From StuartL - NSFW Children's Books - Children's Books and Sarah's Library Cart - 60 Points

Hello again.

With the Fantasy Books taken care of, I'm going to hop back on Sarah's Library Cart and zip off to the next stop in the library. 

    I offer this maid as payment for the journey. Another Reaper mini, this time one of their civilian minis that will probably see the table as either scene dressing in a game, or an NPC in an RPG.

    I also painted up a little piece of terrain. This is a stone animal enclosure from Warlord Games' Rorke's Drift set that I bought years ago. The pen is resin and mounted on a CD. The gate is made from pieces of plastic sprues that I trimmed down to fit.

    It's not very big, but should fit onto a wide variety of tables as a piece of handy scatter terrain. I'm not certain exactly how much of a terrain cube this is, it isn't very big and I don't want to have to do the maths to calculate it, so I will simply ask for 1 point.

    For the next library section to visit, it is off to the Children's Books section. There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by where the news isn't talking about something or other being banned, cancelled or removed from schools, libraries and public access. Some things are removed because they are may offend people from different backgrounds, others because some politician is trying to score political points and others because the writer said something mean on social media. It is hard to keep up. 

    Personally, I am of the opinion that you shouldn't read something that you don't like, but unless a book is egregiously wrong and offensive, it should still be available for people to look at. (Perhaps with suitable warnings if people might find the contents hard to stomach). For the longest time, children's stories were pretty horrendous, often serving as dire warnings as to what happens to naughty kids, or as an education in the real world and all of its horrors.

 

    For my entry to the Children's Books, I offer the Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version, but the Hans Christian Anderson version. I painted up a similar model for last year's challenge (https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2023/02/from-stuartl-fish-fishmen-and-menfish.html), but found that I had a couple of models from the same set still untouched in my to-do pile. This one is a little NSFW, but I think we are all mature enough not to giggle too loudly.

    As with the models last year, this is a Reaper Bones mini. I don't know why this one is topless, the others were all wearing something. I'm no expert on mermaid biology, but I assume that they are mammalian in nature, or at least the sculptor believed so. I went for a blue skin tone to match my previous entries and to avoid any of the controversy surrounding the most recent live action movie. People truly will complain about anything.

    To accompany the mermaid, I also finished up the set with this regal looking monarch figure.

    And here we have the pair together. Both of the figures are fairly large, being well over 40mm tall before you include the rocky bases. 

For scoring, we have:

1x28mm mini = 5 points

1xsmall terrain piece = 1 point

2x40mm minis = 14 points

Library Cart = 20 points

Children's Books = 20 points.

TOTAL = 60 Points

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A great entry, Stuart. I like your milkmaid and animal pen, and your Little Mermaid (with Monarch) are excellent (love the swirling red hair). I also liked your comments on book censorship. 

I have to be honest that one of the reasons I chose 'Libraries' as the theme this year was not only because it was super-easy to pop themes into (certainly a factor!), but also in recognition of the unique and invaluable service they provide to society (and I'm speaking specifically about public libraries here). When allowed to follow their mandate (a important distinction in today's environment of ever-growing censorship) a public library gives access to knowledge to all members of society, no matter their standing or the topic of interest, so I feel strongly that they need to be protected and nurtured. Anyway, off the soapbox, thanks very much for the fine entry, Stuart!

- Curt 

From StuartL - Fish, Fishmen and Menfish - Books/Limo - 208 Points

Hello all,

Last week, my minion suggested that I should perhaps group all of my posts together rather than spread them out. So, as requested, I only have a single post to make today.

I left off last week at the gift store, so first of all it is time to take another ride around the studio lot in Lady Sarah's Limousine. This time, we'll be heading for the Books area. To pay for the ride, I have painted up a mermaid from Reaper's Bones range.

And to cover the cost of entry to the Books area, may I present my take on The Little Mermaid. Many of you probably know the story from the Disney movie, but it was originally a fairy story written by Hans Christian Anderson and a lot darker than the later movie adaptation. Again, the mini is from Reaper.

So, with two mermaids down, it seemed only fitting to round them up to a full squirrel point and I painted three more of them. 

Each of the models stands well over 40mm tall, with even the 'little' mermaid being about 42mm, not including the base. 

Continuing with my underwater theme for this post, I also painted up some Sahuagin, carnivorous fish-men from Dungeons and Dragons.

Again these are figures from Reaper and the three above are roughly 28mm, though one of them is 'swimming' up off some rocks.

To lead them and provide some muscle, we have a Sahuagin Baron (centre) and two Merrow or Sea Ogres (left and right). These figures are much bigger standing around the 40mm mark.

Hmm, any good underwater environment should have some fish in it, right? Well Reaper have that covered too. 

First up, a large shark. This fine, finny fellow is a bit porky, though you can't see it from this angle. Most of the fish are mounted on raised bases to give them the impression of swimming through the ocean.

That said, this large catfish is not, swimming along the sea bed.

A mixture of sharks, dolphins and a massive goldfish.

To show the size of these critters, I have included a Gripping Beast arab in the foreground. The smaller fish are all roughly 28mm scale, a little longer, but thinner perhaps. The big shark is probably closer to 40mm and the catfish is a massive chunk of sea life and maybe counts as a 50mm mini?

Okay, time to head back onto dry-ish land, with the soggy, squelchy Turnip28 setting.

These minis are straight builds of Perry's War of the Roses knights with added tufts and weird growths coming from both the horses and the riders. The models are quite dark and haven't photographed very well, despite me fiddling with the exposure settings on my camera.

And finally, to finish off the post, from the wettest of environments to the driest. 

These mummies were a real rush job, base colour, wash, drybrush and done. The centre figure is from the D&D minis game that came out about 15 years ago and the other 4 are from Reaper's first wave of Bones figures and are super bendy, lousy with mould lines that cannot be removed easily and are in some kind of odd 2D pose. If they ever see the table, they will be fodder for the players to mow down before they get to the real bad guy (represented by a much nicer figure). 

So for the scores:

13x 28mm minis = 65 Points

3x 28mm cavalry = 30 Points

9x 40mm minis = 63 Points

1x 50mm mini = 10 Points

Books = 20 Points

Limo = 20 Points

Total = 208 Points

My side duels

Squirrels +4 = 25

Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Dwarves, Fire Giants, WW2 Polish, Daemons, Viridians, Vasa, Junkers, Turnips, Necrons, Tau, Genestealers, WW2 Japanese, Teutonics, Lizardmen, Gnolls, Arabs, Space Marines, Kung Fu Chinese, Wolf's Dragoons, Merfolk, Fishmen, Fish, Mummies 

Skullz = 200

Turnips +30 = 115 Points

Fantastic post, love the mermaids. Bonus point has been awarded for doing as you are told.