Swatch Party II – DELAYED, TBD (was Monday, February 15, 9pm Eastern)
Birdwithabrush Twitch Channel
I’ll be painting out the Cyber Gang and Cyber Metal Fast Palette Packs from the RVE Punk Box
Storms across the US mean late package deliveries, so the swatch party is delayed until I have the paints!
Reaper Virtual Expo is an online event on March 5-7 2021that includes miniature hobby classes, games, panels, painting challenges, and more. The classes include painting, basing, sculpting topics, and others. Even if you’re not a Reaper product fan, you’re likely to find something of interest. I’m going to highlight my classes and the other events I’m participating in, but for check out the Reaper Virtual Expo page for all the information.
All of these events are free and take place online. I hope I’ll see some of you there!
General Events
Reaper has planned a full slate of fun events to run on their Twitch channel throughout the weekend. Here are a couple that I’ll be involved in.
Crow’s Nest Painters’ Panel
When: Saturday, March 6 at 12:30pm to 2:20pm Central time
Where: Reaper Twitch channel
A panel discussion with a number of miniature painters, including Michael Proctor, Aaron Lovejoy, Derek Schubert, Jen Greenwald, and myself. The Crow’s Nest is also hosting a sculptors’ panel on Friday, March 5 from 2:30pm to 4:30pm Central time.
Knightheart Gaming puts on a heck of a show!
Reaper Errant Dungeons and Dragons Session
When: Friday, March 5 from 5pm to 9pm Central time
Where: Reaper Twitch channel
Knightheart Gaming runs a Dungeons and Dragons session every other Friday for a team of the Reaper sculptors and painters. I love playing with these guys! Our Dungeon Master, Frank, does a terrific job of setting our sessions up so you don’t need to know the whole backstory to enjoy watching them. If you do want to catch up on our previous shenanigans you can read summaries from the perspective of the character Kay Nimblewit. These are a great read! Or you can watch any of the previous episodes. One recent adventure featured our gnome stripping down and greasing himself up with a tub of healing salve to squeeze into a small space…
Knightheart is also running a one-off game for the Reaper Twitch personalities. That one will have a cyberpunk theme to fit in with the Reaper Virtual Expo theme. I believe this is slated for Saturday night.
Hobby Classes
The hobby classes include an array of topics – painting techniques/colours, weathering, special effects, basing, using an airbrush, and more. You can get the schedule and details on each class over on the class schedule page. The classes take place on Zoom, so you’ll need to register to receive the login details for a class. Also if you check the class Details button, you’ll see if a class has a handout with more information on supplies and so on.
I believe the plan is to record all the classes and put them up on the Reaper YouTube channel, but if you’re really excited about something I’d try to attend live so you can ask questions. (And in the very rare event of technical difficulties.)
I am teaching two classes during this event.
Painting Scales
When: Saturday, March 6 from 8pm to 10pm Central
Where: Register to receive the Zoom link
I’ll be running this as a paint along class, though you’re also welcome to just watch and try out the techniques later. I’ll cover methods for painting smaller scales and large plate scales. The figure shown above is the colour scheme I’ll be using in class, but I’ll be using a different snakeman figure with a more open pose so you can see the painting more easily onscreen. My class PDF includes suggestions for alternate figures and paints.
Texture paste samples. I’ll also demo onscreen.
Additives, Mediums, and Texture Pastes – Oh My!
When: Sunday, March 7 from 2pm to 3:30pm Central
Where: Register to receive the Zoom link
In the first half of the class I’ll take about what additives and mediums are, and why you would add them to your paint. In the second half, I’ll cover products you can use for basing and effects. I’ll be demonstrating and discussing products from Reaper, other miniatures companies, and the art store. You do not need to buy any of these products to participate. Part of the point of the class is to help you figure out what you might want to buy later, if anything. The class PDF includes general information and information on specific products.
Reaper Virtual Expo Swag
If you are a Reaper fan, you may want to pick up some of the Reaper Virtual Expo swag. Currently they have three box collections up for sale. I suspect some of the contents will go up for individual sale later, but I don’t know for sure.
Recently I swatched out some of the RVE paint colours and showed off some of the figures on a Twitch stream. It’s in two parts because I had technical troubles in the middle. Part 1, and then Part 2.
Reaper has better pictures up of the figures than I could take, so I’m just including pictures of my paint colour swatches here. I have the remaining paints on order and hope to be able to do another stream and swatch scan soon so you can see all of them.
My scanner scans pretty close to true colour, but also remember that differences between my monitor and yours may mean that these colours appear a little different in person.
The 12 colours above are part of the Commemorative MSP Colors set that is included in the RVE 2021 Hobby Box.
The three plasma colours are packaged in a blister pack and included in the RVE 2021 Expo Box. They are intense colours, I’m not sure the scan captures the full intensity.
These three colours are not related to Reaper Virtual Expo. They are sample colours. Bottles of sample colours may be randomly added to orders placed at the Reaper store during February. So if you do order some RVE swag, you might get one of these, as well. The VDAY 3 colour is shimmery, which is not really captured in the scan at all. The Reaper paint wizard, Sadie, tells me that there are two additional pinks as well!
Bird with a Brush 