First looks at painting Reaper Bones!

Ok, so not as much completed over the weekend in the painting department as I would have liked.

I blame this partially on the poor weather, and the chores that needed to get done, but also on the new PS3 FFXIV game that finally came to Turkey. After picking it up on Friday, I knew that my weekend was shot, and low and behold it was.. meh.. still a pretty sweet game, and a good time suck all around!

Anyways.. that aside, I did do a bit of hobby related work. First I worked on picking what projects I would take to show at BAM which is rapidly approaching, and also fixed the transports with some foam to better safeguard against breakage.

That aside though, I also tackled the first of many Reaper Bones models! And since it was the first take on these little b*****ds I figured I should pick an easy model. So this old lady sweeping from the Townsfolk range was my first victim!

Prep was simple. I took it to the sink, pulled out the soap and an older toothbrush and gave it a scrubbing.. all the while praying to the artistic gods of yore that the mold release would be removed, and it would hold my paint. What is funny is that for this I actually took WIP shots throughout the whole process! And since I have been asked a few times lately how I go about painting here is a kinda walkthrough of my process :)

So here we see the model, post wash and scrub, attached to a 20mm base, sand glued on, and then pattafix'd to a socket to make it easier to hold and paint her. Pretty standard start to a model these days! I have tried to remove some of the mold lines, but since this is a test, and a model that would most likely sit in the background, I am really not too bothered with them.

Next up is the airbrush primer. I am out of Black ( on order and will hopefully pick up in Hamburg this time around ) so this is Dark German Grey. Again from Vallejo's primer range. Great little stuff, and so far the paint is holding!

Now the classic 2k priming.. though for me, I tend to go with a 3k.. being Black/Light Grey/White. Shooting the light grey at a 45 degree angle from the top, and then the white from directly above. This gives me a little bit more variation in the shades on the model, and since it is with the airbrush it takes so little time extra here.

Airbrush is put aside, and the face was worked on. No real step by steps here, as I was experimenting on the colors again. Here I used the GW Cadian Fleshtone as a base. Then added white and cream to it to lighten it up, and Vallejo Air Color Mud Brown for the shadows. After working on the Alice dio, I have begun to try to soften the colors used on female faces, so this was my first shot at it. Mud Brown was used for the eyebrows, and the eyes were washed with a black before adding some flesh+white. Then dotted with black.

Notice that I did not paint the arms yet. This is due to the fact that I have the dress behind it, and if I painted the arms now I most likely will have to retouch them up due to paint slippage. Happens when you don't want it, and doesn't when you think it will. Oh well.. such is life.

You can also see I began to pain the base here also but that was just cause I had a lot of mud brown still on the palette and it was a good color to use for the sand also.

Now the dress gets some paint. Pretty simple coloring here, and again the colors of Alice were used. I figured try it with something that I know best on this model so that I can give a better comparison against other mediums later on as a comparison. Here it is just a base of VMC Prussian Blue thinned a lot to lay on a few layers ( learned that from Alice also ), and then adding some white to it to lighten it up. Shadows are Dark Sea Blue and black. Again super thinned down and almost washed onto the model.

Base is just a series of washes and inks. Mostly brown/black inks, and sepia wash. Then drybrushed with cream for the highlights. Again, pretty simple and standard for the base here.

Shot of her from the rear. You can see a bit of the imperfections in the casting here better. But again, this model cost 50 cents or something like that.. really no right to complain here at all.

For the apron, I did not want stark white so went with a more greyish tones here. Again laying down a base of thinned layers instead of a heavy one layer. This was used from Andrea's Black set.. and was the base coat color for black if you can believe it.

I just continued on with the black set from Andrea working more on the highlights sections, and adding some white near the top. I also washed with with a very thinned black afterwards to bring the colors together, and tone everything down a bit more also.

At this point I also painted up the arms in the same manner as the face, and then began to work on the broom handle. Again mud brown was used here, and mixed in some black for the shadows, and cream for the highlights. Washed with Sepia.

Hat is similar to dress and apron. Nothing fancy.

And here we see the pretty much finished product. Broom bristles was washed with Sepia again, and then drybrushed with cream/mud brown.

Hair is mud brown, washed with Reikland Fleshtone from GW's new washes, and then touched up with cream/mud brown for highlights. Final pieces touched with some white.

At this point it would receive 2 or 3 layers of satin varnish from the airbrush again just to seal the paint in. Not sure how well it will hold, but for now it seems pretty safe. Might have to toss it into a bucket of models for a bit and see how it holds up!

And then photos taken with the big camera instead of my cell phone WIP shots. Gives a bit better picture of the overall model. But it was a nice one to paint up as a starter in this new material. And actually I think it hold promise more so than originally thought. It just depends on the model itself. But I can foresee with a bit more prep on these, and some better cleaning, I might have been able to paint this to a higher quality even. Instead of rushing through it like I did here.

Also it was nice to paint something with a pretty limited palette of colors. With only 10 or 12 colors in total, most of which were re-used throughout the scheme regardless of placement, it also brought together some interesting complimentary uses I think.

There are a few other models that I think will look great due to the material and can paint up nicely, but I will also attempt to paint up a model that I think is not suited for this material and see how it turns out also. More tests to occur!

And so.. what do you all think of this? Still a fail material or does it show promise when painted up a bit more? Comment below!