Focused work: Noh Empire Assembled!

Beautiful!

Now that I'm picking up the hobby again, one strategy I've decided to follow is Focus.  Us gamers love to try the latest board game (Star Wars Rebellion or Star Wars Destiny?) or follow the latest Kickstarter (Relic Knights 2.0?), and why not?  It's a hobby!  Just do whatever is interesting!  However, with my collection of unpainted Relic Knights, Super Dungeon Explore, Infinity, Malifaux, not to mention 3d-printed proxies for Star Wars X-wing and Armada I'm working on, I didn't have enough focus to get any one thing done. 

A New Year, A Fresh Start on the hobby, and Relic Knights 2.0

Dynamic models from Relic Knights 1.0

Wow! It's been a while!  Lots has changed since the last time: I graduated, I moved, I got a job, I got married, and more recently I bought a house.  And when you spend all your time remodeling said house, not a whole lot of time is left for hobbies! But all of that is winding down now, and my new goal is to get my mountain of miniatures painted before a kid comes along.  And nothing gets the mojo going like following a Kickstarter: Relic Knights 2nd Edition =D.

Navia Dratp in progress painting

In Progress: All I need to do is the eye detail, and maybe freehand the orange/red tattoos on his shoulder.

Recently I've been working on some Navia Dratp figures I've had primed up for the longest time.  They're part of a Japanese chess/Shogi variant where these special units can be "summoned" to the chessboard. At approximately 54mm scale, the detail on these guys are pretty nice and they're really easy to paint.  I've been using them as my practice into the world of miniature painting.  Plus the set of them were like dirt cheap since the game's been out of print for years now. The game is pretty good, lots of fun with different win conditions, but it suffered from terrible naming and probably bad marketing. And some of the character designs are just plain weird.  These two are among my favorites.  The pose on the Pterodactyl (below) is pretty dynamic too.  My painting technique here is pretty much all dry-brushing.  I haven't really moved up to blending or advanced techniques like that but it's amazing how good you can get something to look with just a simple darker color basecoat and dry-brushing up the lighter shades.  Also, this size 2 Filbert is my newest favorite brush for detailed, controlled dry-brushing. =)

probably add the red tattoos on his head an call it done!