I feel like sushi tonight.

Our  DnD Campaign set in mythical Japan has picked up steam again, which has gotten me looking at my medieval Japan references again. At the same time Gunbird started building Japanese houses and a second hand copy of Daisho came along on the LAF. Apparently Samurai are in the air... So why fight it?

Especially as I have a Pappis box full of the belligerent little dudes. :D A couple were already paint in progress and I had a basecoated Torii. As good a point to start (or continue) as any.
Here's the results of a day's painting:

 I tried to get the Torii to look like a simple, weathered, rural one, the design just lent itself to that. No idea where it came from, it was a gift from Gunbird.

And more of a close up of the Samurai themselves:

The mini's are from The Assault Group, Gempei Wars era Samurai.
I've got a few more primered and ready to paint, but those will have to wait for another weekend.
Once my Daish rule set arrives, I'll have a root through my box and assemble a warband/Buntai. I should have some ashigaru as well. And if I have the right mix of weapons and gear, they may even visit Frostgrave?
For now, it's just fun to be doing hobby stuff again and sharing enthusiasm with Gunbird.

See you next time!

All in all, you're just another...

... brick in the wall.
Tiny foam ones, that is. This weekend the lad is out on a sleepover trip, the misses is meeting up with friends, so I've designated this "Terrain Weekend".
Specifically, I wanted to work on the scenic background I'm building for my wife's Warhammer Quest collection.. I had one section of corridor I still needed to do the walls for. Inspired by JimBibbly's excellent Castle Blackwolf thread on the Lead Adventure Forum I decided to try my hand at bricklaying. As I wanted the wall to look roughshod and crudely made, I opted not to measure or use a ruler when cutting, but to just cut by eye and feel. I'm glad I did, the results look nice and "rustic" (aka dilapidated and unsafe...):

Here is how the entire thing looks at the moment:

I've still got a fair  bit to go before I can paint this beast (I should have included a mini for scale, come to think of it). Here's what I still need to do:
-Sculpt some (semi-round) tree trunks for the upper left area, to give the impression that the cave entrance is in the middle of a forest.
-Add floors to the centre corridor sections (the left one, with the large stone blocks gets a dirt floor, the centre one a tiled one, maybe even a mozaic, the right one gets worn plank flooring).
-Detail all of it (floors, furnishings, dirt and debris, small little touches). This may potentially be the most time-consuming step yet....
-Seal all the solvent-vulnerable materials and primer the thing!

Sunday update:
I got some work done on the trees, but I ran out of greenstuff and daylight...
Here's where I got:

The leftmost tree still needs to get it's wire branches reinforced with greenstuff. After that the trees can get a bark texture (still need to figure out how...). Nothing of it is glued in place at the moment, I want to attempt to paint a scenic backdrop on the rear wall. Hopefully I can achieve the effect that the 3d trees are merely the nearest ones of a larger forest. If not, I'll just have to cover up the entire rear wall with trees...

"Tha mo bhàta-foluaimein loma-làn easgannan!"

That's what he shouted at me as he staggered out of the bushes towards us, or at least, that's how it sounded to me.
Several of my men had already drawn weapons and were ready for him, or any hidden friends of his, to attack us. 
As he noticed the movements of my retainers, he twitched and fell over flat on his back. As he lay immobile, a tense second of silence stretched into several seconds, then a minute. My retinue exchanged confused glances. I quietly instructed them to keep their positions and remain alert, but not to do anything...yet. This standoff was broken by him suddenly thrusting a bottle at the sky and laughing uproariously for a full five minutes. 
Still chuckling, he stood up, but broke his bottle in the process. His face turned red and contorted in rage. My men shuffled nervously, as the goblin drew a deep breath. Before they could decide on their actions, he launched into a indecipherable roaring goggle-eyed rant, seemingly aimed at his broken bottle, the skies, the woods behind him, and anything in between. 
I believe, could it understand but a single word of it, this stream of (I assume them to be) profanities would have greyed my hair and bleached my heraldry, such vitriol was behind it! 
At some point, seemingly halfway into a sentence, he suddenly fell quiet, sighed deeply, and started to sniff. Seconds later he was sitting on the forest floor, hands limply in his lap, crying as if all the grief of the world suddenly was on his shoulders.
He cried for quite some time...
All this time me and my men stood there, astounded and confused by this strange specimen of the goblin species, and his indecipherable actions and language.
Just when we were at the point of deciding to move on and leave him be, he suddenly jerked his head upright, wiped away his tears and stood up.
He looked around until he saw me. Then he walked towards me and looked me straight in the eye. He shouted something at me, "Tha gaol agam ort!" I believe it was. At that he seemed himself to blink in confusion, and then said "Is mise cliamain" or something like it, in a more quiet voice.
Muttering under his breath, pointing at various member of my retinue or items in our baggage train, he walked to the rear of the column, and sat in the grass until we departed. When we left, he walked after us.

