Short, sweet, and hey where's my wallet?

It's my birthday today, so last night I was banished to my sweet basement while my wife made me a cake, and I managed to finish a couple of miniatures that I'd been working on, the first of which I present to you here:

Ugh, for all that is good about my basement, there is a distinct lack of natural light that makes miniature photography horrible! Although admittedly it was half one in the morning when this picture was taken, so it's not like there was an abundance of natural light available... Imagine that the colours aren't so washed out though nevertheless!

As you may recall, this is the promo Halfling Thief from Westfalia Miniatures, purveyors of a line of absolutely fantastic miniatures that are a joy to paint, and hopefully soon providers of the bounty of the first Kickstarter project that I ever backed...

Level of detail on a miniature is a difficult thing to balance, and I think Westfalia Miniatures are one of the best at getting it right - I had great fun picking out details like his pinky ring, the brooch on his cloak and painting tiny griddle lines on the sausages hanging at his waist, but there weren't so many things that I got frustrated as can sometimes happen when you spend ages painting details on an overly busy miniature and don't feel like you're making any progress...

[Brief diversion with a shot of how I spent the last minutes of my twenties...]

And here's the back! The cloak isn't as washed out as this to the naked eye - and the patch actually looks purple!

This was my first time painting fire on a miniature, and after (despite?) watching several youtube videos with wildly conflicting advice I think it came out looking alright (and oddly seems to be the only part of the miniature that actually photographed well...)

Eh, it'sdaylight now, so here are some much better lit pictures:

Fun fact: in daylight, you notice that the tea based display board that you made a couple of years ago seems to have taken on a strange tinge, and looks like it might have started going mouldy (boo!) - it looks like I might need to strip it off completely and redo it...

Anyway, finishing this chap takes the Tally to:

22 vs 333 = -311

What, did I say that I finished a couple of miniatures at the start of the post? Well, you'll just have to watch this space...