Having ADHD is hard to live with, especially when you need to focus. I’ve found that when painting a batch of figures like this week’s Pygmy Archers and African Princesses, it helps when I get bored or distracted to work on something else for a few minutes. So while my goal this month is to reduce the number of Colonial Era figures, I’ve also been painting some fantasy figures to help me get through the moments when I just can’t stand to paint another 19th century African figure.
I managed to finish three fantasy figures this week, all from the various Reaper Bones ranges: a courtesan from a Townsfolk pack, the innkeeper of Brinewind (a pirate city), and Tirika, a succubus demon.
The Courtesan
You can never have too many NPCs for a WHAT encounter, especially the carousing encounter. This Courtesan is one of two from the Townsfolk: Cortesans (2) pack from the Reaper Legends Bones range. I’ve gotten to where I paint more and more figures with darker skin tones. This may be a subconscious protest against C.S. Lewis and fundamental Christians. I know Lewis was a friend of Tolkien and wrote the Chronicles of Narnia among other works. One of his books, which I found a bit offensive was Pilgrim’s Regress wherein the character discovers Lust in the form of “brown girls”. This has always seemed racist to me in that in many Christian allegories, sin and temptation always takes the form of people of color. I’m probably way off base, but I feel there needs to be more diversity in my miniature games.
The Innkeeper of Brinewood
I think this figure was a limited-edition resin print since she doesn’t appear in Reaper’s catalog. She’s a big woman closer to 32mm than 28mm in scale. Not only can she be used as an innkeeper, she would also make a good bouncer.
Tirika, Succubus Demon
This delightful figure is from Reaper’s Bones Black range, and she really was fun to paint. Not only would she be a demon in WHAT, but she could also be used as a Bat-Winged Bimbo from Hell character in the old Macho Women with Guns game.
Summary
Every figure counts and these three bring my total for the year to 272!
- 14 – 28mm Science Fiction figures
- 17 – 28mm Modern Horror figures
- 8 – 28mm Interwar Pulp figures
- 9 – 28mm Old West figures
- 34 – 28mm Colonial Era figures
- 84 – 10mm Seven Years War figures
- 49 – 28mm Medieval figures
- 24 -28mm Amazon figures
- 33 – 28mm Fantasy figures
Well, that is all for this week. Time to clean the brushes, refill the paint water jars and put a fresh sheet of palette paper on the wet palette. Next up are some Arab Traders/Slavers and Askari in British service.
If you don’t have any people of color in your figure collection, why not?
Atomic Floozy Adventures 
Response
When you ask about painting people of color, I suspect you mean other than natives for my colonial forces to fight.
My British and French armies for colonial era battles include a variety of darker skinned units. West Indies Infantry and askari provide blacks for the British, while the French have Senegalese blacks. The British also get various Indian peoples with darker shades of skin (from different parts of India). I got ancient Egyptians for skirmish/RPG type games. They are painted with Reaper’s “Olive skin” triad. They include one figure to represent me on the table.