Sea Hag
A few months ago I posted a drawing of Jenny Greenteeth, a river hag from English folklore. At around the same time I started drawing her, I bought a metal Razig the Sea Hag from Reaper Miniatures’ Warlord’ range, which sat untouched except for a roughly applied base of blue paint since then. And a couple of weeks ago, DM Mike introduced a green hag as an NPC into our &D campaign (whether as an ally or an antagonist remains a matter of debate in and out of character – after all, in Gaelic myth the Cailleach are a sort of divine spirit rather than evil). So, this week I finished painting her.
I used more-or-less the same formula of thin blue glazes and pallid highlights as I had on last week’s stone carrying troll, albeit with a bit less success here, and shaded from deep sea greens to almost yellow for her hair and rags. For her base I used the same materials as the previous week’s orc pirate queen, this time without painting the seashells and with much more lichen (I glued the highest points to her back with a dab of PVA). To get the wet effect, I varnished her with Vallejo Still Water, another technique I’ve used before. Although I wasn’t really trying anything new here, I don’t feel like this was a particularly successful project. I’d previously found it hard to get good results painting Reaper Bones, but rather enjoyed the last metal miniature I’d worked on, so this was a bit of a surprise challenge. I’ve read that a 40mm base-sized creature is a bit of a sweet spot with Bones, so perhaps I’ll try that next to see how I get on.
Before I start that there are a few things in my painting queue, including my most recent acquisitions: the full compliment of player-characters for our Terrible Things campaign.
From left to right, we’ve got:
- Tcheh’Rul the Sea Bear, half-orc barbarian pirate (deceased), Warmonger Miniatures’ Bloody Magda the Malodorous Queen.
- Thargon the wood elf druid. He often transforms into a bear, so I’ve used an old Citadel wood elf beastmaster.
- Tagil the halfling bard. Claims to have killed a dragon, buffs other players mostly by saying “don’t worry, you’re with me!”. That’s another Reaper miniature, specifically Lem the Iconic Bard. I’m really looking forward to painting him!
- Thax/Ivor, a raven necromancer riding a human fisherman. This is really the standout mini in the lineup, Studio McVey’s Raven Priest. I had to bulk up the joint between the cloud of ghostly ravens and the man, as the sculpt was less than a millimeter thick and my motor control isn’t that fine. It’s a limited edition mini and I’m not sure if it’s available anywhere anymore – this might be the last one.
- Vimes, human shadow-monk, using an Otherworld human assassin. Vimes has killed at least four enemies by kicking them in the balls.
- Benedict Amicus Donner-Blitzen von Drei Täler VII, tiefling wild magic sorcerer. Has an agenda. The mini is an old Citadel chaos sorcerer, Slagroth Vile Staff.
- Fthanwen the wood elf ranger and dog. Fthanwen is female elven archer from Dark Sword, based – I believe – on a black and white drawing by Larry Elmore. I think I might paint her first. Dog is a wolf from Greenskin Wars.
Written out, there’s a lot to do. So why waste time writing about it when I could be painting?
