Sheila Figs - Wizard Chick with Book Stand

It's been a couple of months since I did any painting - doesn't help that it's football season, which kind of takes away some of my Sunday recreational/hobby time.

I was so happy to get this figure; I really like painting women figures, and I wanted to do something really cool with her cloak. I decided to do a "disco" theme for her, so went flashy with the colours and ornamentation on her.

Here she is, ready to primer, all the flash and edges filed down. Primered! Now I can really see the detail and start thinking about colours.
Skin has been done, as well as the base colour for the book's pages.
The first colour. Originally, I was going to do a more silvery cloak, but I found the grey just too dull, so I painted over it later.
Getting the darker colours in the creases and lightening up for highlights.
Disco cloak! I really like how this turned out. As you can see by her arm, I'm not really very careful about the other colours - it's easy to just paint over and clean up - until I start working on the highlights and lowlights.The cloak is done, now for the rest of the colours. Hair, base metal colour.

Lots of work on the book and stand. Yes, the stand is made of skulls. Ooh, scary!
And after a few hours' work yesterday, voila! Details done: eyes, skin shading, silver highlights on the metal, bases, blacklining and words on the books pages. The intent is that her dagger is causing this book's page (obviously it's some evil magic book) to blacken.

A shot of the back.

I'm pleased with this figure, but it's not one of my best. I like the cloak the best - it's very "Fantasia" and was fun to experiment with.

Winners Week - Cropped Pant Suit

This week's theme: Winners! If you love a sale or hunting for that bargain, you've got to love Winners - a whole department store of odds and ends of new clothes, shoes, etc. (apparently they carry things other than clothes and shoes, but those are the only areas I look in).

Elaine and I spent 4 hours there yesterday and, spent and exhausted, we were triumphant in our purchases. Every day this week, I will feature one of my Winners' finds.

Black suit jacket (Max Studio, Winners), black cropped pant (Focus 2000, Winners), pale orange cami (Mexx, Dots), yellow satin blouse (Do & Be, Bliss? damn, some boutique shop), red satin dragon pumps (Aldo), gold big link bracelet (Jones New York, The Bay), gold hoop earrings.
Hee, Inigo wanted to be in the picture. At least he's not showing off his ass this time.

The pants are the new item, although the jacket is also Winners (from last fall). I was pretty sure that the fabric and shade of black were exactly the same, though, and I was right: they are an exact match! So now I have 2 pairs of pants (one regular length) to wear as a suit with the jacket. And only $19.99 - score!

I just love these shoes - and you know, I never used to wear them. I spent $90 on them and never wore them except for special occasions. What a waste! Now, I try to wear different shoes every day (well, I have enough of them! may as well), and I love that some of these older ones are seeing the light of day.

Just spreading my own brand of sunshine, ha ha.

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!

A Backlog of Figures

I took some pictures of some of the more recent figs I've done - there's a bit of a backlog of photos, so this is pretty much one giant post full of pictures. Whoo hoo!


First up: Barbarian Fighter. He's supposed to look like he's a Northern fellow.
This guy's pretty recent. I like how his cloak turned out (it's supposed to be some sort of arctic wolf fur), and his shield looks cool (I handpaint all my designs - no decals!). Hmmm...flash is too bright.
Bartender: This is one of the village people; meaning, he will go in the Christmas village, at the Inn with all the other Inn staff and their customers. Our Christmas village is pretty cool. My bartender is one of the early floor polish figures - you can see how I was just getting the hang of the thin layers of paint on his apron and clothes.
He's got a bit of a weird eye thing going on - perhaps keeping an eye on a customer who might not pay for that ale? I wouldn't want to anger this barkeep.
These next two I am proud of: both are recent, within the last year.

Samurai Chick: I handpainted her flag. I really like her colour combination of blue and red. Her hair and face turned out really well.
I like her socks.

Purple Wizard with Dragon: This is one of my favourite pieces. Everything just came together perfectly on him. There isn't anything I would change. I love the way the purple and black on his cape fade together.

The gold looks really good on this guy - that's a Testors gold paint. Testors isn't great for painting in colour on figs (it's not an acrylic base, so you can't mix the colours or thin them), but their metallics are superior, especially gold and silver. Nice and shiny, they really look like metal.

That's it for now - gotta go for a walk!