Aunt Jean's Chaplin

Our Aunt Jean--second-youngest of the four Etsell sisters--is a painter, and she's generously shared her paintings with family. This portrait of Chaplin has lived in Mom and Dad's house for several years, and now it'll live in our theatre room for a while. I hung the painting a few days ago, and just now I added a couple of shelves to host my collection of Chaplin films (along with a few others from the golden age of comedy). 

Thanks so much, Aunt Jean. 

Newton Place Knicknacks

I didn't live in Newton Place for long, but it's where I watched the last season or so of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I remember hardly anything about the layout of the apartment, and I have very few photos of my time there. This is one of them. 
 

The Talented Ms Highsmith

Sylvia and I finished RIPLEY (2024) on Netflix last night, and we both quite enjoyed it. In the spirit of the show, I asked Bing to create an image of Tom Ripley meeting Patricia Highsmith in Rome as Carvaggio might have painted such a meeting. 
 

What We Found There

 

Smithsonian Open Access

 

This beautiful image of civil rights hero Frederick Douglass is just one of millions of files now freely available to the public at Smithsonian Open Access! What a wonderful resource for artists, historians, graphic designers, or anyone who has the urge to create. 

Captain Kirk of Earth-2022

AI art is getting wackier/scarier/more amazing by the day, it seems. My prompt for this was "Captain Kirk goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel, oil painting in the style of DaVinci." This result is not at all what I had in mind, and yet it's somehow arresting. (Interpret that adjective however you see fit.) Made with Stable Diffusion's DreamStudio. 
 

Double Dungeon Door Display

Here are two more finished dungeon doors from one of the Dungeons & Lasers terrain Kickstarters I backed. Not bad! 
 

Little Buddha

Painting this tiny Buddha statue was simple, but the results are nonetheless pleasing. A couple of thin coats of different shades of bronze and gold followed by an ink wash did the job. 
 

Blonde Vault Girl

Here's the Vault Girl that printed correctly, with her sledgehammer in hand. This one's a blonde to help differentiate her from her brunette counterpart. I probably should have added something to the base, too; but I can do that later. 

Vault 11 represent! 

Misguided Blonde Biker

In pulp fiction Nazis make excellent villains, and so I have a handful of Nazi figures for use as bad guys in games like Villains & Vigilantes. Even so, painting these guys makes me uncomfortable, partly because there's a danger in trivializing one of the greatest horrors of the 20th century (or perhaps any century), and partly because fascism is on the rise once again right now. On the other hand, popular culture is a powerful force, and casting Nazis as the most despicable characters could possibly be one of the best means to remind people that their ideology is one of the most noxious ever created. 

I don't know. History and politics aside, I like the way the paint job turned out. And as Steve suggested, if this range of figures winds up leaving me too disconcerted to use, I can always recast them as 1970s biker gangs (only slightly less problematic, perhaps). 
 

Brunette Fallout Girl

Jeff 3D-printed Vault Girl for me--twice. This is the first. It's still a perfectly good mini, but her sledgehammer failed to print. So I used this one for practice. I think she turned out fairly well, given my trouble painting human beings at this scale. I like how the little pile of bottlecaps and the teeny-weeny lunch box turned out. 

Another T-60

Here's another wasteland wanderer who's lucky enough to have secured a suit of power armor. In this case, though, I applied an ink wash in an effort to create additional depth and detail. I can't decide which result I prefer. 

Pristine Power Armor

Here's someone wearing a very well-preserved set of T-60 power armor. Most technology in the wasteland is old and beat up, but sometimes a lucky survivor will find something new in a sealed container. So no rust or weathering on this particular model, just shiny metal. 

Turret

Tonight I painted the turret you see here defending a donkey and a high fantasy version of Sylvia. (The Sylvia model is from the HeroForge full-colour 3D-printing Kickstarter I supported a while back.) The turret should keep low-level raiders and hostile wildlife at bay. 
 

Cheap Barricades

A little sloppy, but they'll get the job done on my Fallout: Wasteland Warfare table. And they were cheap! 

Beat-Up Pick-Up

Carson Smith Has Weapons

Here's Carson Smith, one of the figures included in the Pulp Figures Rugged Heroes 1 set. Rather than try to ape the excellent paint job featured at the link, I gave my copy of Carson my own spin, styling him in blue, black, and white rather than shades of brown and tan. 

The Rugged Heroes 1 set comes with two weapons for Carson: this intimidating whip . . .

. . . and a deadly machete. Carson's metal hand creates enough friction to hold his weapons in place simply by shoving the grip between his pliable metal thumb and fingers. This gives the mini an additional level of versatility and immersion on the table, and I'm really glad Pulp Figures creator Bob Murch incorporates this feature in a few of his minis. 

My paint job is, well, serviceable. I need to keep practicing and fostering my eye for colour, shading, lighting, brush strokes, and all the rest. 

Cringing Minion

Every good villain needs a skulking minion of some short. This guy skulks. Or perhaps cringes. 
 

Newish Car Wars Wreck

Here's another attempt to paint a Car Wars wreck. Jeff gave me plenty of good advice after I posted my last such wreck, but I only used a smidgen of his thoughts this time around--mainly because I thought this wreck needed to look more recent. So there's no rust, but there are some smoke and oil streaks and paint scraped away to reveal bare metal. Also, fresh blood! Ominous. 

Gorilla Man

Here is a gorilla in pants.