From KeithS - A Miscellany of Monsters (80 points)

I'm sort of between larger sub-projects so I'm continuing to clear a backlog of minis that have been taking up space for a few decades.  First up is a 60mm Fire Giant from Ral Partha.  At least I think that's what he is (in any case that IS what he is now!).  I don't much like painting really big guys as I see too many defects in my own techniques, but my current D&D campaign is centered on giants, and I have this vain hope I'll get to fight some miniatures battles with the one's I've painted.


Anyhow, per my usual approach, I tried to follow the description by Gygax in the AD&D Monster Manual, so dark skin (rather than "coal black" I went with black with a hint of red).  He is wearing red dragon hide.  Sadly, there is no hair showing so I could not use bright orange!  He looks menacing enough

From the back -- more dragon armor:

Next up is 50mm Hill Giant by Heritage.  I have no idea how long this guy has been buried in my stash of old lead.  The skin is tan to brown with some red, per the MM.  Since he is a barbarian sort of giant, he gets lots of earth tones.

He looks like he's on the move.  I like the sense of catching him mid-stride.  The skin came out really darker than I liked after I ink washed it, so I ended up drybrushing over to lighten things a bit.  he should be dingy and dirty, but not insanely so.

From the back, he has two heads tied to his belt by their hair.  One was clearly human with a hapless expression (understandable).  The other was really hard to identify, so I decided to do it in standard humanoid green.  Maybe it's supposed to be an Orc or something like that.  Whatever, it is now.

Up next is a Cockatrice by Grenadier.  I had accidentally poured a little too much dark green paint in my palette while doing something else and, rather than waste it, decided to do this guy real quick.  Glad I did!  The description from the Monster Manual was a little confusing to me, as I don't think the figure exactly corresponded to the critter.  But it was close enough, so he got a green body except for the feathery part which is "golden brown."  The wings are supposed to be grey but I thought that a bit dull and dry brushed some green on the ridges.  Everything else was per Gygax's clear instructions!

I like this figure a lot.  My only qualm was basing it for outdoors, as it would be a really useful critter to have available for dungeon crawls.

Last up for the week (and it was a busy weekend, so painting time was lacking), are 9 Bugbears also by Grenadier, at about 30mm.  They come in a set of three; the first set I've had for decades and actually painted many years ago.  At the time, I thought them among my finest work, but during my rummaging I looked at them and thought I could do a LOT better now.  Also, I needed some Bugbear forces if I ever do so wargaming for my D&D campaign, so did some hunting and bought two more sets.  The previously painted ones were repainted from scratch alongside the newer ones to get them all uniform.  I rather like the result.

A close-up of each of the three sculpts.  They're well detailed and very expressive.  I do wish there were more like these.  Three dudes with eye-patches makes it seem like they are pirate LARPers!

Three have blank shields, so I went ahead and tried to come up with some designs for them.  Since I can barely draw stick figures, I stuck with my wavy dragon styles.  On the right is the chubby red dragon, while the center got a serpentine thingie.  On the left, I decided to be different and tried a medusa head with snakes going every which way.  The shields have three faces with a sharp fold between sections that made painting them somewhat difficult for my meager skills.

Three of them had pre-designed shields.  Their pretty fancy for  these guys so I figure they were looted from an armory or maybe taken after a victorious battle.  That made me feel ok about having that much uniformity.  I could've smoothed them off and done something from scratch, but I rather like the English-like designs they came with.

That's all for this week.  I'm hoping next weekend is more productive!

Some nice Giants - nice to see those - I can imagine them flinging dwarves to the other end of the table ... Nice bugbears (surely an oxymoron) I used to hate coming up against then in my long gone formative D&D years - i have topped you up some extra pounts for the giants and bugbears foir the size.