Samurai Vignette: Water well

I still have one more base I can do another vignette on, but my new 42mm samurai have arrived, so I will start preparing them for painting. In the mean time, here is the last of these vignettes for the time being. This is a Japanese style water well with a bamboo cover.

Most of the reference images I found showed the square wells as wooden, but I wanted the stone to add another color to the base. The same with the walkway; I wanted another color on the base as well as another level.

The well and walkway were made using blue foam. The bamboo cover was made from extra bamboo spears that I got from my peasants (after replacing the spears with my versions made from brass rod.) The little water bucket is made from a thin piece of plastic wrapped around a small cylinder of sculpey. Some simple foundational flock, tufts, flowers and a floral stem tree finish this one off. On the opposite side of the base is a small wall of foliage clusters. I'll probably try them out as display bases when I take photos of new figures, so you'll probably see these bases again soon.

Samurai vignettes: The cemetary

This one turned out almost exactly as I pictured it in my head. The only difference was that I originally wanted the base to have lots of tall grasses -- almost as tall as the grave stones. But I couldn't get the grassy material I have to look natural; I'll have to hunt around for super large grass tufts instead.

Still, this piece turned out nice. The graves were made from Sculpey and the footpath from green stuff. Then I spent an hour throwing on various grass, tufts and flowers over everything.

The next base will have my waterwell on it. This one might be a touch more urban, having a (ever so slightly) raised wooden walkway next to the well (to add a third level to the piece.) I still need to sketch out a plan for that one before I make any final decision. 

I'll still have another base leftover after I do the waterwell; not sure what to put on it yet.

Samurai vignettes

This one was much simpler to make. It took about a half hour.
Half of it is actually an eighth of an inch taller, having a
foam base sloping gently; the figure here is on the high ground.

So I had these 120mm bases sitting around, and I wasn't quite sure what to use them for (I don't own any dragons or huge minis.) So I'm making these fun little terrain pieces to serves as objectives/areas for my samurai (and other) skirmish games. I used the word "areas" because I'm using the Red Sands series (by Two Hour Wargames) to play my samurai games, and in the Red Sand series, figures move from area to area. Each area can only hold three figures (as do my little terrain vignettes.)
When I'm not playing, these serve nicely as display bases for a figure or two.

I made the nicer of the two vignettes here by cutting some blue foam to fit the base. I carved out the creek bed and used two-part epoxy resin for the water. The foaming water is simply white paint applied directly to the cured resin. Grass, foliage, tufts, flowers and tree to finish. (The tree was made using floral stems from Hobby Lobby.)

I made this one -- oh man, more than a year
ago already. Time flies when you're having
fun painting samurai and providing them
with a pretty battlefield.

The rocks on the second base were made from blue foam scraps that were sanded smooth. I kept the second base simple because I wanted to bang it out in a half hour. (The waterfall base took a couple hours.)

I have two or three of these 120mm bases left. I think I will do a Japanese water well for one and maybe a tiny graveyard for another. That should give me enough time to think about what to do with the last one -- perhaps a tiny footbridge over a little creek.

I used one of these bases a little while ago to make a ruined stone corner. It looks nice and provides some cover on the field, but it isn't meant to hold figures; the remainder of these I want to hold two or three figures each.

Mouse and friends build a barrel

I was doing a crossword at a local pizza joint; one of the answers was, "stave," which inspired my to do this little doodle on a napkin. Later in the day, I penciled and inked the bigger page, and I finished painting it this evening.

The caption reads, "Well how in the hell did we make the first one?" I'm sure there's some lesson in there somewhere.

Mouse enjoys a nice read

I still don't have any energy for painting minis just yet -- well, I have the energy, it's just I hadn't found anything I wanted to paint. So I prefer to do these watercolors for the time being. I've put in an order for some Steve Barber samurai, and I actually look forward to painting those. I'm also working on the next project to commission Steve to do soon, hopefully.

Here's Mouse reading in what I call the watermelon carpet room (even though it's not the dominant carpet.) It's not evident in the painting, but I'm pretty sure he's reading some Conan the Cimmerian.

My personal favorite Mouse paintings are those with fancy carpets on the floor and famous paintings on the wall.

This is one of those rare instances when I get an in-progress photo of my art. All Mouse paintings start out as a pencil sketch. I follow them up with an inking using my brush pen (it's pen but has a brush instead of a nib -- great tool.) Then I end with the watercolor; peel off the masking tape, Done!

Samurai commissions

These are all the figures I've commissioned in 2014. A few notes: the samurai in the orange shirt and the one with the yari
are variations of the same figure, both of which are available in Steve Barber's catalog. For one commission, I let Steve
choose what to sculpt, and the result was the neat armored bandit at far right. The archer here was my first commission.

I missed the first anniversary, which was a couple months ago, of my first samurai commission with Steve Barber. Since that first one, I've followed up with several more commissions, including a few extra heads here and there. The photo above shows all of those commissions. I have extra copies of all of them, and many are converted, but these represent, for the most part, the figures now available from Steve Barber.

This is Steve's favorite. This is also one of my favorites, though the archer has
 a little more sentimental value being my first. If you're looking for something
fun and different to paint, I recommend this yamabushi monk. He has plenty
of detail without the detail being too difficult to paint.

I started doing the commissions because I wanted a bunch of unarmored samurai for doing street skirmishes in the vein of several samurai films (Yojimbo, Sanjuro, 13 Assassins, Kill!, Ichi, Zatoichi.) Admittedly, my first commission was the archer monk; I used him to to test the waters to see how I liked the process and the finished product. If it was the first and only commission I did, at least it would be a nice shelf piece. He was a great success (and one of my favorites), so more suitable skirmish models quickly followed.

I have another samurai who is being molded. Unarmored of course, armed with a katana in a hasso stance (at least the best I could ascertain as "hasso." There is one complaint over at TMP from someone who says the pose is all wrong. I don't care -- it's an action pose for movie-style skirmishing, anyway -- It's my money, so I'll choose whatever pose I think "looks cool.")

I'm saving up money for yet another commission; I think the next one will be a classic sohei monk armed with naginata. In the future, I also have ideas for another peasant, a yari-armed samurai, another monk archer (a standing version of the one in the photo) and maybe an ikko-ikki monk. All of these will probably take another year or so. 

So why spend the money? I could spend a few dollars for a few packs of minis to get some figures that are close to what I like, or I can spend extra money to get exactly what I want. So instead of having a shelf of hundreds of figures, a few of which I love, I have a shelf with a few figures, all of which I love.

Steve Barber will do just about any commission. Drop him an email and check it out. He'll give you a quote for free. 

Still watercoloring

... but I do have a couple Mice and Mystics figures painted, I just have to get them photographed.
I've also been informed by Steve Barber that my new samurai is ready to go to sale! A new batch of samurai might just pull me out of this mini-painting drought.

In the meantime, here are some more watercolors from the past couple days.

More watercolors

I had hoped to have some Mice and Mystics figures finished to show to you; I had planned to meet up with a friend to do some minis painting, but I never heard back from them, so I said, "fuck it," and went out and did some watercolor painting outside instead. It was a nice day out, so no need to let it go to waste.

The first one only took 10 minutes to finish (for true!) The second one, about an hour. They are both 12x18".Enjoy!