Spiders from Otherworld and a small dragon from Reaper

These spiders come from Otherworld Miniatures and are a rather failed experiment.

My idea was to paint them black and then let the abdomen have a hazy red shimmer on it. So I gave the black abdomen a coat of gloss varnish and then a red glaze and repeated that several times and topped with a satin varnish. The result was… somewhat disappointing.

I think the idea of varnishes sandwiching translucent layers of paint could give really interesting effects, but this was not it. I’ll have to do more experimenting and probably with an undercoat of something not so dark.

I let my daughter rummage through the case of unpainted monsters the other day to pick something she would like to have finished and she dived in, full of enthusiasm. She had a hard time deciding as the case is rather large... 

What she finally picked was this young dragon from the Reaper Bones range. We checked the D&D Monster Manual and decided it was a black dragon. I just did a very fast job on it, mainly because I think black is such a difficult color (I know it is technically not a color) to work with. Well, I have to practice more, I guess.

Anyway, we both thought it was great fun for her to find a figure and me to paint it up and we will continue doing this regularly, one monster and one character. For me it is an opportunity to paint stuff that wouldn’t be in the front of the painting queue. Next monster will be a Cthulhu-thingie that is really weird and the character will be a female druid that will be Johanna’s next D&D character.

Stay tuned for that.