Tail Feathers: Meadowlark

And here's my Meadowlark for Tail Feathers. (I believe it's supposed to be a starling originally -- I'll paint one up with my second copy of the game.)

The Meadowlark has a lot going on, so it didn't turn out as good as the others, but he will be no less loved. I think the birds with simpler patterns and bright colors will look best; the Blue Jay is my favorite. I'd like to paint up a cardinal, but the beaks of all of these birds are the wrong shape -- he would need a grosbeak style of beak ... maybe I can convert one of the next batch of birds.

Tail Feathers: More birds

Here are couple more birds, a Blue Jay and a Baltimore Oriole. These are very easy to paint, and are still rewarding with minimal effort. For the oriole, it was just a matter of getting the color onto the right spots (though, I would have liked a brighter orange.) Granted, some of the details take a little patience, but the rest of the bird took all of 10 or 15 minutes (of mostly dry- and overbrushing.)

I kind of wished the armor wasn't there (on his belly) so that more of the orange could be displayed, but there is still more color here than there would have been had I painted this as a starling.

The Blue Jay took a little more planning. I started off with an overbrush of the top with a nice, middle blue followed with lighter blue. I went one more level lighter on the secondary feathers and the wing tips. The underside was overbrushed dark gray -- lighter gray toward the wing tips. Then I drybrushed some brown over the transition between the dark and light grays.

Next came the white tips of the secondaries and tail feathers, starting with light gray followed with white. I also overbrushed some light gray/white onto the face. Then came the black stripes on the feathers and the markings on the face. The remaining details fell into place: silver armor, brown leather straps and a check pattern on the side armor(?) For a final touch, I watered down my black paint a little (ink will work just fine -- I was just too lazy,) and I lined the between individual feathers to help define things a little more.

Next up is the smallest of the birds, which I will paint as an Eastern Meadowlark. It will take a little extra planning as did the Jay. But once the plan is in place, it should paint up quickly. Then it's off to paint riders and ground troops!

Birds of a feather

I've started painting my Tail Feathers figures, starting with the birds. They are fun to paint -- easy and fast but still with a nice result.

Just a plain, old crow.

The largest bird has a wingspan of about 5 inches, and the smallest is around 3 3/4 inches. The game lists the birds as crows and starlings (and a blue jay,) but I thought those were to boring. So I'm painting mine as more colorful birds.

I stuck with one bird as a crow, simply because, yeah, a crow should be in there. But instead of having a second crow, I painted the bird to look roughly like an Eastern Kingbird.

Eastern Kingbird (sort of,) but he looks much nicer than that crow.

Before I primed these, I masked the connector sockets off with masking tape. I primed with Army Painter Matte Black Primer, then followed that up with a couple layers of black craft paint (Delta Ceramcoat.) Then I painted as usual, removing the masking tape only after everything was done. The little bit of excess masking tape also provided a little extra hand-hold.

The other birds will come in time; I have other stuff on my plate (on and off the painting table.) But they will all have some color: I have planned the Blue Jay (which is actually what it is in the game,) a Baltimore Oriole and an Eastern Meadowlark.

Oh yeah, I also ordered another copy of the game so I can paint some more birds :)
It will also be nice to have extras of the components, as well as another box in which I can put in some custom battlefoam to carry everything.

Gettin' things done

I got an email a week ago saying my copy of Tail Feathers was on its way, so I figured I better get to painting to make room on the table. I used the extra drive to finish up a few random things.

I still have a dozen or so Low Life figures on the way, but I finished up the couple that already had primer and a little paint on them. The KS delivery on the remaining figures has been going slow, so I haven't put a high priority on finishing those I already have. Still, they are a neat little range, and the most imaginative of any of the figures I have.

On the Zombicide front, I told myself I would paint at least the figures from all the base and expansion boxes. I thought I had fulfilled that promise until I found these three at the bottom of a baggie of extra Z-cide figures. Now I can say all of my base-box Zombicide figures are painted -- at least until Black Plague arrives in the next few weeks.

And then, finally, I managed to get energy enough to finish my Mice and Mystics figures. I had several minions and a couple characters from the Downwood Tales and Heart of Glorm boxes that needed to be painted. I've been working on those this week and just finished last night. And righgt on cue, this morning, my copy of Tail Feathers arrived!
The photo below shows all the figures from the Mice and Mystics base set and the Heart of Glorm and Downwood Tales expansions. There are also extra minions I pulled from an extra base set of figures I bought from Plaidhat Games. (Not pictured are my extra set of heroes.)