The Band's Back Together, and There's Some New Faces

It's another snow day today in north-west Kansas.  Twelve inches of snow have fallen since yesterday and everyone has spent their morning digging out (my street wasn't fortunate enough to be plowed).  Now that we've cleared a path down our driveway and street and Harley was able to make it into work I'm back to the hobby desk.  In the spirit of snow days everywhere, I'm putting down my paintbrush today in favor of taking a day off to do some IT work (it's still working, but hey).  

Before I move onto coding and html, I'd like to share a group that I finished yesterday.  Some of the minis might look familiar to you, it's because they're Ron N.'s models that I painted up for him last fall and can be seen in the fantasy model gallery at the top of the page.  There's three new models he's adding to his roleplaying group's collection as well.  Let's take a look!

Ron's elf mage has progressed in his adventures, electing to take a darker path.  I got a brand new model from Ron to paint up and represent his character's delving into the arts of a shadow mage.  I jumped at the chance to a palette of dark greys, purples, and blues.  I also wanted to do something a little more different.

I have had an idea for some time to do star field in the place of shadows on a model.  As it happened, Wizards of the Coast beat me to it.  I haven't seen a shadow mage with anything like that represented, so I knew that this was the guy to be sporting a celestial cloak.  

And here are the two models representing the same character back-to-back.  His attitude definitely has changed with his more esoteric delvings!

The next model I received from Ron was a lot more wide open for artistic interpretation.  It was a "teen wolf" werewolf, wearing blue jeans and a letterman's jacket.

Ron wanted the wolf to be a kitsune (traditional name for a Japanese fox spirit) cleric with a magical bow.  The first thing I did was carve the big "W" off of his right breast, and then set to sculpting a few armor pieces.  A right pauldron, two greaves, and a sash around his waist brought the model from 50's noir to the land of Pathfinder.

The bow was made from a brass rod, bent to shape, and the quiver/arrows was grey stuff and pinning rods as well.  This was my first kitsune, and I'm excited to try my hand at another, possibly with a golden fur coat!

I can't take total credit for the final paint.  Ron gave me this previously painted model with the request that I "spruce it up."  

The flames had a traditional highlight paint scheme, so I inversed the color of the magical fire to bring it closer to true flame shading.  Some heavy highlights on hair, face, and shoulders and it looks like the fire is really emitting a brilliant purple glow!

And that's it for this week.  Thanks for dropping by the Monster Lab and checking out my latest project.  There's more to come and some exciting developments on the horizon.  Check back next week and I'll start previewing a special project that has been shaping the face and future of the newly renamed Monster Lab Miniatures!

Hope to see you then!