Raggy's Gaming Adventures

Warning: I'm a numbers guy... there's a lot of that in this post! Well, I posted a few months ago that I had already completed my resolution to paint 365 minis in 2018. At that time I set myself a stretch goal of 500 minis!!! Soooo how did I do on that one? Well... I didn't paint 500 minis from scratch in the year, but I completed 511 minis in 2018 and another 45 smaller pieces. A really healthy total I think. I feel like this year has taken me a long way toward getting back on top of that lead mountain. There is still a lot to do but I honestly think that I could be realistically on top of things by the end of 2019 if I continue with the same mindset. Carry over: (22 + 11 small) Space Hulk:  6xTerminators Mansions of Madness:  2xShoggoths, 2xCthonians, 1xDark Young, 1xDunwich Horror Blood Bowl:  Wood Elf & Chaos Apothecaries, Ball Marker Warhammer Underworlds:  Reaver 5xSpiteclaw Lady Morrigan Wander: Tank Misc: 10xBarrels Comple...

I am super excited to be able to say I completed my goal of averaging a mini/day in 2018! It's been a fairly absorbing task and has left me largely unable to paint for competitions, it has however hammered into the mountain of unpainted minis (particularly for boardgames). So to keep moving forward, I have a new target - 500!!! This should also mean I will have fully painted 5 boardgames this year (Space Hulk, Burning of Prospero, Mansions of Madness, Descent & TMNT: Shadows of the Past). Completed: (369 + 34 small) Space Hulk:  20xSpace Hulk door stands, Chalice, C.A.T. , 23 Genestealers Mansions of Madness: Darrell Simmons, William Yorrick, Gloria Goldberg, Carolyn Fern, Joe Diamond, Monterey Jack, Bob Jenkins, Dexter Drake, Vincent Lee, Mandy Thompson, Sister Mary, Father Mateo, Tommy Muldoon, Diana Stanley, Finn Edwards, Preston Fairmont, Carson Sinclair, Charlie Kane, Agatha Crane, Lily Chen, Minh Thi Phan, Wilson Richards, Marie Lambeau, Akeche Onyele, Rita Yo...

The early stages of this figure went undocumented sadly. Death is a very monochromatic model and I decided to not Zenithal prime but instead wanted to highlight up by hand. EDIT:10th May 2018 I lost a lot of this original post due to getting signed out of blogger part way through writing the result was that on the rewrite - I neglected to add in the details of painting the black cloth. The base is Stynylrez Black primer. Fabric is fairly matte (excepting silk/satin). For Death, I imagine a rather rough fabric with an almost unreal matte to it. The result is bringing up the highlight only very slightly without going to anything even close to a pure white. The solution was to use Meng Rubber Black and Coat D'arms dark grey as the 'highlights'. I also added some Tree Fellas Light grey for the top highlights. The traditional method I'd been taught for texturing course fabric is to use thinned paint drawn in lines across the figure to simulate the threads however at ...

Faithful readers may recall that last year I put together three blog posts covering my painting of my first ever serious painting contest entry ( here , here and here ). The model was from a line of Discworld miniatures put out by Micro Arts Studios. These models are my most prized of miniatures and I have held off of painting them for many years, waiting until I felt I was good enough to work on them. I am finally starting to feel like I have reached that point. I am no Kirill Kanaev , and I still have plenty of scope to learn and improve, but I am at the point where I can finish a miniature, look at it and say... "Wow, that looks good to me. I'm proud that I was able to produce that." Having gotten to that point, I was comfortable starting on some of these beautiful miniatures. I have been working through the figures that feel easier to paint and that I am inspired by. There is no rush for me to complete these chaps (they are definitely not a part of my #doneno...

People may wonder why an Englishman, living in America, chose to paint a reading Orangutan to represent his 'tribe' in a painting contest. Is it a statement about British education? A statement that we are all once species sharing a planet and should all get along? An outright protest? Well not really. It is a celebration of a great author from Buckinghamshire who passed away far too soon. This is for Terry Pratchett , author, satirist and role model: The full album of photos, including the work in progress and a nifty animated rotation can be found in this Google Photos Album . - Raggy, signing out

Hey folks, Updates have been getting a little thinner on the ground as I am currently preparing for an exam and workload is piling up a little. The pro elves have been progressing by inches but there has been some decent progress on our favorite Orangutan: After substantial angst over how to paint the flooring, I opted for a silvery/grey wood effect using: Unfortunately for those trying to reproduce, I have no idea what that grey paint is. I bought it from The TreeFellas from a UK game show. They don't have a web presence but their paints are great. Of course, having settled on the base, I needed to tint the wood, get the shading in place. I tried 4 washes: I then drybrushed the Minitaire Mummy to bring it back to a more wood color. I drilled through the middle of the board and added it under the Librarian to allow for direct juxtaposition. In the end I settled on the Dark Tone to remove any of the red hues, keeping them on the Librarian himself. I al...

For those of you that are new readers to my blog, you should know that for the last year or so, my painting focus has been Blood Bowl. The drive for this has come from my local League that runs short seasons giving me just enough time to paint up a new team for the next season. The results have been pretty solid. I have played in four seasons and two tournaments with a new team each time that has really gotten me through the list of Blood Bowl teams in need of painting. Why am I talking about all this Blood Bowl nonsense when there is clearly an Orangutan reading pictured below? Well in order to avoid burn out, I will switch up my focus every so often and pick up something else. Recently a lot of my friends have been gearing up for painting contests (Our local convention KublaCon and some for the Crystal Brush at Adepticon), with all the new skills I have picked up recently thanks to CK Studios and Miniature Monthly (See previous blogs here and here ) I figured I should put my ski...

For those of you not familiar with the universe of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, it is a fantasy universe that had a major part in making me the person I am today... it has a range of miniatures sculpted for it by the awesome Micro Arts Studios . Discworld features, among other wonderful characters, 'The Librarian': He is the Librarian at the Unseen University Library and was turned into an Orangutan through an ill explained, and by now barely remembered, magical accident. He is my favorite character for many many reasons: his love of books, regard of them over and above people, philosophical thoughts and ability to kick ass when required. So why am I rambling on about all this? Well I bought a large collection of the Discworld miniatures, promising myself that I would paint them once I felt that I was talented enough. In my latest attempt to procrastinate in painting up my Pro Elf Blood Bowl team... I noticed a cool little painting competition on reddit and with Mini...