It’s been a while since I got one of these painted. Let us briefly get into why.

First of all, I’m still gaming, still playing D&D, almost on a weekly basis. That pace of gaming, and the creative work that has to go into it, sucks up a lot of my hobby time. Another chunk of time was taken up with woodworking, which has become a small but critical bit of secondary income. Finally, I just wasn’t inspired. Printing resin miniatures is difficult and fiddly work, and the pile of old-school Reaper Bones miniatures meant I would be struggling with their hydrophobic tendencies, not to mention their tendency to bend easily.

And finally, my wife wasn’t spending much time in the craft room. She’s been struggling with a lot and not feeling like sewing (although the garden is looking good). Evenings are our time to spend together, and if we are not jointly crafting I’m not going to hang out there while she is somewhere else.

But a few things have changed. My wife has gotten back into sewing. The weather outside is atrociously hot and muggy. And after a very long wait, the Dungeon Crawler RPG Kickstarter by Reaper finally game to fruition. I wish that they had a different name for the game; it is too similar to Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeon Crawler Carl in my opinion. But perhaps that is ironically apt, given that the game is highly based on existing D&D mechanics. Think a simplified, scaled down version of D&D, with the exception that it has detailed miniature/grid combat rules (not surprising, given its role to drive people to buy miniatures from Reaper).

As part of the Kickstarter, there is a whole bunch of their grey plastic miniatures which while still based on PVC are much more durable, detailed, and take paint better than the original white. They also represent some iconic C&C monsters, so I went back to work.

My first is this harpy, which I decided to paint in a crow color scheme. There’s a family of crows that live in a tree by my house and we have taken to feeding them in hopes that they will bring us shiny objects. With the darker skin tone the entire miniature came out a little dark without a lot of contrast, but hey! Newly painted miniature!

Months ago I was easily making my painting goals. Now I have some work to do…

Thanks for sticking around! Comments welcome!