Hellboy – The Harpy’s Cry

I’m happy to report that I had a better week than last and definitely more exciting hobby wise too. I decided to tackle the last Hellboy miniatures I needed to paint to complete the B.P.R.D Archives expansion and make that playable in game. Truthfully, the harpy minis are a bit of a mix in quality from a sculpt perspective. The feathers on their wings and the talons are pretty well done but the faces and the feathers on the head are a lumpy mess and not worth trying to make look nice. As usual, I tried to follow the art from the Hellboy comics which is a little bit bland for the harpies but it made the colors mostly pick themselves so no complaints here.

Fortunately, these were quick to paint overall because I could dry brush most of the mini and speed up the process compared to normal. I can also now look forward to trying some new stuff in Hellboy. I have a feeling it will be Christmas break before I’ll be able to play again but I’m definitely looking forward to it. I’ll try report back on how it is once I do play some more.

I mention the harpies being quick because it freed me up to start on something exciting towards the end of last week. I recently bought Grunthal from Black Crow Miniatures and am thoroughly impressed by it. Its a resin bust with really, really nice details and next to no mold lines or clean up before painting it. I was a bit worried because its basically winter in Chicago now and the weather this week was around 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Obviously, this means there’s no hope of priming miniatures with a rattle can for months now. Fortunately, the resin took paint fairly well with a brush and I was able to make a start on Mr. Grunthal. Those of you who are Warhammer fans will probably see the inspiration of this dwarf straight away.

I chose this bust because it doesn’t have a lot of metal which is something I need to learn more about at this scale but also because he has a lot of interesting details on his face. On previous busts, I messed up trying to paint the skin because I tried to use the same technique I use with 28/32mm miniatures. On those minis, its easy to glaze in the various skin tones for whatever reason. For the busts I tried, this wasn’t the best approach and I ended up losing details because I applied too many coats of paint on the miniature. Instead, I tried a technique that’s new to me called sketching which is basically what it sounds like. Just like in a drawing, you roughly apply highlights and shadows with thinned down paint and then you can work on smoothing it out later. This helps you not only judge where the lights and shadows should go but get an idea of what the paint job will look like. It also gets these results in fewer layers of paint so its pretty quick and fun to do. I expect to use it going forward on any busts I work on and maybe even 75mm miniatures as well.

While Grunthal needs polishing, I’m impressed by how he looks after three days of work. Of course, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and it will be fun to see where things go from here as well.