5 - Reaper Miniatures - Ridley Darkedge, Male Thief

This is my second attempt at painting Ridley Darkedge. Overall, I'm very pleased with how the scenic base turned out. The broken arch was scavenged from a dismantled VHS cassette tape (remember those?) and the cobblestone floor was sculpted using clay purchased at a craft store. The only "non-scratchbuilt" part of the base was the skulls and chain which was a plastic bit taken from a Games Workshop Chaos Space Marine Rhino sprue.

As for Ridley himself, I'm semi-pleased with his paintjob. I'm getting much better at shading with washes, and my patience with applying multiple layers of paint to cover a surface has grown as well. This has led, in my opinion, to smoother painted surfaces. Well, except for the faces of miniatures. For some reason, I'm still struggling with getting a smooth coat of paint down on the faces and heads of these models. More often than not, they still end up looking like they've been afflicted with some evil sort of flaky, splotchy skin disorder. In general though, I'd say Ridley's paintjob demonstrates slow improvement in my technique. You can view a gallery of this miniature here.

Next up, either a continuation of my Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troops project (assembling and painting the vox-caster operator of Second Squad, 1st Platoon), or painting the Juron, Mystic Knight miniature I mentioned in my previous post. I'm leaning towards the Cadian Shock Trooper because I'm actually formulating a plan to use Juron in a large diorama involving multiple miniatures which I haven't quite committed to, motivation and time-committment wise.