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Despite being distracted by the watertank arriving I did manage to get a few of those Knuckleduster minis finished before I left for Sacramento.

Nothing very exciting here, these are supporting cast minis not hero minis. I do wish that someone would start doing some really good old west female sculpts though. These aren't bad but they could be a lot better.

A few pretty poor pictures just to prove I was painting more than anything else.

Almost half way. There are three more male minis and four more female minis in this group

Gravedigger, Blacksmith and Worker

I'm in that never ending cycle of painting more western miniatures for Calamity. This time around I'm concentrating on by-standers, those normal everyday citizens that are not likely to be armed although they certainly may catch a bullet now and then.

This batch contains a couple sets from Knuckleduster and another pack of Wargames Foundry. Got them all prepped and primed yesterday and even managed to get started on the skin tones last night. Just in case I get to bored with this bunch I still have some gunfighters ready to paint as well. Hopefully I'll make some significant progress over the weekend on these.

The one thing I do wish is that someone would spend some time sculpting some nice female western figures. The Knuckleduster ones aren't bad and there are a couple of nice ones in the Reaper, Black Scorpion and Wargames Foundry lines. But I really need some women without guns both your regular everyday citizen types as well as a better selection of soiled doves.

Here is what's on the table:

Knuckleduster OW28-306 Pioneer Women

Knuckleduster OW28-304 Working Men

Wargames Foundry  OW11/1 Town Traders pack This pack was a little odd. It is suppose to have 6 minis in it, but mine had 8. It included a double of the Doctor and the Fiddler from OW11/5  Just Passing Through pack. I figure Calamity is probably going to need at least 2 doctors anyway.

This mini is from Wargames Foundry's Old West range. She came out of pack OW11/2. She is a pretty simple and it only took a couple of hours to finish her up mostly spent trying to get skintones right. I have been having problems with skin lately and it took a lot longer to get it mostly right. I'm not totally happy with her skin but she is gaming piece and sometimes its just good enough. I do like this color scheme though, I have to work to not use it to much. I think my tones may be a little to subtle and are getting washed out in the lights.

I managed to get another citizen for Calamity finished over my few days at home. I wanted to be able to sit down and finish something so I set the Marines aside and decided on another western mini. This one is from Reaper Miniatures in their Savage Worlds line, #59005 Huckster. Now there is a little story to go with this one. The sculptor is a friend of mine; Bob Ridolphi who I have become friends with over the years at ReaperCon. I'm pretty sure he worked from the original artwork that graces the cover of the book "Hucksters & Hexes" by Pinnacle Entertainment for their Deadlands RPG. The original artwork for this cover was painted by an old friend of mine; Dan Frazier in Boulder CO. The "model" he used for that cover is another friend of mine Dave McMillen. Seems like I was pretty much destined to paint this piece, its not often you find a connection to mini like this.

I'm about to head out on business travel for the next couple of weeks. I have found it difficult to take painting stuff with me so this will probably be the last miniature I finish for a while. I have managed to finish off all but one of the western miniatures on my desk and that's because I'm not quite sure where he is right now. That leaves only the 18 WWI Marines as works in progress. Well that and the usual pewter mountain of primed and unprimed minis.

So here is the latest, Reaper's Wichita Witch from their Savage Worlds line #59027. I think the blending and highlighting may have gotten a little to subtle on this one, the pictures aren't showing the different tones in her boots and hat. But then again gaming figure!

There was a quick peek at two of these miniatures yesterday with the Marines. Late last night I got into one of those inspired painting sessions. It started with movies, I put in the Quick and the Dead and followed it up with Silverado, I like both of these movies a lot. I had Reaper's Ellen Stone in the pile of primed miniatures so I started and finished painting her last night (and into the wee hours of the morning) and finished the basing this morning. I trying to hone up my blending skills again (which tend to fall off when I'm doing army or bulk painting) and she seemed like a good candidate for it. Overall she is pretty good, although I'm having trouble getting my skin tones smooth again, something to work on since there is a lot of skin on one of the miniatures I have earmarked for the Genghis Con painting competition in February.

The other two miniatures are just more ordinary citizens for Calamity so I didn't spend a great deal of time on them. I tried a white coat on the preacher but I don't think it worked out very well and he kind of looks like a scientist raising his hand with a question. The Dixon bartender has odd eyes but was a fun mini to work on.

On to the pics, because pics are like bacon for blogs:

Reaper Miniatures, Ellen Stone, 50003 (Chronoscope)

Brigade Games, Western Characters I, Preacher I don't like how the white coat came out on this one, but I'm not going to change it. I'm pretty sure I have at least one more preacher in the pile.

Dixon Miniatures, Bartender with Whiskey bottle, WG93

Action at the Saloon

I sat down and put in some pretty solid work on the WWI Marines today. I'm not entirely happy with the color, but its actually a pretty close match to some of my color photographs so I'm going to ride with it. I was shooting for something closer to a deeper brown but I think I missed a bit. I used Vallejo Feldgrau and US Olive Drab for this bunch, different from my original combination of Vallejo Feldgrau and Dark Olive. I started the with Vallejo US Field Drab and I'll lighten up from there. I have rethought my idea and I'm not going to do any of my Marines completely in US Army colors, I'll do a group with drab shirts with green pants and one with green shirts and drab pants. I might experiment with a third version of the green as well. I can pick out three distinctive shades of the Forest Green in the pictures that I have.





I also finished up a couple more citizens for Calamity. Here they are checking out their new digs.

Battle Flag Saloon, Brigade Games Preacher (Western Characters I) and Dixon Miniatures, Bartender with Whisky Bottle (WG93)

I have actually been painting. I'm not terribly pleased with how these are going but I think they will look okay for gaming purposes. These are in various stages of painting, the skin and eyes are pretty much done on all of them, none of the hair has been done. As I blow this up with the camera I can certainly seem some rough spots that need to be taken care of. Hopefully a few glazes will take care of that. There are few highlights that are definitely "wrong" and need to be fixed. On the blacks I really want to get that black fading to dark gray look which was pretty typical for the timer period.

I have been using my Games & Gears Kolinsky Sable brushes on these. At this point I find myself a bit frustrated with the brushes. Neither of the two I have used hold their points particularly well and I find myself "fighting" the brush as I work. I have only used the shorter S1 which is suppose to be a wet-blending brush and the #1. I started with the #1 as that is my preferred size for painting and is fairly close in size to the #1 Da Vinci. I have been working with the S1 on larger areas and because its much shorter in length. I still like the triangular shaped handle on my Da Vinci's better. At this point since I don't do two brush blending I don't see the point in having a double headed brush. I certainly can't have paint on both ends at the same time as it would dry on one end before I could use it, partially because of my painting style and partially because of the climate and altitude.

Here are the pictures from after a couple of hours of work (I probably shouldn't throw movies I haven't seen into the DVD player in my workroom when I'm trying to paint, I would get more done). I think I'll block in the rest of the colors and try and get everything finished up this week.

Wargames Foundry (?)

And from the Back. I need to pick out the shoes in another color.

A Dixon Miniature.

After I took the pictures I decided on green for his shirt

A Reaper Miniataure; Coot Jenkins

Coot from the back. Vest is a little rough

Wargames Foundry(?) maybe Dixon

And from the back. Again I need to pick the shoes out in a different color.

Not a huge amount of progress but farther than I have gotten since I was working on stuff for Reaper Con