What I Spent My Afternoon Doing

Since it was snowing out and it was my "off" weekend for D&D, I read OSR blogs all morning and then broke out my miniatures for some painting. I actually spent the first couple of hours going through the paints here to see which ones were still good, my buddy Lance recently donated a large collection of his paints to me*, so I figured it was about time I checked them out since he had had them in storage for quite a while. Most of them made it, but there were 13 casualties, almost all Games Workshop paints, except for 1 truly ancient AD&D bottle.

I decided that I would prime a bunch of miniatures up for painting, hopefully this week, for my new B/X campaign set in England during the Anarchy. My lovely wife Mona joined me for this fun weekend activity and began to paint a previously primered Black Orc Games Geisha, just for fun, until I had some miniatures more appropriate for our current campaign ready. I am a stickler for waiting 24 hours for the primer to dry, but she over-ruled me, since she is an actual artist and just waited until she decided they were dry enough.

I primered miniatures today until I ran out of primer. She painted a total of three from start to finish, and has a fourth in progress. My son, whose 17th birthday is tomorrow, so Happy Birthday John, painted his first ever miniature too. He's convinced it sucks, I don't think it's too bad.

So here are the pictures.



This is John's first try at painting a miniature, from the front.



And from the back, he was going for a skull on the shield there. I tried to warn him not to try an paint anything too detailed on the shield, but he wouldn't listen. He decided it looks like a Panda. The red is supposed to be blood. I usually go for a less is more approach to gore on my miniatures, but again, it's his first time and he's 17 tomorrow.



This is the Lantern Bearer miniature I call Lorenzo, after my last campaign's professional lantern man. Oddly, this is the only picture of all the ones that Mona took of the individual miniatures that she painted that came out good, the rest were all blurry.



These are all 4 of the miniatures that were completed today from the front.



And from the back.



This is the huge bunch of mostly Clan War Samurai Heavy Infantry, but also a bunch of Black Orc Games Bushido Clan and some of their Panthera Tribe.



Lastly, a group shot of the miniatures I primered today I think I did 46 total, including 3 of the ones that were painted or partially painted. Most of them are Mega-Minis or old Grenadier AD&D Gold Box, the rest are a mix of Ral Partha, Heritage and a bunch of other companies. I only wish I had remembered to grab the pack animals off the shelf in the other room before I ran out of primer.



*Only fair, years ago I did the same for him, strangely three of my old AD&D bottles made the trip back, sadly one of them had dried up.