Painting – A mixed band of Adventurers

Q. What is the first step after you take finished figures outside to spray varnish them?

A. You drop one on concrete. ( NOT! )

At least my cleric landed on his head and only required a slight touch-up.

I was originally going to paint these as two separate groups. Two figures in each group were wearing mail and that was what I chose to start my painting with, so I just did the lot together.

Seven adventurer’s – one plastic figure, six metal, four different manufacturers and most of them pre-dating “slotta” bases. Surprisingly, all three elves were Games Workshop. I finished these all last weekend, but I’ve spent the week mucking around with light boxes and this weekend with desk lamps. I finished my second (smaller) light box during the week, but I’m not convinced that any of my desk lamps here work as great light sources. I think I’ve got something that works, and maybe a little bit of playing around with my graphics program can tidy up the images.

1. Metal Mordheim Elf Ranger
2. Plastic HeroQuest Elf Warrior
3. Metal Warhammer Quest Elf Ranger (Knight)

Games Workshop Elves

1. Metal Grenadier 9602 (Dragon Lords) Priest (Came with the “Red Dragon II”)
2. Metal Ral Partha 02-352 Adventurer Wizard

1. Metal RAFM 03908 Female Ranger
2. Metal Ral Partha 03-067 Armoured Cleric

I wanted mostly woodland colours for the elves, but went with a bolder style for the Ranger Knight. The hardest part of painting these figures was choosing a colour scheme! I’m happy with my final choices and used a few colours from my newest paints. With one exception (the GW HQ Elf) each figure had a fair to high amount of detail and having a lot of figures meant I keep cycling through them doing different features.

I think nearly EVERY metal pre-slotta figure I have (not just these ones) is on a solid metal base that is a bit small. Even with the weight of the figure it’s still easy to knock them over, so these all got a bit of filing to smooth out the base (and try to thin it a little) and was then glued to a plastic 25mm round base. Two got a little bit of paste and fine shell to add some texture and blend the base joins before some black paint. The female Ranger was on a “stone slab” styled base (much like the male ranger from last week) and so I added so more rocks around it and painted it the same way. She wears a glove on her right hand, and there’s a hawk/falcon sitting on it. The shape of the falcon wasn’t done correctly and was tricky to paint, but I think you get the idea of what it’s meant to be if you look at the figure closely. [Oddly enough, this shot – without the light box and only one light source looks better to me than all the others… maybe I need to recreate that set-up for photo’s.]

Female Ranger close-up!

This lot done means that nearly every adventurer/hero figure I have is painted. I think my next step is back to touch-up some I painted a long time ago (maybe 20 years?) and give them a varnish. Then I have a wide range of painted figures for PC’s or NPC’s in D&D, which is much nicer than plain metal or grey plastic.