I got several questions about how I made the bamboo in the Made in Japan diorama, so I put together a quick tutorial. here it is.

It was close, but I did not advance to the final in the Iron Painter Contest. I actually tied with another painter, and I lost out on a tie-breaker. My opponent used a figure by Wyrd Miniatures (who is the company that arranged the contest) and I did not.

Oh well, congrats to the three finalists!

This is the collage I entered. This one scored a 50.

The theme for the fourth round of the Iron Painter Contest is Made in Japan.

Like before, I did not have any immediate ideas, but as I started looking through my stash of figures, one of the little vignettes that came with the Stephanie Law Darkword Miniatures Kickstarter stood out. As I did some more research into Japanese folklore, I realized that this little scene depicted something fairly Japanese. The vignette is called True Reflection.

To spice things up a bit, I also ordered a figure “Geisha Assassin” from Darksword Miniatures.

A few WIP shots:

My Olfo figure was able to get me through to the next round of the Iron Painter contest. It scored a 52, so that’s not too shabby, I guess

A couple of more pictures

I haven’t really kept track of my rank on CoolMiniorNot very carefully, but when I logged in today I noticed that I am currently ranked exactly #1,000 on the site. That’s out of over 9,000 members, so I guess it is not too bad, but it also means there are 999 painters on the site that are better than me!

My Curse of Anubis was just featured in the New and Notable section, btw

The theme for round three of the Iron Painter Contest is ‘Something Wicked This way Comes’.

I had no immediate ideas, but after some thinking I decided to use the Olfo Fastfeet figures by Andrea Miniatures that I got quite some time ago. I liked this figure the first time I saw it, but I didn’t quite feel up to the challenge of painting it till now.

Here’s a few initial WIP’s

Like the other model shows I have been to, this one has a raffle. I usually buy a decent amount of tickets, because the odds of winning are so good. In the past it has been to the point that it’s been a bit embarrassing, and I get more models that I know what to do with. So this time I got a bit fewer tickets. However, I was extremely lucky, and in the end I think I won more prizes than I ever have before. I got six of their more expensive tickets, and four of those were winners!

I won a bunch of model kits, mostly airplanes, though I traded one of them for a car model. I also won an airbrush from iwata.

I guess I need to get busy building models!

I went to the Blue Angel Model Fest last weekend. It was fun. I got to see a lot of great looking models, and I entered several figures myself.

My figures fared very well, though to be honest most of the figure categories were not very competitive. Airplanes are definitely the most popular categories, and there are quite a few tanks as well. Normally there is a decent amount of cars, and then a few figures. But then again it’s a model show and not a figure show, so it’s not that odd, I guess.

I entered two models. The large peterbilt truck that I had in the Mobile model show as well, and a small dune buggy that I built the night before the show.

I wasn’t sure what category to put the buggy in, but I entered it in the street rod category. That was the most competitive of the car categories, and my model didn’t place. That wasn’t really all that surprising, since it was just a quick build. My peterbilt truck got a second in the truck category. I got several comments on the truck, but the judges does not seem that impressed with it. It got a second in the Mobile show as well. I guess it’s because it’s a cool paintjob but pretty mediocre build.

I brought 14 different figures, vignettes, dioramas and busts to the show. Just going through them all, for my own record if nothing else.

Small Figure:

1st Place – Reaper Bones Golem

2nd Place – Reaper Bones Innkeeper

Fantasy Figure:
This was the most competitive of the figure categories – a bit over 20 entires, I think.

1st Place – Elf with Banner. This also won the ‘Best Figure’ award.

Unplaced – Chibi Dog

Busts:

1st  Place – Infamy Uncle John

2nd Place – Gulf Breeze Tourist

3rd Place – Abyssal Dweller

Unplaced: Brain-eating zombie and Sacagawea

Vignettes:

1st Place – Beyond the Wall

2nd Place – Anubis Revenge

Unplaced – Shades of Grey

Dioramas:

Unplaced – It’s the end of the world as we know it.

The results for the second round of Iron Painter are in, and I was able to go through to the next round. It was a close all though. This round was settled in groups of three. One of my opponents didn’t submit an entry. My entry beat the other one by 1 point! My score this time was 35. I though that was maybe a little low — I expected it to be lower than the first round, but not 19 points lower. But then again, I think my first round entry got an almost too high score.

The theme for round two if the iron painter contest is “It’s the end of the world as we know it”.

It took me a while to come up with something that would work with the theme. In the end I made a fairly silly entry, with quite a bit of figure but not so much detail.

I needed some ‘regular’ folks for this, and I had problem finding any good figures. It seems most figures are either carrying some sort of weapon or is doing something special, or they are ‘townsfolk’ which means they have a more fantasy/medieval feel to them. For a few of the figures I used zombies I already had and just cleaned them up a bit.

Here are several WIP pictures. I was posting some to the Wyrd forum as I was working on it, so i have quite a bit of pictures. They are all pretty small though.
I converted this zombie into an odd looking man:

Working with balsa foam for the base.

Another converted zombie. This one is a Reaper figure

Made a little well:

And a sign:

Painted the Wyrd logo in this guy’s shirt.

And I put paint brushes in the hands of all the figures. The brushes I made out of pins that I cut of and used the sharp end of.

The final entry: