On the Reaper forum’s  bi-monthly resolutionary painting challenge the first bonus challenge of the year is to fingerpaint a miniature.

…as in use your fingers to paint it, no brushes or other implements, and you need to do this yourself, not get any help from others, including small-fingered children. Priming and sealing excepted.

And it must be a creature, no scenery to make it easier.

I decided to make a go at the bonus challenges this year.

 

*Witness! The Hand of DEEEWM!*  

So, my fingers are about one and a half centimetres in diameter, with fingertip-pads at more or less a full centimeter square. How to paint a mini that is only 2-3 fingers high with that?

Obviously I would need to select a mini that will not need too much detailing…

I considered the great worm, the land shark, the sharkorosaurus, the brass bull and any number of metallic robots shiny or rusted both. Should be doable, with some vigorous rubbing and weathering.

But I ended up with a creature of mist and shadows.

Enter the Reaper Bones translucent purple Shadow Demon! And some translucent inks to paint it with.

 

Added red ink as well. Messy work this.

 

at this point I got carried away and forgot to take intermediate pictures of the actual mini work in progress.

I had some nice differently coloured areas here and there to make it look insubstantial on the mini by the time I set it aside to dry, but the day after I found most of the colours had done gone and mixed it up all over the mini, leaving it more samey all over. oh well, should have done the colours one at a time and let it dry more between each colour.

 

Detailing:

Eyes of blue, tongue of red and teeth of light grey. Still done with my fingers! …or rather, a torn fingernail. A lucky happenstance that worked a treat to dot in some details.

Base was also done by finger, brown inside, black rim. Tufts glued down in massive-fingertip sized blobs of pure PVA; the rest with watered down PVA, wiping glue off the rim before dunking it in the tub o’ mixed flock.

—and then having to dab some glue here and there where I had managed to wipe off both glue and flock when hamfisted wiping the rims… and some more black on the rim to fix the results…and the same again. Rinse and repeat.

Conclusion: Fingers are not very appropriate tools for painting miniatures!

 

But the results ended up not too shabby:

    

and since the backdrop it a wee bit too samey to show up the colours properly:

 

this is taken with a pink piece of paper as backdrop.IRL it is a bit more blueish.

These pictures show better that it does in fact have some of the insubstantial not-quite-there effect I was hoping for, with the translucency and blotchy colour variations all over. But one does need a bright light to see them.

 

77368: Shadow Demon

Reaper Bones KS2

Sculpted by Bob Ridolfi

Translucent purple Bonesium

40mm base

 

Painted so far this month: 33 / 31.  +2 past target!

Painted so far this year: 33 / 365.  Just 332 to go!