Reaper Bones 77046 Bat Swarm

As far as I can recall, it's been a year since I last slapped paint on a miniature. There was a couple of terrain projects during that time, but that's not quite the same kind of painting. "Tabletop standard" has a different meaning when applied to miniatures versus terrain. People pick up miniatures, hold them up to their faces, scrutinize the things, and ask about the lack of painted on eyes. Terrain only needs to be painted well enough to get the point across.

It's been way too long.

What did I have to work with? Wiping the dust off my wet palette revealed it to be fine. Surveying my paints had mixed results. The dropper bottle stuff seemed fine, but all needed a through shaking. The sheer incompetence in plastic form that are Games Workshop paint pots was another story. About half of it dried up, leaving nothing but hard flakes and wasted potential. My brushes are all fine, being stored well out of reach of my daughter's cats.

I decided to start with something straightforward. Something that would look fine with a base coat, some shaky brushwork, whatever highlighting I could muster, and awash to cover up my mistakes. That all added up to a Reaper Bones miniature from my pile of shame.

This miniature depicts a swarm of bats flying around a grave marker. It fit the season and didn't seem too demanding of my rusty skills. A nighttime scene limited the colors I needed - it's all dim lighting and shadows.

I described my process for preparing and basing Reaper Bones miniatures in this linked post.

For my first attempt, I painted the whole thing black and went overboard with drybrushing it gray. Trying to recover with a black ink only made it worse. I covered it all up with a black base coat again to reset and start over.

Paints used:

• Reaper Master Series Pure Black 09037 - used because the last of my Citadel Colour Chaos Black died in the bottle.
• Citadel Colour Codex Grey - still clinging on to life.

Instead of jumping straight to a medium gray, I used a mix of black with a little gray for the first drybrush layer. I added more gray for each following layer, getting less aggressive with the drybrushing each time.

I highlighted certain areas with an even mix of black and gray. I paid particular attention to the edges of certain bat wings, the grave marker, and a skull on the ground.

The final touch was to reintroduce shadows. Some areas that didn't need it got hit with the previous drybrush layers. I watered down the black paint remaining on my palette and used it as a wash. The wash was applied selectively. Only the areas that would be in shadow and needed to be darker got hit with the wash.

The end result is a serviceable miniature. More importantly, it a start to get me back into miniature painting. I'll likely ease back into it with another Reaper Bones miniature or three before tackling something more exciting.