Draconis: Spring Clean 2023 and onward

Well today the Witches spent most of the day flying up and down through the various displays of the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

They took particular interest in a large display of the Battle of Agincourt. (Possibly Perry minis).

Although Magrat wasn’t sure why people would be interested in tiny fighting men…. ?

Then it was a quick fly past of Sandal Castle, before home for tea.

Maybe with some avec.

For today the trio took a tour of York.

Passing the minster first.

They then swept through the Jorvik viking centre looking for hairy men… but found nowhere to land.

So it was off to Clifford’s Tower

The wonderful Witches are nearing the end of their grand tour now.

Today they stopped by Kirkham Priory, Pickering Castle, Helmsley Castle and Rievaulx Abbey.

Helmsley Castle:

While at Pickering Castle they did see some of the fey folk having their iconographs taken…..

The ladies are making their long way home now, looking for liquorice in Pontefract, cake in Conisbrough and a Princess bride at Peveril Castle.

Having extended their tour so that they didn’t have too much flying in one go the Witches returned home today.

On the way, to recharge their magical energies (via tea and cake of course) they stopped by the ancient sites of Avebury,  Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow

With them safely back home now I have a few things I would change…

I would varnish them, weight the bases down for better balance, magnetise them,  take a small strip of metal so they could ‘fly’ wherever.

Alternatively,  I would just take one mini if I were to do it again ?  maybe a gobbo….

Normal service will now be resumed. Likely my Star Wars Legion project.

7th June 2023

Just a very quick post.

I am still working through my SW Legion clones currently, but next up on here will probably be one or more of these…..

A mix of things, but they have all been sitting on the desk for quite some time.

**please note that this post contains spoilers for the Level 5 secret boxes for Voidwarden and Red Guard**

23rd June 2023

Last year my wife and I played through Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion.

I painted all four characters but we ended up using Hatchet and Demolitionist.

At level 5 you get to open up a secret box with an extra piece for your character.  So I painted up those for our two characters.

However,  I realised that I hadn’t painted the remaining two pieces – so, another spring clean up job  ?

They are relatively basic minis. There is a ward staff for the Voidwarden and a Sand Devil for the Red Guard.

I started out with a brown base coat for the Sand devil, then dry brushed up through several Sand colours, and a final small few highlights.  I gave it a matt varnish to seal it and to make it look more ‘dry’.

Then it was onto the staff.

I painted it as dark metal, and made the ground a dark earth shade.

I then painted the ‘flames’ white and gave it a green wash to make it llook otherworldly.

There are cracks on the ground where the staff is struck in, so I mixed white into the green wash and ran it into those cracks, and into the glyphs at the top of the staff.

A quick job on these, but I think they came out OK.

25th June 2023

One that has been sat on my paint area for far too long is Ironclad Man, from Ironclad miniatures.

Basically a Victorian sci-fi version of Iron Man.

I got as far as painting it red over silver.

The red didn’t look rich or vibrant enough, so in my spring clean resurrection I decided to take it back a stage.

I drybrushed it silver in two shades, leaving some red in the recesses still.

Next step was to apply some red contrast over the metal, to give a metallic red sheen.

Then to give it that iron man feel I picked out joints and facial features with gold, washed with a touch of brown and highlighted up with gold and a touch of silver.

Some blue in the eye slots, and some work on the backpack boiler, and it was pretty much done.