Howdy! I'm back, after three weeks of illness followed by extreme busy-ness at work, a brief stretch of painting ennui, and a frantically calculated period of experimentation with photography and backgrounds and lighting. Never intended to have two months between posts, but I really don't know where those two months went. I'm planning on much more frequent posts, now that I've figured out a thing or two.

First, I want to say hi to my new friends, Michael from 28mm Victorian Warfare and Dave from One man and his brushes. I've been following Michael's blog for several months now, ever since I discovered we have a common love for dinosaurs when I googled 28mm dinosaur miniatures in a search for reference pics for several DeeZee, HLBS and Acheson Creations critters. I'm newer to Dave's blog but definitely enjoy his work. If you've stumbled onto my little blog here and have never visited either of their blogs, I highly recommend that you do.

Speaking of "dinosaurs", I didn't mention it originally, but I have a fair collection of animals and prehistoric critters in 25/28mm ranging from the Devonian through the Jurassic to the Oligocene and Miocene to present day. And they by no means take a back seat to my fantasy or historic figures. A zoologist by education though no longer by profession, I've had a fascination for living critters of all types as long as I can remember...and that has followed right into my two hobbies: painting/collecting miniatures, and aquariums.

I found my self struggling and getting frustrated with smaller figures, after a long time away from the hobby, and decided to get back to practicing the basics on several larger figures. The end results were a DeeZee miniatures brontotherium...

 

and a Steve Barber crocodile.

 

 

I was really happy with the algae effect on the head and scutes of the crocodile. It came out much better than I had hoped. Still have some things to work out with the lighting, as neither set shows the  colors as well as I'd like, but I'll get there. I have a full table with works in progress...

 

 

...ogres, ettins and giants from Ral Partha and Reaper, two D&D grell from Ral Partha, a Grenadier beetle and intellect devourerer-type critter, a Reaper assassin, and the Bruise Brothers from Ral Partha. The grell, intellect devourer, and Bruise Brothers simply need to have the base finished. The Ral Partha wyrm is in there as well, on hold, as I kinda hit a brain freeze on how to finish him.

 

'Til next time.