It’s been awhile since my last post. We’re hitting one of the two busier periods at work (from now till mid-year, and then again from October-Dec). Unfortunately on top of that I’ve had some serious computer issues, where Windows Update 20H2 that keps not installing for months finally went through with no problems (for a day) and then a followup update auto-installed overnight the next day and fucked my PC. Long story short, even after a rollback and partial refresh, my pretty good PC is still only able to limp along, most of my programs are gone, I can’t find the .exe for my legit Office install since the shitheels that MS outsource here to distribute Work At Home packs only allow downloads for 3 months. (This sort of bullshit is why people pirate software!) I’ve got a laptop, but it’s just not the same as working on a real desktop with a decent monitor. Anyway, I’ve been backing things up (got just about everything done) but I’m too hesitant to allow the desktop PC to reboot and install until I’m 100% certain that it’ll be good.

So anyway, miniatures!

Today’s model is one that I absolutely hate. It’s the Harbinger from the Shadows of Brimstone starter set, and it’s a large, smooth, undetailed piece of trash. For whatever reason, I initially decided to not just paint it a cartoony demonic red, and went for a fleshy pink, but basically, due to the thing being a big, smooth piece with almost no actual detail, it didn’t go all that well, and so it’s been a WIP for ….2 years now? Hard to motivate oneself to work on something that you absolutely hate sometimes.

I did have some ideas for the model occasionally, and so I added the cracked earth as I had the idea of the demon corrupting the ground as it landed. It was only as part of this last push where the idea to make it glowing yellow-green rather than a more typical lava red-orange-yellow came up, mostly because of that Tessaract Glow technical paint I picked up recently – though it did make me start thinking of a World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade kind of overall look. This in turn led to repainting the webbing of the wings, which if you can believe it – looked even worse than they do now! I added some striation texture to them via paint, but still, they look pretty shitty.

Since finishing this thing, I’ve had a bit of a google image search on this model and I’ve seen a couple that do manage to look half-decent. I see an airbrush helps immensely on the large, smooth, undetailed masses of the model. Luckily(!) for me, I have a second one of these things. If I ever do paint the second one, I think I’ll go for an ashen grey-black overall look with perhaps some red and/or purple for the wing skin.

As far as positives go, I’m pretty happy to have finished this model just so it can get the fuck off my painting table and away from me. I guess it’ll be fine to use in actual games of Shadows of Brimstone – another target I have for the next few months – to complete the two original core sets’ models so we can start to play the game, which is apparently pretty good.

The only way I did manage to get the thing done has been due to this month’s painting challenge –  Monster MAYhem, over at Dead Dick’s Tavern and Temporary Lodging. Ann, over at Ann’s Immaterium is running a “Summer Solstice” painting challenge for your best model painted between May 3rd and June 20th. Certainly a worthy challenge, but not something I’ll be submitting this thing for!