Miniature Monday – Gauntfield (Updated)
Although Halloween is still months away, we painted some really spooky scarecrows this week!
(posting by Antonia)
Editorial Note: We just got our shipment of Bones 3 miniatures! Yay!
And guess what – tomorrow (August 1) the Bones 4 Kickstarter is going live. *sigh* I know, American backers could enjoy their minis months before, but still… Shipping outside the US has always been difficult for the Bones Kickstarters, and we’ll see how the darned Brexit will influence the situation for Bones 4, since the european distribution went through the UK… But anyhow, the quality of the figures seems to be really nice, so I’m looking forward to painting some of them.
When we chose Gauntfield, we picked it because of its size – it towers standard humans, I guess it’s supposed to scare a lot of crows – or some very big ones? Pterodactyles perhaps? On a closer look, the mini also shows some crisp details like the stitches on the burlap sack or the tiny skull as a belt buckle.
When I looked at my mini, I wondered “How is this thing animated? Some kind of dark magic for sure!”
And since I’m always interested in lighting effects, I decided to give this scarecrow an evil glow! To do this, I decided where the glow would come from (the inside of the scarecrow instead of the bones themselves) and after painting the mini in base colors, I added bright green with a tad of white for the glow. It was a tricky one, because the bright green had to go between the ribs – it would have been much easier to just brush the light on the elevated instead of the lower parts. I’m not convinced that the picture shows the whole glowing effect, but since the eyes and mouth look quite nice I’m still happy with the result 😀
As an afterthough I dappled a bit of dark orange paint on the scythe for an quick-and-easy rust effect, what do you think?
Dirk said he hadn’t the faintest idea how to paint (or use) the mini, so he re-modeled it to be something else!
Although we were out of town over the weekend, he managed to green-stuff the scarecrow into a gaunt witch – a Hag, in D&D’s terms. To do this, he covered most of the visible skeleton joints whith putty and scratch-built an enormous nose (reminding me of GW-style goblins or the wicked witch from Oz) which I absolutely love! The creature also got breasts, more rags to cover them and a very creepy eyeball pendant (please excuse the pun, but it’s a real eye-catcher!). It’s really awesome how some little details completely chance the look of the whole mini, don’t you think?
The paintjob is also very fitting, and the greenish runes on the scythe are a very cool touch.
Michael sent us a classic scarecrow:
He wrote that this was a speedy paintjob, but I can’t find any oversights 😉 The palette is traditional, and I really love the overall look. Very halloween-ish! The color of the cloak reminds me of pumpkins – is it reddish-orange in real life or does it just look that way? You wrote that you gave the scythe blade a red tinge, which is a nice detail – it seems more bloody than rusty, which adds to the menacing look of the face. This scarecrow definitely looks like it’s coming to get us!
Update:
Brian sent us Gauntfield clad in bright and familiar colors!
As he already commented his picture came a bit later, but no worries, we can always update 😀
His version of Gauntfield also uses orange, albeit much brighter and really really pumpkin colored! Did you think about this/Halloween while painting, or how did you chose your color scheme? You wrote that you didn’t intentionally painted the mini in the team colors of the Denver Broncos (who are a football team? Baseball? European here :p ).
I like the overall look, although the mini would need one or two layers of wash to fit in with our more grimey style 😀 Nice idea to give the bones a grey undercoat with white highlights, that way the creature looks like something constructed, maybe from more than one dead body…!
This week’s gallery:
Coming next:
08/14/17 Olivia, Female Cleric, Core Set
8/28/17 Swamp Invasion Part 2: Turtle Warriors, Core Set
9/11/17 Little ones: Hobbit Ranger and/or Gnome Druid (as many as you like 🙂 )
9/25/17 Catch-Up Monday: Monday Minis that you missed last time! Bones I & II
10/09/17 Start with Bones III! Mini is still to be announced 🙂
10/16/17 Bones III miniature TBA
10/30/17 Bones –> II <– miniatue TBA
11/13/17 Bones III miniature TBA
Caffeineforge 
D’oh! I forgot to send in my photos! Everyone’s looks great though…
-Brian
Feel free to send them! The more the merri-, ahm, scarier!
I was so busy that I didn’t even get a chance to start mine! Oh, well, everyone else’s came out good and they’re all different, too.
I was hoping someone would do a glow! I contemplated trying it for a bit, but after my vacation, I didn’t have a ton of time to try something new. It looks great! Very creepy and spectral.
Dirk’s hag modification is awesome! Besides the great nose, I like the eyeball brooch and the arcane runes on the scythe blade.
The cloak on mine is in fact reddish-orange in person (the reddish on the back of the hat, though, is a weird reflection). I blended Reaper Fireball Orange with a little Army Painter Chaotic Red (kind of a dark brick red) to darken it, then brown wash and orange highlighting.
I found this sculpt was GREAT for washes and drybrushing. There were a lot of little ridges and grooves everywhere which let me get this done in a relative jiffy, especially compared to the last one.