So this is what I’ve painted over the last couple of months. And before anybody gives me the inevitable “You should be writing instead!” mini painting is how I sharpen the saw. Think of this as Zen and the Art of Mini Painting.

Before I get to the glamour shots (my light box consists of 2 paper towels hung over 2 lamps the photographed with my phone) here is my current work in progress. I stuck a quarter next to the base so you non-geeks can understand just how freaking tiny these things are.

This knight is for an upcoming Iron Kingdoms RPG.

I like to play the tabletop war game, Warmachine. I enjoy the heck out of it.  I even write books for them. (and for those of you who aren’t gamers, you should read this anyway, because it is a steampunk Dirty Dozen with mad science lightning swords and steam powered fighting robots)

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These are for my Retribution army. Think of them as Angry Elves.

I (sort of) participated in a local start up league with this army. I say sort of, because I only made it to a couple of the game nights, but deadlines loom, so you know how that goes.

I went for a sort of Swiss flecktarn camo pattern.

The leaves on the base are actually birch seed pods.

Considering how fast I painted these guys, I think they came out pretty cool looking.

Then this one was dissapointing. Most of these are metal, but this one was plastic, and I think I got a poorly molded one. The details were very shallow in spots, so hard to paint, and I had to cut off some huge mold lines. But at tabletop to eyeball distance she looks fine.

Up next, these guys are for that same upcoming IKRPG game. Right now Writer Nerd Game Night is playing Legend of the Five Rings (hence the Friday serial that I post every week) but that campaign will be wrapped up in January, so this is up next.

And requested for the bad guys, some Legion of Everblight monsters exploding out of elves like an Aliens movie. I kept these guys glossy in spots, so in person they look slimy, which is awesome. 🙂

And another Legion one. Also plastic, and I’m not happy with her. I think she came out kind of rough.

This one is really cool because I didn’t paint it. This one was done by my nine year old son. I helped with a couple of touch ups and gave advice the whole time, but this is 99% him. He used lots of ink washes and dry brushing, and I think he did a fantastic job. Even the aging looks fantastic. Way to go, Correia 2.3!

These guys can be used in my regular Merc army and also Khador.

I went for tats and scarred up knuckles on the Commisar looking guy.

This unit is called the Kayazy assassins and they are notorious for having ugly heads. Personally I don’t like having exact duplicates in a unit, so I sculpted some hoods, hair, and hats for these guys. This is actually the very first time I’d ever tried green stuffing like that (I’ve had these guys primed for like a year before I painted them). Like the guy above, I made that hood. It is a little thick, but it looks pretty darn good on the table.

The guy on the right is another one of my first hood attempts. This was before I knew that green stuff putty could get hard spots in it, so he is a little lumpy,. The guy on the left looks like a derpy matador. He had a weird spot on his eye that I couldn’t paint, so I scarred it up to hide it.

The guy on the left got a hat. That was my first ever attempt at sculpting a hat. The brim came out a little thick, but overall it is pretty darn good. Then the guy in the middle is Derpy Matador #2, so I shaved the top of his head off and tried to sculpt hair… Now he looks a lot like Eddie Van Halen. Gonna chalk that one up to a learning experience.