Greetings Terrans, how goes it? It has been a while since my last post, but it has been a very busy month in the Leadballoony house, where both my youngest son and I have been both been working hard on our Fembruary offerings. That means that you lucky buggers get to have a double-helping of pics to enjoy, so grab a beverage, strap in & get comfy.

Starting with my stuff & working in chronological order, I kicked off my Fembruary with a trawl through my Bad Squiddo stash & I grabbed ‘Patti’ the Ogre:

I actually converted Patti a bit – the original model is wearing arseless chaps and knickers (I kid you not – go check for yourself), but I sculpted over that little detail to give her a proper pair of troosers. I went for green skin instead of the usual human skintones – no particular reason really, I just fancied painting some different coloured skin, with the face being a particular joy to paint. Finally, I painted the patches of armour in all sorts of different colours & designs, including turquoise & white cheques in the left shoulder – an idea I pinched from krakendoomcool’s Orks, (I never would’ve thought to put those two colours together, so cheers mate!).

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Next up is a Bad Squiddo Alien called ‘Trinity’:

Not much to say about Trin – the mini is quite hard to interpret in places & it took me a while to settle on colours that I was happy with. Not my favourite mini ever, and not even obviously female, but she’s done.

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Next is another Bad Squiddo piece – the B.I.T.C.H. Cyborg:

Again, not too much to say here – she’s a nice mini, very week ankles, nice to paint & was good fun.

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Next up is more Bad Squiddo goodness – the ‘Junkyard Kids’:

I really like these lil’ minis – they kind of remind me on my nieces. I decided to put them on a single base rather than base them individually & painted them nice & bright. The one in blue looks very innocent, until you realise she’s hiding a crowbar behind her back!

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The next three are also Bad Squiddo minis – the ‘Wrenchmouth & Handlers’ set:

I went with a desert raider type scheme for these ladies & I’m really happy with how they turned out. Not sure if the Wrenchmouth itself is female, but I’m guessing so because of the baby one that is being held by one of the handlers.

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Here they all are together, ready to join my all-female gang ‘The Banshees’:

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Next we have a slight change of genre & project. I was looking over my ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’ inspired Ghost Archipelago warband, and I noticed that ‘Niamh Stormcaller’ from the Pantheon of Chaos range was female, so I got her painted up:

She’s is a cracking mini, but there was quite a lot of chopping & sculpting needed to de-chaos her to my satisfaction & then make her more piratical. I’m really pleased with how she came out – more anthropomorphic bird-woman than a ‘because chaos’ Beast(wo)man. A nice tropical colour scheme suits her well I think, and I painted that cool trident dagger with a bit of ‘magic glow’™. She joins my fledgling Ghost Archipelago crew as a Storm Warden… how could I not with a name like Stormcaller!

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Also… while searching my leadpile, I found the 2^nd set of Karr-Keel Zombies, and noticed that there are a couple of undead ladies in the set so I painted the set up. I’ll share the whole set in a separate post, but for now, here are the lady-Zombies:

These are lovely minis to paint – Kev Adams at his best if you ask me. I always paint my Zombies the same way – washes only, very messy, loose & free. Now I’ve added Contrast paint to that method & can reliably smash minis like this out really quickly… I’ll never win an award with them, but I just love painting in this way.

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Finally, I managed to squeeze in one last Fembruary piece – this is a special mini I have converted to represent a character in my Spero Secundus campaign – Marog the Sump-Witch:

She is based on the lady-Ghoul from the Warhammer Underworlds Ghoul warband ‘The Grymwatch’. More on the rest of the warband in a later post, but suffice to say that I’m not a fan of the look of GW Ghouls these days – all the bone piercings & skull-bling is just a bit OTT for my taste. I de-cluttered Marog, sculpted some rags on her, and then I painted her in a similar way to my ‘Goblins of Goblin town’ set. One day me & my Droogs are going to play out that bit of the campaign for reals 😊

So that’s it for my Fembruary efforts, but we also have my youngest’s offerings to look at! He’s such a cool guy, so when I explained the concept of Fembruary to him he wanted to take part. We looked through his Mythic Battles: Pantheon minis & picked out 6 female models that caught his eye. First up is a three-fer (a Throuple?) of sisters – Deino, Enyo and Pemphredo, collectively known as the Graeae:

These witches, made famous in the classic ‘Clash of the Titans’, were blind, but they shared one eye and one tooth between them. My Son and I played about with a creepy pallid flesh & after watching the original movie, (where they are portrayed as cannibals) he wanted to add some gore. I’m glad he did, because that brightens these minis up & adds a nice bit of interest.

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Next up is Medea – the love-interest in the classic ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ film:

In the film she is portrayed as the sultry daughter of King Aeetes & high priestess of Colchis. Spoiler alert – she falls in love with Jason & helps him steal the Golden Fleece (too soon?). That’s a nice image to hold on to, but it’s a good job they never made a sequel! There are a few versions of the story in the mythology, but in all of them she is a sorceress, a woman scorned, and generally quite killy, (including killing off her own children with Jason when he buggers off & marries another lady!). The mini itself is a weird one… I had to go look at the original artwork to see what the heck she was supposed to be holding – the picture shows something like a flower disintegrating into soot, so we just painted a kind of black smoke effect. Not the greatest mini ever tbh, but a fun bit of research & worth painting.

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Next up, we went big… like Goddess big, with Athena and her owl:

We had great fun with this mini, and painting at a bigger scale is really nice to do. It’s also pretty useful as a teaching tool, so we took our time & talked through the shading & highlighting process at some length. As a result, there is probably a bit more of my time been put into painting the flesh here, but still mostly my Son’s work.

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Finally, the one mini that my Son was most excited about – the undisputed star of Clash of the Titans & Ray Harryhausen’s finest creation in my opinion – Medusa:

My Son was determined to paint this one by himself as much as possible, so of all the minis, this one has the least parental assistance. We watched Clash of the Titans together for inspiration, we talked about colour schemes, and we planned out how best to approach the mini. I am so proud of what he achieved here – using all the techniques that we had practised together, he worked independently to produce a fine paintjob that is far better than anything I was doing at twice his age… he has just turned 11 btw, so you can see why I’m so impressed! Here’s a final pic of all his efforts this month:

Well, that’s the Fembruary offerings from the Leadballoony clan – I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what we’ve achieved – I reckon that’s 17 female minis painted between us, (or 20 depending on the gender of the Wrenchmouth, Wrenchmouth pup, and Athena’s Owl)… Not too shabby!

Next post will be a round-up of all the Fembruary efforts from folks that contributed from all over the world. I’ll curate the lot as best I can & present them all as a celebration of the event – hopefully this will coincide with International Women’s Day! (wish me luck because we have a record number of entrants, so it’s a big job this year 😊)