Happy Miniature Monday! I'm happy to report that I'm getting faster with this speed painting thing. Again, I'll use "Speed Painting" loosely, since I consider anything between 2 - 4 hours a creative race against time. This past week, a new mini was chosen by @catafracture, a new participant in our last #speedpaintchallenge. The Reaper Bones miniature we agreed upon was cheap ($2.79) & Bones in general are relatively low maintenance and don't require priming-- perfect since I would need to paint him while traveling. The standard rules applied: 7 colors, less than 4 hours. Here's what I came up with in 3.5 hours total (4 hours if you include the increased drying time):

I didn't expect humidity to be as big of a challenge as it was. 30 minutes into my initial venture, I found that the paint layers just weren't drying-- adding considerably to my overall paint time. Very frustrating after spending the time unpacking & setting up my mobile paint station:

Two days later, while I was still waiting for the weather to settle down, @EpicBlueMouse suggested I take advantage of the humidity and work on wet blending. Why not? At the last minute I changed up my color scheme and swapped out the metallics I had in store for the weapons in order to focus on a cool orange/purple cape concept. It was fun to try and blend rich orange into a dark purple and see how quickly I could create a nice transition. Lastly, I blended the edges of the cape into a lighter, rich purple and was grateful for the mini hair dryer I had available. Without it, I'd be watching paint dry for ten minutes in between each layer.

I chose to focus my time & effort on the cape color transitions and the details of his armor. The weapons (especially the back view) suffered somewhat, but I think the sacrifice for the end result was well worth it! My final seven paint choices were as follows-- all from the Reaper line:

Leather White, Blue Liner, Marigold Yellow, Burning Orange, Monarch Purple, Nightshade Purple, Dark Skin