Painting – Nolzur’s Demons

The last of my Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures – a pack with a D&D Succubus and an Incubus. Mold lines bothered me a bit with these two, particularly annoying along hands and the tails. While better than some of my early purchases, I think mold lines are still a concern when the figures involved are slim and/or have long thin hands/arms, etc.

These are the female/male version of the same D&D minor demon. Good looking humanoids, who can change their appearance to look more or less human, who are frequently employed to deal with mortals. Both will be quite handy to represent any winged humanoid that appears in my game, and not just the actual demons.

The colour scheme on the pack is detailed, but quite dark – not the first time with this range. Since its only slightly larger than actual size, it doesn’t help much to see how someone else has painting these figures. With the exception of the dark red of the wings, I’ve pretty much gone and done something rather different with each. It’s taken me roughly a day each to sort out what I wanted, paint and wait for them to dry. Apart from the initial flesh, and the red on the wings, I painted them one after the other. Painting under and around the rear of each figure got interesting – you have wings, arms, a tail, and the flared skirt (or whatever you call it) that all try to get in the way of a brush. I regularly cleaned an unwanted colour off the tail, and painting the arm-bands/straps was real fun. (Not!)

Both have a nice pose, and are a good sculpt – except for one leg, and the odd head connection on the female. With the latter, the odd neck depression on the succubus looks like it is meant to define part of her top, or be a necklace – at least according to the official painted image. Doing detail with a depression around the neck is odd to me, normally you have raised detail for something like that. (Which is the way the dress straps are done.) At least painted, it doesn’t stand out as odd like I’d thought it was going to.

And that clears a lot of figures, and my tray is reset with Space Marines. With a good chance C-19 lock-down is wound back this afternoon, I may get some more ‘Little Scythe’ figures to paint this week. Either way, I’ve got some stuff that should be fun and not complicated to paint over the next week or so. Hope you are all coping with life where you are!

Painting – Nolzur’s Centaur

One Nolzur’s Centaur. It’s a nice sculpt – the proportions of the torso go well on top of the horse body and it’s a nice pose, although I’d prefer the bow wasn’t so close to the face. The detail on nearly all of the figure is quite good, although the bow gets a little sloppy with the strapping (if that what you call it).

I think the head has been a separate piece attached to the neck, because there’s some odd seams or ridges that ink has settled in. You have to look closely to see them, and I really don’t want the fuss of trying to fill and/or repaint them now. The arms have the same look – but only obvious from behind. I suppose I can call them ritual scars!

I don’t recall ever using or needing a centaur in a game, but I like the idea of having one just in case.

With most of my horse figures (in the past), I used darker browns to start with and had trouble lightening them. I started light with this guy, darkened him a little with some brown ink and then started to highlight parts with lighter browns again. He’s come up very nicely.

Next I have a pair of Nolzur’s demons to paint, and then I’m on to 15 Space Marines!

Painting – The eyes have it!

All 26 of them! Yesterday I finished a bunch of Beholder-kin. All the figures here are WizKids Nolzurs/Deep Cuts.

I’d started with the pair of “Gazers” (or eyeballs) as they were both small and pretty simple. The size did mean a bit more care in painting, trying to get detail that is suggested by the sculpt. They don’t truly have an open mouth or teeth – just a depression. They came out better than I’d expected.

Next the Spectator – a smaller, lesser beholder with four small eyes, who is typically a neutral guardian. The gazers came in a pack with this guy. I started by cutting out his tongue, which I think makes the mouth more distinct and the bite look nastier. [/Begin rant/ Why a long tongue? It’s not like the tongue does anything, not even in 5th Edn which is where this sculpt comes from. Apart from being able to bite, it’s the eyes that are important! /End rant/] I didn’t care for the green colour of 5th Edn either, so the paint scheme was a basic mid-brown. I’m very pleased with this guy too.

Then the main beholder. Back when I painted the undead beholder, I decided I wanted a blue colour if I got hold of this figure. Purple seemed a good shading colour – done well by Scent of a Gamer. Cobalt blue as a base colour, then an Army Painter purple ink. I had planned to then start with a darker blue and lighten as I went, but the ink provided better shading than I’d expected. After drying, I got the ink out again to pick out lines and spots where it hadn’t settled in. Then I went back to my blue to touch up tentacles and scales, then steadily lightening it with some white in stages, to pick out edges and the spikier bits sticking out on the sides. The mouth was done with a ‘fushia’ and ‘native american’ flesh. (This dark red flesh makes a great colour for inside mouths on a lot of my figures.) Some brown ink around the mouth, teeth picked out in white and some more purple ink and blue to shade/highlight around that. I’d planned a yellow/orange eye, but saw a different beholder figure done with red-orange-yellow and somewhat mimicked that. The iris is actually cut into the eyeball on this figure, with lines/ridges sculpted into it. Trying to actually paint the markings there was very difficult, so I mostly ended up trying fine lines of yellow and orange to mimic the actual sculpting.

So that’s one busy week of very enjoyable painting! I also finished two wild boars last weekend, but hadn’t taken pictures at the time. They are simple figures (with a reasonable amount of detail) and I wasn’t planning on being fussy with them.

PS: To my players…. Yes, now that they are all painted, there’s a fair chance you’ll see these in Fals’Krag. You have already met a Gazer, I just didn’t know a figure existed at that time.