He has followed us ever since. At least, until 5 months later, when we met another group of traveling adventurers on the road and he apparently decided to follow them along instead. 

Sometimes we encounter him again, always with another group of heroes. Sometimes he joins us, sometimes he doesn't. We still don't know why.
Drunk or sober (rarely!), he hasn't been any more intelligible than on that first day.
He always knew to find the best loot and booze, though...


Gilbert D'Abelard, traveling knight, recounts his first meeting with the goblin adventurer known only as "Mad" McHaggis the Fighting Drunk.

The man himself, along with his three favorite things in the world: A heavy blunt instrument, whiskey and gold. He is well known to be an intemperate and enthousiastic user of all three.

This is the second miniature I got in a gift package from fellow Lead Adventure Forum member Elprez. It's Hasslefree Miniatures' Sparr.
I knew the triangular whiskey bottle is specific to a small family of brands, namely Grant's and Glenfiddich. Of the two, Glenfiddich has a green bottle, and as there would already be a fair bit of green in the model, I opted for Grant's, in their clear bottle. Specifically, he is holding a bottle of Grant's Family Reserve.
Tying in to this theme, "Mad" McHaggis is dressed in the Grant clan tartan, or at least as close an approximation as my eyesight and painting skills will allow.

Here is a shot from the behind:

 Thank you, Elprez, he was a lot of fun to paint!

The treasure chest is from the old GW Mordheim accessory sprue, and will be part of my wife's Warhammer Quest set. I painted it to look old and dirty, but still solid. It's fairly subdued in colours, so that it would set off the richness and colour of the gold. Have to make sure the riches draw the eye...

Tinctures and Metals, Charges and Blazons...

Or, in other words, the stuff of heraldry!

If you're painting knights you can't get around it. To make my life easier when designing heraldry for my knights, I made a little colouring-book style sheet to work out how designs for heraldry would work. Not only on the shield, but also on the horse's caparison or in the livery of a knight's retinue. I didn't want to discover halfway through painting that a certain combo or design didn't work out after all. I'd rather waste 10 minutes and some paper, than spend hours on a miniature and having to strip it...

I mentioned this sheet on the LAF and offered to scan it.

So I thought I might as well put it up here.

Here is the design sheet I use:

(Sadly, scanning it has washed out the lower right area a fair bit.)

This is the one that I used in deciding on a colour scheme for my recently painted knight and retinue:

Like I said, colouring-book style...

If you need a primer on how to design heraldry, this one seems pretty complete and thorough: www.internationalheraldry.com

Behold!

This miniature is somewhat special to me, as it is a gift from a generous fellow member on the Lead Adventure Forum* who goes by the name Elprez.
So I decided to give it a bit more attention when shooting pics of it.
Here it is, the Beholder:

The miniature is a Black Tree Design "Evil Eye".
I painted the miniature up from a ruddy brown basecoat, highlighted up to a pale, almost tan brown. Initially I simply drybushed, alternating with various purple, brown and red washes and glazes to smooth the colour transitions and tweak the colour to the tone I wanted. For the last few passes I painted the highlights instead. Quite an unusual experience to paint what is essentially not much more than a textured ball. It meant I could spend my time and mess about with texture and tone of colour instead of needing to focus on getting all the details, and making different colours work with each other. It's a nice change of pace to try and make a single-colour model look interesting.
I hit the eyes with a layer or two of gloss varnish, to give them a more natural shine.
Thank you again Elprez, for giving me the opportunity to paint this model!

I painted this model over the Easter weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed myself doing it. I just didn't have the time until now to get a photographic backdrop set up. (Should have taken the time to clean the lens too, but didn't discover it wasn't clean until after I took all my pics... Then again, it adds a slight dreamlike quality to the pics. ;-p)

*: A really great forum, full of lovely folk. If  you don't know of it already, you should really give them a visit!