Corpse Mound

 

Oof! I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this one! I decided to all-in on Halloween painting and participate in MZ4250's monthly competition - there is a printer up as a prize, and it was worth a shot. Unlikely to nab it, but I am more than happy for the extra motivation to work on spooky topics befitting the season. MZ has been making a bunch of creepy monsters on his end, so I wanted to work on something new to the catalog. This piece immediately struck me as being ambitions and audacious - perfect! I tried a few other prints as well, but my print game was weak and this fairly complex and delicate piece was the only one I was satisfied with. Ambitious was right!  

After printing I had only a precious few weeks left, and my initial look at basing was unimpressive. I spend some solid time building up a base worthy of the title "corpse mound". It is partially clay with some woodfiller and a good dose of chopped up chunks of bad prints. I even made a few skeletons from MZs catalog to bulk it up. I followed that up with a few rounds of late-night speed-painting. I pretty quickly realized I was in over my head - so many bits and bobs here and there. I mostly just went sloppy with it with the hopes that the decayed nature of the undead would mask my mistakes. The photography leaves a lot to be desired - I was forced to use my old phone in a pinch and it struggled with focus on all the protruding bits. Next time ill do better with my painting contest goals.

The end result is decent, but suffers from some balance and detail issues. I think it gets the point across though. Maybe. My kids have differing opinions on what it is - green magical fire, ooze blob or ectoplasm. Not sure what I had in mind, actually - necromantic magic? 

Not sure how I will use it - it is almost more of a terrain piece. Maybe is is a mobile portal to the realm of the dead?  Or perhaps just mundane rotting zombie stench? Time will tell.

Happy Halloween!

Giant Centipede (3)

These giant centipedes were a nice quick speedpaint of some slightly modified miniatures from Reaper Miniatures. while these tiny little sculpts aren't particularly impressive they fill an important role in my collection - they were painted to round out the baddies I need to run "A Most Potent Brew" (see "inferno spider" posted previously). I love running that module as a starter adventure for nearly any campaign, so I expect they will be among my most used models. I might still add an NPC for that module in the future, before I put a fork in it.

 I was pretty happy I was able to manage three pretty distinct poses from the base model, which would've bothered me otherwise. The ruddy brown color with a hint of orange that I achieved on these guys was great, and I definitely plan on using it for their (bigger?) cousins. 

Speaking of which, I always thought the use of "giant" in monster descriptions was unsatisfactory. These creepy crawlies are on 20mm bases and are probably the size of the biggest living real-world centipedes, whereas a "giant spider" is the size of a horse!

Violet fungus (2)

These fungal monsters pair nicely with the shriekers in my previous post, and were part of the same set from Reaper Miniatures. They were cast in transparent purple, and initially I tried painting them with some transparent painting techniques I had seen elsewhere. somewhere along the line I decided my attempt had failed, so I went with a more contemporary approach (though, they are still slightly transparent). My failed initial approach left these somewhere in between and as a result I wasn't entirely happy with the end result. Ah well, Ill try again! There is always room to grow as an artist, and transparents are definitely a technique / subject I need to research more before my next attempt. 
 

Shrieker (3)

 A set of shriekers by Reaper Miniatures. These were really fun to paint and I enjoy the variety of color combinations I was able to play with on this set, where each model is clearly unique. This is both practical from a game-play perspective and a pleasure to paint. These fungi are smaller than the photos suggest - each is mounted on a 20mm base. while I painted these a few years ago, I have been itching to revisit a mushroom theme so I can really play with fun colors and shapes.

Mandragora (2)

 

 

 

Some cute little guys from Schlossbauer I finished as a speed paint. Despite their vegetable cuteness they are definitely a perfect post for spooky season. The little screeching fellows are also a little known entry in AD&D Monster Manual II, probably because they lacked art, so they check a box on my journey to complete miniatures for every entry in that tome.