“In The Night Garden” (Advent Challenge)

So we come to my entry (well hardly an entry, as it’s only me doing this) for March in my Advent Calendar Challenge. Now I stated before that part of my reasoning behind this idea was so I would have to paint miniatures I wouldn’t normally buy/paint, and I think I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I would never have bought these two miniatures. That is not to say that they are not nice figures, they are, just really not subjects I would have ever have been drawn to pop into my “shopping basket”. So after that intriguing introduction I give you…

No 12 Giant Weasel (Official name)

No15 Gnome Adventurer with Lantern (not Official name)

Yes it’s another “Gnome”, but I promise you that’s just the way they were randomly picked, and that this is the last one, so more Gnomes this year! The Weasel was based on an integral plastic round base, but the good thing about these “bones” figures is the bases can be trimmed with a good strong pair of scissors, so the side edges were cut away, and he was rebased onto an MDF “pill” cavalry base with 25mm rounded ends (I used to make these myself, from card, but have now bought some from “Warbases”, so much easier!). The Gnome was mounted onto a two pence piece as normal. Both were then “blended” in with some Tetrion filler, and once dry they were given a spraying with matt black, that was then touched up with a brush.

Starting with the “weasel”, he was actually pretty quick to paint (and with not a lot of colours either), so taking some black, some chocolate brown, and some coffee, on a palette (Pringles lid), I mixed a little black into some of the chocolate and painted most of his back end with the resultant very dark brown, then taking more of the chocolate, I added a little coffee, and painted from his shoulders to back of his ears, using more chocolate between the two areas and blending them all together, the same was done on his face using just coffee and blended backward, with a stripe of the lighter brown run between his ears. Once all this was dry I repeated the process, except I just dry-brushed the areas with a slightly lighter tone than before, adding cream to the coffee on his face. I then added his “mask” in black along with his eyes, his nose in European flesh and his mouth in dark red, with white teeth, a dot of white was added to his eyes too as a highlight. His claws I added with more coffee, and after a quick round of touching up around his mouth he was done. To be honest he looks a little more like a “Ferret” than a Weasel now, but I certainly wouldn’t want this vicious looking this down my trousers!*

Turning to the Gnome, after I’d dry-brushed his sword, buckles and accessories in chainmail, I decided to do his coat on royal blue, this was later highlighted with more of the same with light blue added, I also used a little “neat” light blue on the frayed areas on his right shoulder and cuff. His shoes, gloves and belts were chocolate brown highlighted with leather brown. The light from his lantern came next, I started by painting the glass panes in citrus orange, then repainted the middles in lemon yellow, and finally I added a small blob of white to the centre of each, the lantern case was then added in bronze with highlights of copper. His flesh was my “old faithful” European flesh with a mix of pale, and Europen flesh for the highlights, and his hair was chocolate brown with chestnut highlights. His “hose” were first painted matt lime, then I added “rings” in coffee and cream, I also used coffee and cream on the middle stripe of the patch on his coat, the outer ones were done in plum with lupin highlights, and coffee was again used to add the stitches holding it on. I did try and add a little bit of highlighting on his left side, to simulate the light from his lantern, not sure this really worked that well (or if it even shows at all).

Both figures were then given a coat of Quickshade light tone, before being finished in my usual manner, (if you want to know what that is click on almost any other post 😀). Looking at these two now, I can’t help but think that Keith (The Angry Piper) could write some wonderful imaginative story about how the poor little Gnome went out to find the Weasel down some tunnel to protect his village, and the battle that ensued. I however am not Keith so I’ll just say two more finished, I think it will be a big “stompy” robot next, but probably not the one some of you might expect… 😉

So till then, stay safe and cheers Roger.

*Apologies to my foreign readers, so some inexplicable reason it is a tradition in the North of England for owners to put ferrets down their trousers, but please don’t ask me why!