Today’s post is another Queue-Jumper. That is to say, I’ve still got a fair few April models to post up, but I entirely painted this one today (Sunday at time of typing) and so up it goes. It’s a “Coral Golem”, a Bones model, and also another good example of Reaper being Reaper with all the weird shit that they produce. It also happens to be my first submission for Monster MAYhem, over at the Angry Piper’s Blog – aka Dead Dick’s Tavern and Temporary Lodging, run by a nice bloke named Keith.

Being a Bones model, I wasn’t about to kill myself working on an award-winning paintjob. Instead, it’s all about getting the model to the point where it’s good enough, and with a large, weirdly-detailed thing like this, the “good enough” is more about visual impression than natty freehand or subtle blending.

So with that in mind, and this being a model cast in the original, shitty, hydrophobis form of “Bonesium” PVC, the first step to painting was done a few years ago – it was sprayed with Shellac. I found it in a tub of minis the other day when cleaning up the crap under my painting desk, based it yesterday morning on an 80mm round – the feet weren’t even even – the sole of the left foot being parallel with that of the right, but raised a good 3mm higher. What the actual….? So I had to make a little rise with greenstuff. Superglued the thing down, and once that all dried, Vallejo Desert Sandy paste all over the base.

This morning I started the actual painting. Again, because Bones, I base coated the whole thing in Reaper Brown Liner, then (everything using Reaper’s “HD Paints”) Drybrushed it with a dark bluegrey, a dark blue, then diverged with some sections in a dark purple and others in a deep seagreen. The purple bits diverged into lighter purple and red, while the seagreen went to teal, and diverged to both light blue and lighter greens. Red and the greens were both able to go into yellowish, and then I painted the head-coral in yellows, and picked out the Octopus and Starfishies, along with the nesting crab and a few other bits and pieces. Washed the base with thinned Vallejo Leather Brown and drybrushed with Iraqui Sand into Ivory, and then painted on sealer (Reaper’s one on the model, and Micromark’s on the base, and then some long-grass tufts that I find reminiscent of the beach.

Now it’s done. I have no idea what to use it for. Tzeentch, because colourful? Idoeneth Deepkin, because waterful? Yeah, it’s probably more going to be a storage issue than anything actually useful in a game….