Snow Leopard

After the long hiatus that was last year, I have been re-energised by the winter break into getting the paints out.

This was helped along by at least 2 games of Frostgrave over the holidays with my eldest. She

In an attempt to equip ourselves for more varied gameplay at home as opposed to at a store, I picked up a couple of prepainted D&D minis, a panther and a bear, as well as a few odds of scatter scenery (more on that in a future post). Turns out, after googling for some pics of the original to post here, it was actually a limited edition Guenhwyvar miniature. I am not a big D&D fan, so really this means very little to me, other than it works as a big cat!

Photo not mine

The bear doesn't really need any work, but the panther was bought to be used as a Snow Leopard, so needed a little modification and a new coat of paint. I didn't take any WIP shots of the greenstuff job on this mini, but basically, I bulked up its shoulders and added some fur to its head, neck and tail.

So, with that, we have the Snow leopard:

I realise this is far from my best work, but the goal was to finish something, and this was painted in a very short time, is table ready, and the Big'un is pleased with it, so goal achieved. It'll take more than this mini for me to get back up to the standard where I was happy with my work last year, but baby-steps.

The Big'un has a wizard with the Animal Companion spell, and has been trying out the various options in her games, with the Snow Leopard being a favourite, and Ice Toad a close second, so I guess I'll be repainting the toad mini I have next.

Upper Canada Village

As newly minted Canadian Citizens, we get a Canadian cultural pass. This allows free access to a whole host of attractions and parks across the country, as a way of helping new Canadians to see and access the country. One of the places we can get into for free is the Upper Canada Village. This is only about an hour and a half from Montreal.

I can remember going to somethign similar as a kid, with the Canadian branch of the family on one of our many visits to Toronto as a young 'un (I think it may have been this one), but I can't remember a thing about it, other than some pigs, people in costume, and it being really muddy. Fortunately, that was not the experience we had today (the blistering sun for one kept the mud at bay). Furthermore, there were two added bonuses to the visit. First off, they were holding a Medieval Festival today, replete with vikings and jousting (not at the same time) amongst a host of other events. This we knew of before going, and was one of the reasons we went today. The second bonus was that the village is sited right beside Crysler Farm, that of 1813 fame.

Firrstly, some pics from the Medieval part of the day.

...and got to try out some others

We got to see all these warmachines in action...

Big'un gets to go for a ride on the knight's horse.

Full contact jousting.

A dragon and minstrel show.

Vikings marching to battle. I was surprised how easily the lil'un followed the chevaliers!

I was sorely tempted by the one with the wings!

Then it was back to the 1860's era village. A great mix of buildings with many roles within the village. Unlike a lot of this type of place, where you just look in and see old stuff, each one of the buildings had a volunteer playing the role of the owner of the building, and each one had very interesting stuff to pass on, as well as was able to answer any questions we had. The last little surprise, was, when looking at the map of the village, I noted one of the homes was named the Robertson House. Made me feel right at home! If you're in the area, I cannot recommend this place more highly.

In the end, the three things in one place was too much for one visit, and we didn't make it round the farm memorial site, so no pics of that. That plus the gorgeous weather all day left those of us with a soft northern complexion in need of retiring back to the air conditioned car before sun-stroke set in. The good news is that there was enough of the village still to see (and a train we didn't manage to go on), that we plan to come back another time (as it's still free for us for the rest of the year), at which point I intend to get a look at the site.

Giraffe Mask

And now for something completely different...

This is not gaming related, but is still modelling/craft/painting related.The big 'un has a school play next week. Nothing big, just her class for the parents and maybe other kindergarten students. In the play she has the role of a giraffe. For the play, each student has to provide their own costume. K wanted to buy a giraffe mask on etsy, but in my skinflint way, I decided I could do better for less. My bluff was called, so out came the papier-mache. Something I haven't worked with since I was in primary school.

The first step was to blow up two balloons to roughly the sizes of the girls heads. Yes, I only need to make one mask for school, but I have two daughters, so I have to make two masks.

Wet papier mache on two balloons. Left over-night to dry.

Dowel rod cut to size, then glued on with white glue, and toilet paper glued round the base. Toilet paper was also used to make the lump between the horns. Again left overnight to dry.

The ears were cut out from cardboard, leaving flaps at the bottom to be glued both in front and behind. Again, the ears were glued on with white glue, and the join strengthened with addition of toilet paper, white glue and water. 

The ears were covered in a layer of tissue paper to strengthen them, to look like skin, and so the card would take the paint well (the backs of the ears were shiny card). I also put tissue paper over the horns to make them a little less wooden.
The mask on the right has a tissue paper nose in place. This was an experiment in making the mask more 3-D, but I dropped this route, as it was beginning to look less like a giraffe.

The balloons were popped, and the edges trimmed to vaguely fit the children's heads. The masks were then covered with a layer of geso undercoat.

There is a lack of pictures of the next few stages, but basically, I put it on the big'un's head to see where the eyes would go, then cut eye holes, and trimmed the edges so as not to hurt her ears. Then it was on with the painting. I had originally though the eyes of the giraffe would be level with the eye-holes, but I blew the balloon up a little smaller than need be, so the eye-holes were far too low to be the real eyes. this meant they had to become the nostrils, and the eyes were painted on. After the painting was finished, cardboard eye-lashes were added as a final touch.

The nose look more like a cow or a gnu than a giraffe (giraffe noses are rather pointy) but that is just an artifact of the eye-hole placement. I'm sure with the rest of the costume it'll look better, and more giraffey.

Now I have to go finish the other one, once the lil'un has shown me where to make the eye-holes. Then the rest of the costume, which is basically a painted t-shirt. I guess that'll be this year's Halloween too!

Paint Table Saturday

I have never yet participated in this spot as yet, as Saturdays are not a day I get to do much painting. However, this afternoon was a family painting session, as the girls and I sat down together.

First off, we did some painting on paper, then, once I waited to see if everyone was actually in the mood to paint, and not to wander off and do other stuff, we each took one of these old WFB Wood Elf archers each and got stuck in.

Man, these things are old. The first plastic minis I bought, and I think some of the first plastics GW made. The detail on these is impressively minimal, but they were perfect for today's exercise.

The big'un was having trouble with the paint coming off the mini when she was holding it (we were using other craft paints as well as my acrylics, but they were doing the job), so I had to get each of them a cork to hold the mini with.

Here are the final results:

As you can see, only the lil'un finished hers off, what a speed painter! I loved the colour the big'un used for the cloak, so I copied her, no need for more green in my archer unit. She in turn liked the green hair her sister had painted and copied that.

I have more of these guys, some of which I painted about 20 years ago or so. Look out for them in the near future.