Christmas Eve
Publisher: Reaper Miniatures
Cost: $9.99
Release Date: 11/28/2014
Get it Here: Reaper Miniatures
Christmas Eve marks my third ever metal miniature that I’ve painted and my second of the 2014 Christmas Exclusives from Reaper Miniatures. The first for both categories was the previous reviewed Christmas Knight, who I was happy with except for the eyes. Of course, I’ve never gotten humanoid eyes right save for Willow Greenivy who I’m very happy with. After being so successful with Willow Greenivy (for a first year painter without any fine motor skills thanks to ulnar nerve damage), I was ready to move onto Christmas Eve who I did purposely paint in time for this review to go live on the same date as her name. I was hoping that I could get the eyes right twice in a row. Thankfully I would.
Christmas Eve, like Christmas Knight is a lot more expensive than most Reaper Miniatures. This is most likely because it’s a holiday exclusive that will only be around for a month. I knew I’d never be able to paint Eve as well as the professional did on the Reaper website. Holy hell, the eyeshadow and eyeliner is something I’ll probably never be able to do. This was still a miniature I really wanted to paint though and below you’ll see the results.
Christmas Eve came in three parts. The main figure and her two hands, which I had to super glue on. The hands didn’t precisely fit the stumps she had so I had to do a bit of trial and error with peeling back some of the metal molding to make them fit. Unfortunately right as I was finishing painting, the left hand holding the staff came off. Too much wiggling of the staff to get at tiny crevices with the paint brush I imagine. So that meant having to glue and hold the hand in place AFTER she was fully painted. This caused so paint to come off and some touch ups to be needed. Perhaps most comically and annoying was that a dollop of super glue landed on Eve’s left breast making it look much bigger than the other, so I had to get that drop off without taking paint or having anything stick to it. That was NOT fun. Finally, Eve has some tiny little leaves in the middle of her skirt. On the professional picture, they are painted gold. I was able to paint those, but it just didn’t look good on mine, so I painted over them with green to let the piece look uniform. Thankfully you can’t really tell they are there on the final project.
So let’s take a look at some photos of Eve now. Again, I am far from being the best painter and I suck at photos, but for a review of a metal figure, you’re going to want some visual aids.
So here we have Eve nearly done. I forgot to take any picture of her in metal or in just a basecoat of Skull White Citadel spray paint. I was just too focused on painting her. You can tell I’m nearly done here with reviews/writing of any kind, eh? Anyway, I used ten different paints on her – five Reaper and five Citadel. As I’ve mentioned before Reaper paints tend to come out really watery, so I don’t trust them. I had that problem with both browns on Eve as well as Christmas Wreath, a sample limited edition Green Reaper sent me to test out. These three paints were just too watery and so I had to do several coats. Even then, the job was often uneven and splotchy looking. You can also see chips on the staff, bird and bottom of the dress from when I would pick her up. Paint peels off metal miniatures so much easier than with plastic or resin so I have to do a lot more touch ups than I normally would. Still, she’s looking good and I’m very happy with the eyes. Maybe I can only get female eyes right?
Another picture of Eve getting painting. Here she is nearly done save for a touch up required at the bottom of the staff and a couple metal flakes at the bottom of her dress/coat.
So, the five Reaper paints used were Christmas Wreath for the goat and dress middle, Fair Skin, Muddy Brown (owl), Walnut Brown (Staff) and Maggot White (off-white for the fur coat lining). The Five Citadel paints were Necron Abyss (eyes), White Scar (flowers), Abbadon Black (belts, pouch and hair), Evil Sunz Scarlet (dress) and Gehenna’s Gold (Gloves, accoutrements and corset).
Nearly done except for a few stray lines here and there to touch up. I took this one because if you check the left breast you can see that dollop of super glue I mentioned earlier. It’s a black splotch in the picture. You’ll also notice that hand with the staff is now at a slightly different angle than it was in the first two pictures because it fell off.
Final version’s back.
Final version’s front. Notice the boob glue is now gone.
Overall, I’m really happy with how Christmas Eve turned out, especially for a rookie painter. I’ve learned a lot this first year of painting, but I still have a long ways to go. Still, Christmas Eve came out great and I feel she was worth the time and money spent on her. She really shows up Christmas Knight and soon I’m have the Christmas Familiars and Christmas Elf painted to go with them. If you’re looking for a fun new figure to paint, get Christmas Eve while you can. She’ll make an excellent Druidess. She even already has her owl companion. You could eve paint the bird on her staff to make it lifelike instead of part of the staff. Let me know if you pick her up!
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