It was a rush job, a favor for a guy at work who wanted something to give his girlfriend. From sculpting the base to painting it and slapping on the grass on took about fifteen hours altogether - which for me is going way past "speed paint" and into "speed record", lol.
I ripped off the color scheme from 10017: Blightfang, mainly because I was rushed for time and I've painted this little guy in that same color scheme twice before so I knew I could bang it out (relatively) quickly (for me, anyway). I rushed putting in the water effect in front of the rock, so it didn't come out like I wanted it to, but I guess it still looks like the branches are coming out of shallow water...
Anyway...
I botched the color blending on the left wing a bit, but it looks okay in person. Also, you can't really tell even in the pictures, but I used the same maroon-orange-yellow gradient on each of the dorsal spines and tail end as well. I still occasionally have a problem with remembering that tiny details that look good under the 5x magnifier I paint with can't always be seen very well without it.
Here's a better look at the highlights on his head and wings and the water detail...
This second one isn't a mini, but I felt like showing it off anyway...
I tend to do a lot of what you might call "ephemeral art", because I get bored easily and like to keep my hands busy - I make origami fish, twist paper roses out of napkins and make little animals at lunch time out of the tinfoil I wrap my sandwich in, etc...
One of the guys at work was ragging on me about it awhile back, asking how much time I spent in jail to learn to make all that stuff...
That was on a Friday.
That weekend I was doing laundry and had about two hours to kill, so I went down into the garage, pulled a sharp piece of metal off of an old broken bed frame, and carved the guy a "jailbird" out of a bar of soap...
You should have seen the look on the guy's face when I walked into the breakroom on Monday morning and handed it to him.
(The whole thing's probably a tiny bit over 3 inches tall from the bottom of the base to the top of the head. It's loosely based on an osprey, since I have a ton of osprey pics pics I've taken over the past few years to use as reference.)
