Turelio's Hobby Hoard

I'm unofficially collecting as many Alice related minis as I can find. When BrokenToad released their range of Wonderland transition busts, I had to get a set. These are some work on progress photos and rough finished pictures of the first I painted: The Cheshire Cat. After a few failed experiments with PVC pipe for the base, I ended up stacking three 20mm MDF discs together and dancing them back to make the base. I blocked in the main colours first, with the straight jacket and straps having colours I felt where reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's Alice films. I worked on the face next, which was quite fun. The more I painted it, the more I got the impression of a madman locked away for murder. I also started to remember the Looking Glass Wars novels, where the cat was some kind of human/cat hybrid, used as an assassin. That memory started to leak over into how I viewed the piece. I worked the jacket up next, and it ended up a lot darker than I...

So I had these minis, and the feeling I should paint them... Titania was the first model painted, as she was the one I was looking forward to the most. The red became a lot stronger than I expected, but I did like the overall look. I also painted her base before the model. I ended up using a few light glazes of purple and green among the rocks. One thing I really like was a brown wash between the stones. It made it look old and dirty, and broke up the boring grey quite well. I quickly painted Aeslin's base as well. I wanted to establish the colour of the vines on the bases, as I knew that would likely carry onto other models as well. The Gorar was next. I quite liked the model, but painting it was a bigger challenge than I expected. I ended up lining every scale, spine, and protrusion, which took a long time. One change I made to my plan was the tail fading from red to black. It isn't as smooth as I would have liked, but is pretty g...

I mentioned in my last post I had some more Malifaux minis to build. If you measure amount of minis remaining in cubic metres, it doesn't seem as much... On Facebook, A Wyrd Place was having a friendly competition to paint a crew in the month of December. This was a great idea, and one I promptly forgot for most of the month. I started building about halfway through the month, and painting... Christmas Eve. The deadline was New Years in the US, so I had about three-quarters of a day once 2018 hit our shores to get it painted, but I made some big mistakes in the planning process, which I'll go into later. Anyway, this is the post for building things. Let's get that sorted first... Titania was the first model to be built, because She had what looked like the fewest pieces. It was late, and I thought I could build her quickly.  I honestly love the aesthetic of this model.  Seriously, this model has this great rudely regal look about her...