Heading into April....

 Wow; What happened???

One moment I am taking a sip of coffee and it's January, and now I put the cup down and it's the beginning of April. What in the world happened to the time?

Oh yeah. Life.

So things kinda got by me a bit on this blog, so there is a little bit of catching up to do.

First off:

GAMING AGAIN!

We picked up from November back into our D&D campaign. With Dan's death, and Daniels departure due to pursuing real life things that prevented him from gaming, we had two spots open.  I put out the call, and had two individuals interested. The first is Tim, who is playing a halfling thief, and the second will be Jared who is going to play a paladin. This will bring the group back up to six. 

(First off: A spot of honor and remembrance for Dan Merchant, aka "Fargrim". He's no longer here with us, but he will always be "here".)

I set the game room up and got it ready. 

(DM's station ready to go!)

(Books are ready!)

(The Game Table in low light...)

(The quiet of the night as the table waits patiently in the dim light of the mini cabinets...)

And then it was game day!

The crew (old and new) showed up.

All was great.

Food was had first!

Oh my!

(Food!...Roast Chicken and Croissants, Manicotti with a Red Pepper added to it for zing! Veggies, Fruits, and all sorts of wonderful snacks later on!)

And the party journeyed in search of the missing merchants son, where a clue took them to a nearby village. Whereupon entering this village, they noticed all sorts of oddities going on....

(Hand drawn players map of the village)

(The PC's entering an inn in town. The good one or the bad one?...)

Much fun was had by all, and they are now collecting clues as to "what exactly is going on" here in this little farm village.

More to come....

PAINTING, PLEDGES, and PURCHASES....

So I was able to do a bit of painting between Feb and March. 

March Monthly Painting Pledge:

# of figures painted: 43 (All Reaper and Wiz Kid fantasy figures.)

# of figures bought: 29 (Reaper), +6 free figures from Reaper.

Total (for March): +6

Yearly Total Painted: 63

Yearly Total Bought: 49

Total: +14

So far I am still in the black (or the plus).

But Reaper Bones VI is going and I know I will drop coins there.

("Painted" means: "Cleaned, based, primed, and all paints applied, and flocked". It does not mean "sealed" as I consider that "finished", and due to Indiana's fickle weather, I haven't been able to seal in over a month)

I know that I am going to end up going into the red as Reapers Bones VI KS has just started, plus I was turned onto another KS which has me ooohing and aaaahing.

Meanwhile I did some painting:

(Wiz Kids barmaid.  Paulissia had heard all the stories before but she learned to be able to smile and laugh at the adventures tired jokes, because a smile and a laugh would always get her a bigger tip...)

(Another Reaper Bones Strumpet. This is the third one in a third different paint scheme. Maybe it's true that "Blondes have more fun", but you'll need to cough up a gold coin or two to find out....)

(The only historical one I have done in a while. Foundry Pirate.)

Then it was back to painting up some nasty undead and experimenting with different shades and inks.

In this case, I started with a Reaper Bones V Ghast.

(Angry because you are "alive" and it's not, it's evilness reached out even in death to make it "undead", and now it hungers for the energy of your life....)

Primed this figure in black and then started with a series of dark blues, and highlighted with lighter blues and whites. The whole idea was to have it looking like something that is trapped "Between here and there" and hateful towards all living creatures in general. I think succeeded in that.

And then I painted up a couple of ghouls to be his buddies.

I used Agrax Earthshade and once again it was magic in a bottle.

(Quite nasty creatures aching for the taste of human flesh....)

I also got around to painting up some of Reaper Bones V KS zombies from the core set.

I call these two "William and Theodore", (aka "Bill and Ted"), traveling troubadours for their group "Boisterous Steeds".... And yes I fixed the groundwork on Bill's base after these pics were taken.

Here's William, showing what coming back from the dead did to him....

Based on how he looks and how his head is hanging, it looks like he had a hard time of it.

After the travelling troubadours, I took the other two and decided to make them a bride and groom, so I present to you, Windull and Helga, the "happy" couple....

(The Bride and Groom, aka (Windull and Helga), together again; slowly making their way back to the peaceful, little, village of Berrysfield. Love never dies...)

Some close ups of "The Bride and Groom"....

I wanted to post a few more pics of the "bride", as I wanted to show the extent of the weathering I went with her, and the damage to her walking corpse. I'm kinda proud of how she turned out.

(The Wedding Party...)

I was also able to paint up some of the Reaper Bones V "Town Guards".

I ran a wash over the armor and highlighted the steel edge of the weapons with silver and really liked how they came out. 

(Just another day of keeping law and order and watching the peasants as they pretend to work....)

("My shield and belt buckle has a skull on it! Am I a baddie???")

(Givin' 'em "da axe"...)

Working with some of the colors has allowed me to also try new blends.

In this case, I did some work on a Reaper Bones V KS Wight.

(Oh great....another evil undead...)

I also painted up some Reaper Bone's V Brinewind Large Tube Worms....

I wanted to give them that revolting "guts" pink and yellow look. 

I had to tone the pink down a bit with a purple wash, but it came out great.

And of course, where wouldn't I be without a slack-jawed, eye popping, mouth hangin' open, low brained peasant in dirty clothing staring at the tube worms that just came forth from the ground in his bean field. I actually named this guy after a friend of mine.

(Paol the Peasant stares in shock or horror (or both), as something comes up from the soil of his bean field....)

To be honest, I really need to get back to doing some historicals as I have been busy focusing on my fantasy figures for the D&D game for a while.

I've got a couple of Western buildings I need to finish up.

Okay that is it for now, and I am going to close this entry.

More to come, so stay tuned!