Miniature Monday – Aaron the Conjurer
This week we take a look at a mini from the Bones 2 Kickstarter, a spellcaster with a built-in special effect. Read on to find out what our painters did with it!
(posting by Antonia)
Since we fell asleep to early last night (Dirk is still recovering from a sickness), it’s Mini Tuesday again 😀
The miniature itself is of a great quality with not too many, but still very nice details and a well sculpted and cast face. There was some flashing overall, but not much, and I like the natural flow of the robes. All the recesses on the spell effect had to be washed carefully with soap water to allow a good flow of the paint, but otherwise the miniature was quite good to work with.
Dirk decided to paint his Aaron as a fire wizard:
Dirk plans to paint spellcasters of every element, and this time he went for fire. He used many shades of red, heavily inspired by the “Avatar – the last airbender” tv show, which we gave a rewatch recently (seriously, take a look at it, it fits for all ages and should be available at Netflix at the moment). I love the color scheme of clothes and fire spell, the bright reds look great with the brown skin, and the lighting effect on the wizard’s shoulders and hair is subtle, but really convincing!
I did a head swap and made Aaron a monster:
When I saw the spell effect I somehow immediately thought of a chaos sorcerer from the Warhammer (40k) setting, and since Tzeentch is the greatest sorcerer of them all, I decided to give his follower one of those characteristic bird-like heads. I used one of the spare heads from the plastic “Tzaangors” aka Tzeentch beastmen, cut it a bit smaller (although it still looks quite large, but fortuantely neither chaos gods nor GW miniature lines bother much with small and delicate features in cultists) and sculpted a feathered neck with greenstuff. I also enlarged the hands a bit to make them look like rough claws, used mostly blues and purples to paint, and here we go, a ‘nice’ chaos sorcerer. (The pic is a bit blurred, but you get the idea; believe me, I’m glad we managed to take pictures at all).
Jim decided to make the spell effect look like smoke:
Jim liked this mini and thought it to be a “good guy” rather than a villain, and I’d agree – Aaron looks angry, but not evil to mee too! Anyway, well done with the paintjob, Jim, I really like the color choice (love the green!) and how carefully and cleanly you painted the mini – I was (as usual…?) a bit annoyed how often I had to re-paint certain areas for a cleaner look… and you even picked out the detail on the book’s back! Jim wrote he tried a bit of a browner skin tone this time, it looks good, very natural, and still a strong contrast to the hair. Since everyone else painted the spell effect as flames (seems to be an obvious idea), is there a reason why you decided to let it look like smoke? Now that I see it on the mini I think that choice works quite well!
Concerning skin tones I think I’ll one day try and write up a tutorial for a variety of different ones, because I love to see more than ‘just’ caucasian tones on miniatures. As of when that will happen… we will see. I should have learned by now that young parents don’t get to plan too many projects at once. I’m already proud we manage to put a blog post online every other week *sigh*
Michael added some very cool (hot?) effects!
Michael wrote: “As you can see, I went complete pyromancer on this one. I used water effect to make ribbons of flame to glue into the base. I followed the technique you guys published way back in a much earlier blog post (so thanks for the tip!). I’m really happy with how it all turned out.” Awesome use of the technique, really! How many parts of fire effect did you prepare for this ring of fire? Which kind of effect gel or glue did you use, and would you recommend it? I love the great detail work on this miniature, and the color scheme is very fitting and harmonic.
This week’s gallery:
Coming next:
05/14/18 Bones III Werebear (B3 Core)
(I added some of your suggestions already, I might shuffle them around a bit, but keep them coming! For some minis there are no pics in the onine shop yet so I’ll add them later.
As you can see I prepared a lot of date entries but am still looking for mini ideas. Post your suggestions if you like! The ‘Type of mini’ placeholder is just that, if you want something else tell us!)
