“Mercury Vizing?” (Advent Challenge)

Advent challenge time again, and this month I have a couple of Sci/Fi figures for you in the shape of…

7. Andromedan Vizier 49022 (Reaper Miniatures)
8. Asanis, Mercury Flyer 30019 (Reaper Miniatures)

Both of these are of the “bones” variety of Reaper Miniature, so after they were tidied up with a very sharp scalpel (though in truth they needed very little tidying up to be honest) they were both scrubbed with an old toothbrush and a little washing up liquid, as I was advised to do by blogging supremo Matt.  They were then re-based onto two pence pieces with a little superglue and Tetrion filler, before they were given a spray undercoat of matt black.

The Andromedan Vizier is a pretty simple figure to be perfectly honest and my painting of him reflects that, so first off I gave all the metal and metallic areas of his costume a very heavy dry-brushing of bronze, then semi highlighted, semi dry-brushed these areas again this time with shinning gold. His robes were next, and to give that regal look to him I went with royal purple as a base here, following this with heavy highlights of fushia. Carrying on with the shades of purple theme I then added the details and insignia on his helmet and tabard, along with some points on his shoulder pads in lavender. His flesh gave me a bit of a conundrum as to what colour to use on it, I wanted something alien looking and did think of green, but in the end I went with Eurasian flesh, with the same mixed with coffee for the highlights so as to give a slightly “off” look to him, he does now remind me of “Dr Zaius” from “Planet of the Apes” 😂. I went for ginger hair around this (would have been one of my Mo’vemember entries if we’d been doing that this year), so after this was painted chestnut I highlighted with orange. That just left the feathered regalia on his back that I simply undercoated in coffee and highlighted in cream. Both this and Asanis were given a coat of soft tone Quickshade and then on the Visier I decided to go with my Alien base style as used on “Betty” back at the start of the year. So after my usual base of chocolate brown I dry-brushed with terracotta instead of khaki , then once the final dry-brush of coffee had been applied I glued on a few patches of red coloured sand and once dry lightly dry-brushed these in more coffee.

And so we come to our “Mercury Flyer” what this is I have no idea, do they have flyer’s on Mercury? (If you can shed any light on this please do in the comments section 🐵🤔). Anyway obviously the first job was to give her a heavy dry-brushing with the chainmail, this was followed by adding the undercoats for her costume and armour panels, in either dark red, or coffee, these were then highlighted in Sanguine scarlet or cream respectively, I then decided that the scarlet wasn’t bright eno8igh so went back in with a second highlight here in Italian red. A couple of other areas on here armour and robot arm (apparently its dangerous work flying around Mercury!) with metallic red, and added some lights here and there in orange on these too. The small amount of flesh visible above her handkerchief mask I did in European flesh, and once her eyes had been added, I highlighted this with more European flesh lightened with a touch of pale flesh. Her hair (what you can see of it) was then added in chocolate brown mixed with a touch of black to darken it. And she was done too. As with the Visier she was also coated in Quickshade light tone, and once dry had her base finished in my usual manner, that is to say, I painted the base with chocolate brown, dry-brushed with Khaki and coffee, and then I picked out areas with scenic green that were later flocked with some “Javis”, summer mix hairy grass. A spray coat of matt varnish was then put over then both to remove the shininess the “Quickshade” had given them and they were finished.

Till next time, cheers Roger.