Townsfolk Courtesan: Bones 4 Figure

   This past week I painted the "Courtesan" figure from the Bones 4 Townsfolk II set.  This completes this set for me and completes all the Townsfolk from the Bones 4 Core Set.
      I prepped the figure in the usual way, soaking it in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish-soap added, then giving it a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying it.  I then glued the figure to a brown-primed 1" fender washer with Aleene's Tacky glue, and then placed the figure in my painting grip.

  I decided since it was such a plain figure, I would attempt to do some fancy pattern on the dress.  The figure appeared to look like it was meant to resemble a Japanese Geisha to some extent, which inspired me to want to to try to do a cherry blossom print on it.  So to begin, I Googled "cherry blossom kimono" to get some ideas on patterns.  Also, since I had just done a lot of white fabric on last week's figure, I knew wanted to do something colored on this one, and I picked yellow. 

      I began by painting the skin with Reaper MSP "Bronze Skin".  I then painted the dress with Americana "Primary Yellow", and her hair with Ceramcoat "Black"

     Next, I worked up mid-tones and highlights on the dress using first, Crafter's Acrylic "Bright Yellow", then Crafter's Acrylic "Daffodil Yellow", Apple Barrel "Lemon Chiffon", and finally a little of the "Lemon Chiffon" mixed with Americana "Snow White".  After that, I gave her skin a coat of Citadel "Reikland Fleshshade" wash.

     Then, while the wash was drying, I painted the tree branches on her dress using Americana "Charcoal Grey", and did highlights on them with Americana "Mississippi Mud".   Next, I painted her eyes, and then highlighted her skin with the base "Bronze Skin", and some Reaper MSP "Bronze Skin Highlight".

       I decided at that point that the highlights on the branches weren't light enough, so I added some more highlights with Americana "Fawn".  I then painted the flowers; first doing blossoms with Crafter's Acrylic "Christmas Red", and then giving them centers of Pathfinder MSP "Urgathea Red", then I did more flowers with the "Snow White", and then gave those blossoms centers with Crafter's Acrylic "Tutti Frutti".     Next, I did highlights on her hair, first with Folk Art "Cloudy Day", and then mixing in a little Crafter's Acrylic "Cool Blue", and finally adding in some spots of the "Snow White".  After that I painted the pendant on her necklace with Ceramcoat "Wedding Gold", and then did the pearls on the necklace, and in the center of the pendant, with the "Snow White".   Lastly, I painted her base and the washer with the "Mississippi Mud".
      I let the figure dry overnight and the next day I gave it a coat of Americana "DuraClear Matte" varnish.  Another overnight dry, and I sprayed the figure with Testor's Dullcote".

     I'm really happy with this one.  I wanted to experiment with doing the the shadows, mid-tones and highlights on the fabric simply with paint, instead of my usual use of a wash; and I think it turned out pretty good.  I am especially pleased with how the cherry blossoms came out, although I'm slightly disappointed in the face.

A Social Isolation Painting Hiatus

   As my regular readers my have noticed, I haven't posted any figures the past couple of weeks.   I've found that as the Covid crisis continues and this period of home quarantine goes on, I have increasingly lost my ability to concentrate on the level of detail that painting figures requires.  It is a little frustrating, as I see others using this opportunity to greatly reduce their unpainted mini piles.  However, I find some comfort in seeing that I'm not alone, as here and there I see comments in different fora from others who find concentrating in this time of crisis a difficult thing to achieve.
     This is not to say I've been creatively inactive. I've found I can still focus on working on bigger painting projects, and building things.  In that vein, I have been working slowly, as my ability permits, on an assortment of Leonardo DaVinci style landship vehicles for a club project to do a  Leonardo themed "tank" battle at Historicon using modified version of the  "What a Tanker!" rules.
   Here are some of things I've been working on:

     I've also entered into the world of long-distance wargaming using FaceTime and Discord, to continue playtest work on the "Wars of Ozz" project being done by Old Glory/Blue Moon and rules author Buck Surdu. You can find a number of those battle reports over on my One More Gaming Project blog.

    Hopefully, as time goes on I will find my concentration again, and get back to painting figures.  For the time being I'm just going to continue to move at my own pace creatively, and wait for the muse to strike again.  So please check back every week or so, hopefully it won't be too long before I'm back to posting more Bones!