Something I have always wanted to do...

I have shied away from attempting landscape painting for decades. Painted hundreds of minis, lots of table top terrain, and not one painting to backdrop it for photos.

Until yesterday.

I took some photos Sunday of my layout for my first game of Andrea Sfiligoi's Of Gods and Mortals*  that I quite liked but the background room clutter really detracted. I started thinking about how I really ought to get started with the airbrush and make a backdrop to hide the clutter for better pictures. Whited in the sky on a couple of handy still-flattened box lids Sunday. Well, I backed off on learning to airbrush too and finished the first painting as a regular brushed painting with some cheap craft store acrylics I usually use for terrain last night. I'm pretty happy with the mountain, not as much with the clouds. But now I know I can do something good enough to use. With the dam broken, I can start getting better. And maybe start learning that airbrush too.

Anyway, here it is, proof of concept...

The painting by itself. Yeah, the box lid folds and corrugations show. But it is basically a throwaway learning piece. Took about an hour and a half maybe. I was in the zone and really don't know. There are some little flecks of white still there from a stupid ancient bottle of blue paint whose lid crumbled to plastic dust as I tried to open it. Got most of them off...

Anubis in a fearsome aspect.

I learned that having tall shadow casting terrain and a sharp board edge in front of the painting is a bad idea. Could take down the towering bits and plunk some lichen or rocks down at the board edge to break the flat line . But hey, he's awesome, so I want a picture here of him until I take a better one! He's an old Diablo-related action figure that I based up on two bases, one for each foot, since he is so big, and could stand, if unstably, without any base at all.

Sobek's left flank guard is the mighty BOAR CROC!

I think my next one will be on foam core to be wider and still lightweight, and not have corrugations to show through. Maybe do two so as to be able to line a 6 foot table edge?

(Thanks to the guys that reported the pictures problem. I was able to see in from Safari on my work machine. I have re-uploaded the broken images by another path and will see if they are visible soon.)

* Published by Osprey. More on the Anubis vs Sobek game I'm doing with it in my next blog post. I think its going to rock.