Sheila Figs - Finished Pit Fiend

I painted for about 6 hours yesterday and finished two figures! I really got hung up on this Pit Fiend - he was a devil (pun intended) to do!

Larger figures are a lot more complicated than small ones. For one thing, there's a bunch of pieces involved. This is the Pit Fiend just how he came out of the box: no head, wings or tail attached. The fire ball is also a separate piece:

I decided to paint him assembled. With some figs, you have to paint them in sections - sometimes you can't paint an area if it's completely glued together first, but I was lucky with this guy. Here he is glued together:

All the flash and rough casting lines have been filed down. Because of the amount of gluing, I needed to fill in the gaps with putty. We use modelling putty - it's really smelly. I push it into the crevices then smooth it out with my fingers, then sand it when it dries. Here's the back of the head, the wing joins and the tail seam:
My least favourite part: primering. I always use white primer so that I can see all the details property before I start putting paint on.

The first paint is applied! Pit Fiends are primarily red, but we already have two really red ones that L did. I started with a burgundy wash base and bright yellow for the wing membranes, teeth/eyes and fireball.
A shot of the back. There are a couple of layers of orange on over top of the yellow here.

Progress: several more layers of red and orange added to the burgundy base, and more layers of successively darker orange on the wings, toning to red.
And in a long session, he's finished! Top brush coats of dark orange, ivory on the teeth and claws. The base was painted, then I glued a black hobby sand to it.
Some extra ivory was added to the creases on the wings to make them stand out more. It's also been fully black-lines to emphasize the muscles and to add definition and depth.
A close up of the arms and the fireball. You can also see his eyes - I gave him slit pupils.
A close-up of the head. He's a nasty piece of business.
Grrr!

Sheila and L Figs - Diaramas

One of the really fun things to do with a big figure or a set of figures is to make a diarama to display them in. A big piece is not as cool just sitting on a base.

This is one of L's figs; it's called "Bridge of Sorrows" (I guess because the unlucky chick that the red dragon has snagged is pretty much dead). This came with all 4 figures (dragon, chick, wizard, centaur fighter), as well as the bridge pieces. This was the first use of "water" (it's plastic beads that you melt and pour to make a water-look surface).
We bought the wooden bases at a craft shop, and the dirt, sand and lichen bush bits at a hobby store. The dragon is all metal, which is very heavy, and caused a lot of problems with assembly. You can see the metal supports that L had to drill into the underside of the dragon so that it doesn't collapse under its own weight.

A close-up of the dragon's head. Great colours. That chick in his claws does not look happy. A shot of the wizard and the centaur fighter on the bridge. A good look at the bushes and water, too.
Vampire Count's Carriage - L Fig

L did this in the last 18 months. This is a Games Workshop boxed figure, of the Count's carriage, coffin, driver, and skeletal horses. L's vision was to have the carriage racing through the woods. He bought a tree kit from the local hobby shop and built all these trees individually. They are plastic with wire in them, which you twist into shape and then glue the bushy stuff onto them. L also gave the trees a light brushing on the trunks to make them look less plastic. Looking back towards the carriage. You can see the driver in the middle - creepy!
Looking down at the detail on the top of the carriage. The roof of the carriage comes off so that you can see the coffin (the coffin is also removeable and it opens to show the Count - sorry, I didn't take pictures of that stuff).
A shot of the back of the carriage. That's the end of the coffin.
"The Protagonists" - Sheila Fig

This is a really old boxed set, one of the first ones I got. I just got around to painting it in the last year, though (it is not a floor polish figure). Unfortunately, I have knocked this over a couple of times - the demon riding the dragon has been re-glued a few times, and I think the pegasus is no longer attached.

This is a really simple example of a diarama, where all I've done is a road, some stones and some grass. I didn't want to distract from the figures, but I wanted them to be on a base together. Sometimes you just want to keep it to a dull roar."Nydgogg, the Wyrm" - Sheila Fig

I am very proud of this figure. This is a limited edition piece - it is meant to stand upright, but like the red dragon in "Bridge of Sorrows", this is solid metal. It's way too heavy to stand without some serious propping/drilling. I came up with the idea of having him crashing through the woods, so I gathered some wood from L's folks' property when we visited them, and used some of that for the wyrm to arch over, like he is climbing over it. This fig started out rust-coloured, then brushed stripes on him and gold "scales" - I also really like the wings - they have a nice semi-transparent look to them.
This entire piece is about 12" long by 9" wide, and 8" tall.
"Cauldron of Blood" - L Fig

This is a pretty amazing diarama. L cast these rocks himself, using sandy moulding material and rubber moulds. He then painted the rocks, added lichen, mushrooms (hobby store), and painted gold veins in the rocks, to make it look like an underground cavern.

These are drow (they are goofy-looking with crazy-ass hair because they are Games Workshop figs and GW can't resist making all their figures look terribly cartoony), with a cauldron of blood for some evil purpose, being drawn along by spiders (an addition of L's).

I like that the spiders are crawling over the rocks. L also researches all animals that he does and paints them like actual species. Awesome!

Sheila Figs - Odds and Ends

I have a serious backlog of pictures to post - I'm going to try to get them up today so that I will only have newer pictures hereon in.

This is a female dwarf fighter that I just fell in love with: I really like how she turned out. I like the skin and the folds of the cloth came out well.
Lots of good detail on her.

I call this the "Inigo pony" - it's a horse-type creature and I matched its markings to my cat, Inigo, right down to his pink nose and toes.

Comparison of Inigo:The shading on this piece is good. The elf girl is kind of weird-looking. Nice fur bikini. How can you tell that men create these figures?
Crazy frog demon:

Another one of the first floor polish pieces I did. I really like the pattern on his skin. I am really pleased with his details; they look just right to me.

A really old piece! I did this one probably close to 10 years ago - it's about 15 cm tall. This is a limited edition figure (1551 of 5000, I think that says). It's a 5-headed dragon (Tahkesis, if you geek out on those sorts of things), and I did the entire thing without any putty, which meant I had to dry-fit all those necks onto the body perfectly and carve them until they fit right. The belly part is hollow so I put a little time-capsule in there; who I was, when I painted it, etc. I guess if this piece breaks next time we move, I can fix it. I like the idea of having that little surpise in there.

This one's recent. Evil fighter with owl helmet. He's an old figure, though - I've had him for about 10 years before he finally hit the painting table.

Not very exciting to paint.

The folds on the cloak are good.

This is one of my favourite dragon figures that I've done. I love the colours on it. This is a fire dragon with rider. I started by painting the entire dragon black and then brushing with dark red, orange, yelow and a bit of white to bring the colours and detail up on it.

Hee, I like the rider's seat.
A close-up of the head:

Scary!