Alien Nation 2

"Get a job," she said. "It'll be fun," she said. "You'll meet people and have money. Something easy, you only need to do about twenty hours a week," she said.

Yes, my unenforced absence from PMPainting and other blogs is thanks to my 20 hours a week turning into almost 40 due to staff leaving and me being promoted. Promoted! A quarter-century in newspapers and multiple page design awards and nothing, but I do six weeks at a bloody dollar store and I'm bumped up to keyholder! So now I'm responsible for closing the store and counting the money at the end of the night, which is laughable given my appalling skills at maths and household budgets. 

I am, to use a medical term, absolutely buggered most of the time, which has not only negatively affected my ability to get off my backside and paint minis/play Space Station Zero but also do stuff like laundry and housework. Still, having a back that's killing me and knees that are filing for divorce hasn't stopped me from ordering more figures from Etsy and elsewhere, and knocking up some more trash terrain so the Muppets can do their next mission.

Work aside, here's three aliens I knocked up over the past week in between taking painkillers and dozing on the sofa.

First up is a Bathalian Primarch. I painted a Bathalian Centurion earlier this year for Monster May(hem). I used a coconut crab scheme for that one, but with for the Primarch I wanted to do something different. After looking around a bit I decided to rip off the bug aliens from Starship Troopers, using black and yellow.

A coat of black primer gave him the base colour I needed, and then I brought out the edges of his shell with a light drybrush of Dark Grey and Black Grey. Easy enough!

The pattern was done by painting it with a couple of coats of Off-White so the yellow, or as it turned out, the orange, would show up better. I went over the Off-White with some Orange Brown and then Wild Rider Red, and once dry I gave all the stripes a once-over with Casandora Yellow. The stripes were still darker and more orange than I'd wanted but they worked and it definitely gave the model a different look.

The Primarch's tenatacles were painted the same way as its stripes. After painting its claws Bone Shadow and Bonewhite, I used Averland Sunset on the eyes with some more Casandora Yellow, and the exposed brain is Ash Grey washed with Carroburg Crimson to give it a nasty red-grey look.

I stuck the Primarch to a 40mm base, pasted on some Vallejo Black Lave paste and once dry it was painted Violet and highlighted with Hexed Lichen and Pink. I stuck a couple of alien tufts, and it was done.

Back when I started on my Etsy addiction I said I'd never bought anything from the site before discovering the amazing range of 3D prints you can get there. Well, I was wrong; in the dim dark days of 2016 I bought this figure after seeing a reference to it on a pop culture forum. It's a 3D print of a Hopkinsville Goblin, one of a group of aliens that allegedly scared the crap out of a family in Kentucky back in 1955. I first read about the goblins when I was a kid thanks to an older cousin buying me a book about UFOs, and when I found out I could own one of my own I jumped at the chance.

He was sprayed with grey primer before having his spacesuit painted with Plate Metal and some Shining Silver. I washed it over with thinned Nuln Oil to tone it down a bit. Then his skin was given a basecoat of  Orange Brown and washed with Seraphim Sepia.

To finish off his skin I highlighted it with Wild Rider Red and Troll Slayer Orange. His base is made and painted the same way as the Primarch's. 

This chap is another Etsy purchase I made last month. It's a nothic, a D&D monster that I thought would work well as an alien creature. I was a bit annoyed when he showed up as I thought he'd be bigger, but on checking the description he's only supposed to be 35mm tall and his hunched posture makes him look smaller. Oh well, he still looks horrible so it's a win.

He arrived molded in black resin, so I just sprayed him with black primer as a basecoat. I wanted to keep him dark, and used some thinned Violet to layer on colour and bring out the raised areas. Once I was happy with that, I layered Hexed Lichen, a reddish purple, over the Violet and up the nothic's spines.

The final highlight colour was a thin layer of Pink, just enough to bring out the tips of the spikes and the most raised parts of its body. After that, I painted his huge eyball White and then did the centre in Black, dabbed some Ivory onto his teeth and claws, and gave his tongue a couple of coats of Scorpy Green.

I went for a really basic paintjob on the base, using Blue-Grey, Nuln Oil and some Neutral Grey. I did bugger up when gluing him on; his left hand is supposed to be resting on the rock, but I got it backwards. But now the nothic is painted I'm very happy with him; he could fit in anywhere, from a dungeon to a cavern to an abandoned space station.

The Muppets will be back very soon, honest!