Painting for fun

I've been doing a little painting for fun that's not for any project. First up was this delightful "Candy" by Reaper Miniatures. I mostly used Contrast to paint her with a little Citadel Air paint for highlights where needed. The experiment of a sand coloured undercoat with a zenithal of Wraithbone has really paid off here, leaving her not too dark. I'm really pleased with how she came out for a quick tabletop paint job. 

I'm still having teething problems with my new light box. With the light coming from above, general objects are fine, but models with faces end up quite dark in front. I've ordered a clip on reading light as it will take up less time and space to set up than using the angle poise lamps I currently have. I'll report back on how that's gone.

I also did a simple base coat, wash and drybrush of these treasure tokens by Urban Construct. When prepping these I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the sculpts. They're certainly very basic. But they've turned out fine once I've finished painting them. I'll be selling them on rather than having them clutter up a miniatures box. I still want some treasure tokens from Frostgrave, but I think I just want some that are a bit fancier than this.

Having painted 11 models last month, I've allowed myself a couple of small miniature purchases as a reward. First up is the Battletech Beginner Box. I never got into Battletech as a kid. Weirdly, I got a free book for opening a bank account as a child and the only remotely interesting book they had was the first book in the Jade Falcon trilogy. I read it at the time and found it a bit interesting, but then never explored further. It seemed very inaccessible at the time.

I pick up the Battletech computer game during the first summer lockdown, and had a blast with it. I should give it another go again some time. I was about to type "last year" when I realised it was two years ago now. Sheesh.

The Beginner Box includes a Griffin and a Wolverine. I'm currently planning on painting them up in Lyran Commonwealth colours. This is partially because in the computer game I like heavy mechs, and the Lyrans are the ones who are typically fond of them. The other part was that while reading up on the background, the Lyran Commonwealth suffers from a large number of generals who are political appointees who are terrible at their jobs. This means that my having no idea what I'm doing isn't just because I'm a new player, I'm also making an effort to reflect the game background.

I also grabbed this Enrieth from Reaper, as I've been keen to try out the Bones USA material. This was in part because I wanted to pick up some hex bases from Miniature Heroes and it felt a bit daft to pay postage just for ten bases.

Looking at her in the blister, her moulded base is really rather tall - but also larger than I'm used to on Bones miniatures. I'm trying to decide if I add her to a round base as I normally do, either with the base or trying to cut it off, or just paint her as she comes.

On the wider hobby front, my big focus right now is trying to get my Deathwatch finished up so I can put them away. It's just cleaning up some base edges and a couple of repairs, but that does mean it's slightly duller work than painting interesting models from scratch. I'd probably put it off a little longer, but I'm looking at getting a game with them, and am also trying to clear the flat up before my dearly beloved returns from abroad, meaning they've moved up the schedule a little bit...