Bargain sales on sites like coolminiornot.com are the bane of all New Year's resolutions for me. I see a figure and my imagination runs wild on what I can do with them... and then that's it. I have to pick it up.
Hasslefree Miniatures Toothy Fairy is a great example. I'm pulled in by the unique and the unusual, and this one has that in spades. The tip-toe "shush" pose with one hand. The pair of pliers in the other. The lanky awkward frame. The wavy, wild hair. The ugly buckteeth of a wild hare. And those expressively odd eyes. This is a fey creature of a Neil Gaiman story, a dark fairy belonging to the Unseelie Court.
I liked it enough that I didn't get just one, I got two. I had a creature in mind I wanted to use in a game, but they needed to fly. So I also picked up Reaper's Fairy Wing pack. Some major pinning was in order for these.
So I was surprised at how few pictures there are of this figure. The only one I found was on coolminiornot. The artist's approach there was for a sad and haunted looking creature whereas I wanted to emphasize the otherworldly look I got.
Tricky thing about her is she needs to be assembled and her arms are tiny tiny tiny.
I cut her off the tab with a pair of clippers. Surprisingly I was able to get a pin in the foot without going through the foot (which sadly I do at times).
Assembly requires green stuff. Can't avoid it with those tiny gaps around the arms.
So for the cool figure, I went with a white primer. On the warm figure I chose a grey primer / black wash / white drybrush. (End results have proven that I probably should have swapped them.) Here's a quick snap of the warm figure before the white drybrush.
I decided that one figure should go for a warm tone, the other a cool tone. I dabbled around a bit on the palette before deciding.
For the cool tone - FolkArt Aqua and transitioned into Anita's Light Green.
For the warm tone - Apple Barrel Burgundy into FolkArt Autumn Leaves into Reaper HD Rusty Red
Cool tone fairy with feather wings in the "Just one minute, I have to yank this kid's tooth out" pose
Warm tone fairy with butterfly wings in the shush pose
These pics were just a comparison of color matching. Assembling them they looked good. But attaching to the base, they did flop over a bit. Especially the butterfly wings which we so heavy for the pinning I was doing.