05/28/18 Bones III Nazeera Bloodraven, female fighter (B3 Core)
06/11/18 Bones II Bugbear Warband! Hunter, Warrior and/or Leader (B2 Core)
06/25/18 Bones III Let the dogs out: War Dog and/or Foo Dog (B3 Core)
07/09/18 Eastern Encounter Part Two: Oni demon female and/or male (B3 Core)
07/23/18 Bones III Quinn, Iconic Investigator (B3 Core)
08/06/18 Catch-Up Monday – your pick from Bones 1 & 2 incl. extras. What about some demons (toad, wolf, slime…), a dragon or a giant?
08/20/18 Bones II Skeletons, as many as you like (like this or this or this one) Here you can find the Bones 2 Core Set picture, look for “Shambling Dead”. On reapermini.com you can search for “skeleton” and check the bones minis to find them. If you have other skeletons to paint just send us pics of those!
09/03/18 Bones III Ogres (guard, smasher, clubber) (B3 Core)
09/17/18 Unhooding woman/cleric (not yet available) (B3 Core)
10/01/18 Bones III Bregan, Valkyrie (B3 Core)
10/15/18 Bones II TBA
10/29/18 Bones III Hobageddon: Hobgoblin warriors (B3 Core)
11/12/18 Bones III Elven Blacksmith (B3 Core)
11/26/18 Bones II TBA
12/10/18 Bones III Animal/Monster TBA
12/24/18 Christmas break
12/31/18 New Year’s break
01/07/19 Bones III Humanoid TBA
01/21/19 Room for your suggestions!
Caffeineforge 
Flame on! How could you not think of fire with this one! Well done, everyone.
Dirk – There’s no doubt he’s a fire wizard. The red/orange/yellow scheme looks great and the flame came out enough different to provide a little contrast.
Antonia – Nice conversion, of course! That head looks really crazy. The blue/red/yellow trio is one I use a lot and works well here. My favorite part, however, is the flame! It looks very unearthly and demonic.
Michael – Awesome flame effects! It would be easy to lose the mini in that “Ring of Fire” but your color choices show up well. Funny, my eyes keep getting drawn back to the book and dagger. When I was painting, those were the parts that I liked the best.
For a while, mine was looking dangerously like a Christmas mini: Green, red, silver. Fortunately, as I highlighted up towards orange, the effect diminished. I love the face on this sculpt, so I was pleased when my painting came out well, even though you can’t really see the eyes. My only minor disappointment is that the hair seems to have lost some of it’s contrast. The smoke really just came from me pondering if it would work and look OK while I was trying to decide which spell Aaron is truly casting. I had thought to use some bright contrasting color like purple or blue, but in the end went with gray/brown. The smoke is painted in grays and then washed in brown and I think it came out pretty good.
Some great stuff this week!
I started to paint this model 4 weeks ago, assuming that I would be in time – But alas, children and real life stuff came in the way, and I am only halfway done with it. 😦
Hi David,
believe me I know all about “real live issues” (since our little one is 1 and a half year old). But if you want to let us participate in your work, just send us a pic of your WIP and we can update the article.
Dirk
Very nifty work, everyone!
Dirk and I were thinking on similar lines with the fire mage. I really see the Avatar look in these robes, though, and the brown skin tone came off really nicely.
Antonia, I was NOT expecting that head! Crazy! I’m not familiar with the source material, but the head and the flames both look incredibly bizarre, in the best way possible.
Jim, I’ve raved at the skill in your blending before, and this one is no different. Excellent work on that robe – the highlight on his left knee really caught my eye. I like the smoke effect too; the faces in the smoke seem very appropriate.
When I started this mini, I hadn’t quite visualized the final goal. I knew I wanted to do something magical on the base, so I glued him into the hollow part of a base and painted the whole figure. For the flame effect, I initially just made two “ribbons” of flame, a short one for the inside and a tall one for the outside. I was guessing on the lengths, though, and there was a gap in the front. I almost left it, but then made two small pieces to fill it in. I used Woodland Scenics Water Effects – Surface Water, squeezing out a bunch of Effect glue (this came in a bottle with a nozzle) onto a piece of wax paper and painstakingly shaped it. It did take several days to cure and become more clear before I carefully peeled it off the paper, but it was nice and flexible, so I could bend the ribbon into a ring. I just used regular CA glue to put them on the base, though I nearly glued my glove to the model when doing the small pieces for the front!