I am currently working though the Bones 4 Lost Valley expansion, with the Dreadmere expansion slated to go after that is done. However, every other batch of minis or so, I will mix it up a bit by playing the shelf game (maybe). Both for varieties sake and to force myself to get something done about the many, many minis that are all prepped and ready to paint but languish in limbo on the shelves of shame.
I recently sorted all the open and increasingly dusty trays full of prepped minis into a large number of lidded plastic boxes. I made up a little encounter table of sorts to decide what to paint unless I had a hankering to do something specific. Problem is, the shelf is more or less full at this point and to make space for anything new, I will simply have to deal with actually painting up some of what currently occupies said space.
Hence, the shelf game. Basically a little random encounter dice roll. The first roll decides which box to look in, numbers starting on the top left shelf. The next dice roll is a d3:
- Hero, a single mini
- Unit, a group of minis that make up a squad or similar.
- Monster or Vehicle or Mounted. This should be self explanatory.
Exactly which mini(s) get chosen for painting will depend on what is in the box, and what takes my fancy. If the lucky box does not include the kind of mini indicated, I will either just choose something or roll again.
I rolled 18 and 3. 18 is a big box of goblins and a few chaos dwarfs. I felt like doing something green, so I picked the resin Troll from Crooked Claw miniatures.
Who’s up for some softball?
Crooked Claw miniatures was a Germany-based one man (and afaik run as a part-time, hobby-style evenings-and-weekend business) miniatures company that was all about oldhammer style goblins (and a few orcs) sculpted by Kev Adams the Goblinmaster. I do not really know the backstory, but I surmise that the person running the company commissioned minis from Kev Adams, had them produced and cast up, and then sold them off his website. There was also an indiegogo campaign at one point. I believe my Crooked Claw minis are from that campaign. I bought a batch of them second hand some years ago. Crooked Claw minis sold off all stock and closed down early 2016.
At any rate, the Goblinmaster makes lovely goblins in his signature style, and the Crooked Claw ones are immediately identifiable as Kev Adams sculpts. However, the troll is not. Both this troll and an armoured wolf are sculpted by Diego Serrate.
I like to think I am not an elitist. This is a well sculpted lovely, even brilliant troll. But still…. not by Kev Adams. Strange how brand names can alter one’s perception of a product, isn’t it?
The troll is cast in resin as opposed to the metal most other Crooked Claw minis were made of. I put in on a 40mm base.
Painting:
I am experimenting with incorporating contrast paints into my repertoire, and am trying out different things here and there. I find that only using contrast paints on stark whiteish undercoats tend to become a but muggy or rough, and are not really my thing. Also each contrast paint behaves differently, and I still have a lot to find out about them.
For this mini I used Militarum Green and Iyanden Yellow (with Gore-Grunta Fur on the club), over a zenithal grey on black for the base coats. Using a brush that was not overladen, both colours on right after the other, drawing off the excess to avoid pooling. This served mostly to tint the underlying zentithal more than use the Contrast paint’s inherent shading effect. I might have gotten similar results using regular thinned paint. However, I like the intensity of the contrast paints, and I don’t have to thin them, put them on my palette or anything. Straight outta the pot!
Once dry, I both drybrushed and layered highlights and smoothed out some of the edges with regular paint. Some extra shading with dark quickshade here and there. Working up some details like the boils, nose, ears and eyes all with regular paint.
Tufts and flockmix on the base and done in roughly an hour after the base contrast coats were dry.
Troll
Crooked Claw Miniatures, 2014
Sculpted by Diego Serrate
Made in resin
no longer available as far as I know.
This model was completed the 2nd of May.
Painted so far this year: (Miniatures: 141 /365 goal // scenery and terrain: 11)
January: 32
Feburary: 19
March: 45 / 10
April: 41 // 1
May: 5
