Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Yule, or just the annual bonanza of sales, the holiday season is upon us. As I’m sure is the case for many of you, some of my traditions are having to be put to the side in this unusual year. One tradition that has remained the same is my annual last minute crunch to paint some of the Reaper holiday miniatures. I’ve painted one or more of the holiday figures since 2015, and pulling out the red and green paints to paint as fast as I can genuinely is a part of my holiday season now!
This year’s 12 Days promotion features a lot of the miniatures that I’ve painted over the years, as well as a couple of great new ones. I thought I would share photos of them in a single post to help people get a better view of the figures from different angles. I’m also hoping to write a couple of posts about the new figures with some insight on painting those that you might find useful in painting yours.
The 12 Days promotion runs on Reaper’s site from November 27 to December 8, 2020. This year you can choose any of the 12 Days miniatures for each $40USD of purchase, or the ornament. This is cumulative, so you can choose two different figures (or two of the same) with an $80 purchase, and so on. It also stacks with the usual free figure of the month promotion, so you’re getting two free figures for each $40 of purchase. Remaining stock of the figures will go up for direct purchase after December 8th.
This year I worked on an additional holiday project for Reaper! Starting December 1st and for as long as supplies last, each $60USD purchase will receive a Paint Your Krampus mini learn to paint kit that I wrote. You need to supply your own brushes and black and white paint, but everything else you need is included in the kit. The Krampus figure is made in Texas from the new Bones USA plastic.
But enough of all that, let’s get to pictures of the charming holiday figures!
First up one of the new figures this year – Christmas Hugs. I love Julie’s holiday dragons, and this one was extra fun to paint due to all the great geek gifts on the base. I’ll post in a day or three with a ‘map’ of the objects on the base to help make it easier for you to paint a copy of your own. In the meantime you can check this Facebook gallery for more views and info on the base.
Sculpted by the Dragon Lady herself, Julie Guthrie.
The other figure that is brand new this year is the Mistletoe Goblin. Worn out shoes and a half eaten box of chocolates haven’t stopped this optimist from looking for love. More view angles available in my Facebook gallery.
I believe this was also sculpted by Julie Guthrie. If not it was her other half, Bob Ridolfi.
One of the first Christmas dragons, this one has a little hoard of presents that I wouldn’t mess with if I were you. I wrote a post describing how I painted the wrapping paper and with more views of the figure.
Sculpted by Julie Guthrie, of course!
Tinker the Gnome is doing his best to get everything ready in Santa’s workshop. You can see some additional angles in my Facebook gallery.
Sculpted by Bobby Jackson.
If dragons get into holiday mischief, imagine what cat dragons can get up to… I have a post with more pictures and some background on painting the figure.
Sculpted by Julie Guthrie. And you can tell she’s lived with a few cats over the years!
This little Stocking Dragon is very excited about what treasures might be found in the stocking. I wrote a post describing how I used the sketching or blocking in style to paint this figure.
Julie Guthrie once again had the honours on this one.
A fun twist on classic Christmas characters – the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. I have a post on how I painted the light effect on Christmas Past. I answered some questions on how I painted Christmas Future’s black dress. There are individual photos and more angles in my Facebook gallery.
Bob Ridolfi did a wonderful job sculpting these very characterful figures.
And one more cat dragon. Painted to resemble one of my cats. My cat doesn’t actually mess with the Christmas tree, but he gets himself into trouble in lots of other ways, so he was definitely the right cat for this modelling job. If you’d like to paint your cat dragon with a pattern, you might find this post on painting fur patterns handy. You can see more angles in my Facebook gallery.
Julie Guthrie sculpted this. I suspect Julie may have lived this.
And lastly, a couple of pictures of the Krampus I painted for the Paint Your Krampus kit. Ron Hawkins, the art director at Reaper, did a wonderful job laying everything out so it’s clear and easy to follow. The copy I painted was a metal master, but I have since seen the Bones USA version and it looks fantasy. A slotta-base version of this figure is available in metal if you’d prefer it in metal or the kits run out. This is a different Krampus sculpt to the one in the Bones 5 Kickstarter.
Krampus was sculpted by Jason Wiebe.
I hope those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving recently enjoyed your holiday despite the changes and challenges, and I send my good wishes for holiday fun to come.
Bird with a Brush 