Category Archives: Dungeons & Dragons Monsters

Reaper Bones 44078: Giant Snake

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Reaper Bones 44078: Giant Snake, Julie Guthrie

I haven’t been blogging or doing as much following and reading as I’d like to. I just haven’t had enough time to keep on on my own blog, my own comments, your blogs and comments. So I’ve been dipping in and out when I can, but I have at least kept up with a bit of painting. Again – not as much as I’d like, but even my leisure time is being stretched a bit more than usual as Marouda and I managed to get hold of a pair of Xbox Series X – and so co-op gaming and painting have taken aa priority over blogging. I mean, I finished this one in the first few days of January, but it’s taken me almost three weeks to get my arse out to take the photos.

The model, then – Reaper’s Giant Snake from the last Bones campaign to deliver. Not the one still outstanding, obviously. This one is cast in the newer “black” version of their PVC (despite being cast in white) and was actually bloody nice to paint. No stickiness, no issues with spray priming, no issues with using whichever paints and mediums I wanted to, no issues with varnish. Now they need to make all of their Bones models in this stuff, including re-runs of the older sculpts.

Reaper Bones 44078: Giant Snake, Julie Guthrie

It’s been sitting around for ages, but I had gone so far as to glue ot to a base. So I did the thing where you see a model on your painting desk and decide to get it out of the way by painting it. I got it done over 2 days, mostly due to drying time for sand and washes and so forth. I googled the look of the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, as it’s got something that looks like a rattle at the end of the tail. Kinda hard to see in these pics, and I mean, it’d work as a generic green snake or whatever, but I sometimes like to use animals as an excuse to practise putting together natural patterns, even if not always pushing myself.

Reaper Bones 44078: Giant Snake, Julie Guthrie

As you can see here, it’s a pretty decent sized model. No idea where I’ll use it really. I guess it works for D&D/FRP games (as does almost any kind of animal) but I could also drop it into post-apoc games as the pulpy-irradiated giant version of the normal Earthly aminal! 😉

It’s also my next submission for Dave’s Paint What You Got Challenge. There’ll be a few more of them over the next few days assuming I can write up the posts. 😉

D&D Monster Manual 52: Tomb of Annihilation – Pterafolk

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Dungeons and Dragons Tomb of Annihilation – Pterafolk, Wizkids

First up, Happy New Year to those of you who are reading this in the timeframe it’s been posted. Secondly, here’s another pair of models completed in November. I’ll really need to get out and photograph the rest of them so I can wrap up the November stuff as quickly as possible. These sculpts don’t appear to have been used in the Nolzur’s line, but do appear as prepaints in the D&D blind-box themed sets. I tried to add some interest to the models and distinguish them from one another slightly via the use of some mottling and dappling on their wings and flesh, but they’re a bit meh.

Dungeons and Dragons Tomb of Annihilation – Pterafolk, Wizkids

I used quite a few glazes of thinned paints as well as some thinned contrast to make it seem like their mottled patterns were within the skin, rather than like warpaint slopped onto the surface, and that effect turned out (mostly) okay – it’s just the ruddy flesh shades I ended up with in the end I’m not super happy with. Later on I saw a very nice looking colour scheme that I would have probably stolen outright, but alas, it was too late by then. I have started to add small tufts to the bases of the ToA models, as it seems to be more of an outdoor setting. There’s also a bit more brown in grey of their bases. Just enough for me to feel like they work as something that could be on a flagstone road in the jungle or in a ruined/slightly overgrown temple, but also subtle enough to work if we combine sets and have them inside a dungeon. Ptera-folk inside a dungeon? Makes as much sense as most of those old-school “monster mash” D&D-style dungeons!

And yes, those are indeed unplanned tide marks of the base rims, and no, I don’t particularly give a fuck. 🙂