Cleric”, a blister with two models. They’re made out of some bendy plastic and the details on them aren’t great, but not terrible either. Perfect low-stakes models then, and they even came primed! I tried to clean the mold lines a bit, but the bendy plastic didn’t want to cooperate so I didn’t bother. Out of the box and straight to painting – I felt a bit like a kid again!

The model was finished in two sessions of around two hours each. In addition to finishing the model quickly, I wanted to try out some new paints and practice new techniques. During the summer I bought a bunch of new paints (some of the new Contrast pots and some Vallejo Model Color bottles). Among them were VMC Dark Sea Blue and Pale Sand. They seem to be all the rage among YouTubers, and I decided to try and use the blue for all the shading and the sand for all the highlights. I think it mostly worked, though I still need to practice some more with this idea of universal shadow and highlight colors.

On the technique side, I tried to paint a worn leather texture on the coat. I remember seeing Vince Venturella doing this by painting small scratches and dots on the basecoat with quite a bright color and then glazing over them with the basecoat color. This was then repeated multiple times, which resulted in a very interesting(/realistic?) layered effect. Again, I think I got the right idea and a pretty nice result for a first try, but some repetition is required on future models!

I also tried to do some simple OSL on the model. She’s got some kind of a spell going on, which was cast from transparent plastic. I wanted to color it, and thought that a Contrast paint could work well. I first painted the transparent bit with matte varnish, in the hopes that it would help the paint stick. I then used very thinned down Siegvald Burgundy to paint the spell and the surrounding areas. I then used VMC Pink and Off-White for some quick highlights, both on the spell and the model. The spell was then given a coat of gloss varnish. I think the final effect is pretty cool, retaining some of the transparency.

And here’s the bingo card with the cleric added. The square says “paint and base”, and I’m aware that my base is probably pushing it a bit. But hey, it’s my card and I say it counts! 😀