6MMRPC Week 4: Bones Aina, plaster rocks, pinning the jabberwock

We are rounding out the first month of the challenge. It's been very impressive seeing the volumes of figures some people have managed to finish weekly. I keep telling myself that 6 months is a long time, and if I can continue to reliably finish at least 2 a week, I'll be making a sizeable dent in the collection. It's a bit of a lie, if I only achieve 52 figs, but I have hopes for some large project completions as well.

This week I finished off Aina, yet another Bones figure. She was in my painting queue in the intersession, but I fell off the painting wagon. I finally finished her, and was quite happy with the result. I was vaguely inspired by recently re-reading Lloyd Alexanders Prydain chronicles, and wanted a 'Eilonwy' type character. She struck me as a fairly strong female character, although I'm not entirely sure my wife would agree.

The free handed shield is not quite symmetrical, and the hair isn't *quite* as red/copper as I'd wish, but otherwise I'm very happy. Unfortunately in a true bones fashion, her sword is bent, and despite being bent back with hot water, I don't think I 'quenched' it well in cold water, so it migrated back to the bent shape. Boo.



As a continuation of the hyrdocal terrain experiment, I left my stuff out to dry for a week or two, and attempting the 'leopard spot' painting style Woodland scenics recommends. I'm a bit on the fence about the final results (below).











You start off with dotting burnt umber, and yellow ochre inks (8:1 dilution) onto the rocks.
You then wash with black ink (16:1). I thought the black was far too dark at first and I cut the ink at least in half if not more (32:1 or more).





I'm not convinced it's dark enough now. I suppose I could rewash it, but I decided to wait a bit. The burnt umber was a bit.....blotchy. I think when I do more, I'll try for smaller dots, and overlap the yellow and umber more often.


I'd like to try and find a reddish toned ink so I can try and match some rocks to my badlands terrain as well.

The final achievement of the week was betting my Jabberwocky pinned. Once again, despite boiling water repositioning and quenching, this Bones figure had an unfortunate bend..... To the left.

His overall positioning was much better, so I didn't want to jinx things by retrying. So Instead I pinned his tail, and the slightly wobbly base, to a solid plastic base. Using some milliput excess from another project, I made a stone that he is stepping on. I haven't yet glued him to it, but likely will. Of course, now I'll have to get some basing materials down and reprime him before I start painting, but at least he is in a reasonable position and doesn't fall over continuously.