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3 Yolk of Oxen

01.21.2023

I'm pretty sure I don't keep it a secret that I suck at painting animals. Horses, a tiger, a deer I thought was a pig. They turn out ok, but it's only by sheer luck.

At some point I picked up a pack of oxen. Sure, these look simple enough to practice animal painting on. I then did my natural thing and tossed the pack with lots of other D&D unpainted minis and forgot about it. I forgot about it so well that at 2 more times I had the same idea again while I was out shopping.

I'm still in my non-spray-paint friendly outdoor cycle, mainly due to wind, so the parking garage I started during Christmas is still on hold. I should just accept that's going to stay on hold until April or so. As it is, I decided my impulse paint project would be those oxen I had forgotten about. I want to say "I picked them so as to better my skills" but honestly for the things that I [will] "want" to paint, I just wasn't in the mood. Thus, oxen it is!

The oxen were a pain. In retrospect, I think the indoor humidity was higher than normal as I had really bad brush stroke lines when painting. That meant another coat to try and cover those brush stroke lines. And while I'm at it, what's the difference between painting what should be an ox with how I think a cow looks?

After a couple of days the brush strokes were covered up enough. I went a little crazy with different colors on manes just to make them look different. Oxen don't have blonde manes. Very, very light brown. With sun bleached highlights.

Now I have oxen. No idea what to do with them, but they now live in the collection. Next up for priming while waiting for April is a batch of Hasslefree minis that have been sitting on a shelf for 3 or 4 years.

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