From the painting desk #72 – A little bit of everything
April 16, 2020While I had originally planned to make posts of these minis piecemeal, I figured that it would simply lead to most of them never getting displayed. As a result, this post features a pretty mixed selection of miniatures, but I’m sure that just makes it more entertaining!
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Up first is a pair of pirates, consisting of a barber surgeon from Black Cat Bases and Esmerelda, a pirate lady from Black Scorpion. While stylistically very different, both were enjoyable to paint and make for nice additions to my pirate crews. I’m especially happy with the surgeon, who I think looks a bit like an annoyed Billy Connolly. As with some other Black Scorpion female minis, I painted the legs to suggest very tight pants instead of the cool pirate lady wearing a loincloth and boots. For some reason I never have to do this with male miniatures, who knew!
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Onto the monkeys! A fair few miniature manufacturers make monkey miniatures as part of their pirate lines, and I’m happy to collect them. The monkey wearing a bicorne is another Black Scorpion sculpt that I picked up at Salute last year. The monkey sitting on a barrel is another 3d print from Depths of Savage Atoll. As one of my early test prints, the quality isn’t perfect and I already considered throwing the mini way. I didn’t have the heart to do it though, and after a bit of paint I think it turned out fine. Both of these were simple sculpts and easy to paint, and I’m really pleased with the end results. As for how I’ll use them, no idea whatsoever.
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Rounding out this post are two very characterful pirates. The first one is a custom Hero Forge piece I printed, who I’m calling Smith of Bristol. Now, to anyone not familiar with the Dubliners song of the same name, it tells the story of a daring pirate who goes around a-plunderin’ and a-robbin’, before finally being killed by a Spanish bullet. The twist of the song follows this, with the lines “he was only ninety-seven/but his soul had gone to heaven”, which I’ve always found hilarious. So, long story short, here’s a sprightly old pirate! If you want to listen to the song, I’ve embedded it below.
The second miniature is another one with some story behind him. He’s Tijl Uilenspiegel, an exclusive miniature from the Crisis wargaming show in Antwerp. Originally Tijl, known in English as Till Owlglass, is a 16th (or possibly 15th or even earlier) century trickster figure. As Wikipedia informs us:
Many of Till’s pranks are scatological in nature, and involve tricking people into touching, smelling, or even eating Till’s excrement. Scatological stories abound, beginning with Till’s early childhood (in which he rides behind his father and exposes his rear-end to the townspeople) and persisting until his death bed (where he tricks a priest into soiling his hands with feces).
An excellent character, in other words! While I don’t think my pirate version of him is quite this feces-focused, the sculpt is great. Paul Hicks has sculpted a wonderful expression on the mini, and I tried to reflect this when painting the eyes. I think he does look a bit…trickstery.
While all of these would technically qualify for Ann’s “Paint the crap you already own!” challenge, Tijl Uilenspiegel is the one mini I had in mind when I decided to participate in the challenge. He’s a sad case of “Oooh I really want that, what a cool mini, better let him sit in a box for a year or two” so I’m happy that he’s finished!
With all this painted stuff, I’m at 12/100 for my painting goal of 100 pieces this year. With a third of the year gone – not great, not terrible. Still, with a bunch of easy to paint terrain pieces and the like in the near future, I’m still optimistic!
Dawn of the Lead 
Very cool group of miniatures and nicely painted. Thank you, too, for the mention. 🙂 I did a quick, initial double-take as I was scrolling through your post, when I came upon the monkeys. I asked myself, “Is that a dwarf anthro-donkey swashbuckler with an outrageously oversized hat?” and then I went back and read your post and realized it was a monkey swashbuckler with an outrageously oversized hat, which to my thinking is good too.
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Cheers and thanks for the comment (as well as organizing the challenge)! A monkey is the next best thing to a dwarf anthro-donkey, I’m sure.
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Very nice! Good range of figures there! You’re in the lead for best-painted-monkey-in-a-hat-miniature-that-I’ve-seen! 🙂
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Cheers John! I won’t ask how many you’ve seen 😀
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Speaking for myself, I’ve seen a lot of painted monkeys (orangutans specifically) back during 5th edition 40K when Grey Knights were all the rage, but only one other with a giant hat and it was a sombrero.
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I had Captain Pinch .. a minky in a hat… belonged to El Toro in our pirates RPG…
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Some great painting of some lovely miniatures
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Thanks! This gives me a good chance to ask you about your nick, is it “Maeno Ferren”, “Maen O’Ferren” or “Maen of Erren” or something else? This has been bugging me for a while now 😀
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Yeah the name… the username is Maenoferren… phonetically ‘mine oh ferren’ bit of a long story. When I first when on the internet (way back in the dark ages) before Google and before businesses in the Uk were using it then I had to come up with a unique username Stephen R was used and I didn’t want to put my whole name up (not to mention I didn’t want numbers after it) so I came up with a username from one of the slate mines in North Wales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenofferen_quarry originally I used the double ff and single r, but I did something wrong and ended up having to change it. Rather than come up with a whole new username I just swapped the double letter over. Hope that answers the question 😊
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Thanks, that’s cleared it up!
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Mystery solved!
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Lovely stuff mate – an eclectic bunch for sure, but very nicely done 🙂
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Thanks Alex!
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Haha love the monkeys. Nice post. My favourite song by the Dubliners is seven drunken nights. Brilliant
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Thanks IRO! I love their work, have done so ever since I was a kid and we had an old C-cassette full of Dubliners songs 🙂
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Looove the figs, especially the monkeys!
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Thanks Mark!
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That’s a lovely collection of painted models – I do particularly like the ladypirate sculpt on Esmerelda, as unrealistic as it may be, and the simple change to tight pants is a very effective and sensible one. Tijl and Smith are both – as you say, very characterful. Both have a lot of personalisy to them in their scultps and your paint has enhanced both of them very nicely!
…now you just need a Billy Corgan to go opposite the Billy Connolly.
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Thanks for the kind words Azazel! Now to find a Billy Corgan mini…
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[…] lacking in pirates of the pin-up variety. As some of those can be nice sculpts, there are some cases where I’ve painted bare legs as tight pants, which is a nice enough compromise to […]
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