Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

I'm back to painting monsters, other critters and game pieces at the moment. This is because I've shifted my focus from big unit games to skirmish again. As usual, I'll keep on this track for a while and make a bunch of stuff until I get distracted by something else. Then I'll blitz that new thing (whatever it may be).

First of all is this little beauty:

A Beholder! At least that's what they were called when I last played D&D (early '90's). This fine chap is from WizKids and he's called a "Spectator" (?) or something similar. I threw out the packaging and I can't remember what it said. My mind is a bit vague on the subject but I do remember the name Beholder.

I was a bit intimidated with the thought of painting the eyeballs. I did them by doing lots of layers:

Grey undercoat. Red wash. Grey/white. White (x2), Very thin burnt orange (x2). Fiery orange. Fiery orange + yellow (50/50). Bright yellow. Then I added the pupil using flat black followed by a white dot. Then I did a coat of flat varnish followed by two coats of GW 'Ard Coat. So... All up 15 layers. On each eye.

He came out looking pretty nice. I like the clear plastic stand. It attaches to his back as you can see in the pic below.

And a troll. In particular: This bloody big troll.

This is yet another figure from WizKids. I decided to make it into an Ice Troll for Frostgrave. It's really large and here's a pic with an Oathmark  dwarf to give you an idea of scale.

From big to small. This one is a Fire Sprite or whatever. It's another Reaper Bones figure and comes from the Familiars set. This is one of the figures from this set that is usable.  A couple of the figures are no good and I threw them out because I couldn't make out what they were supposed to be. It's only a tiny figure and I don't know what I can use it for.

These dogs came with the FireForge skeleton cavalry. They were supposed to be "undead" and I needed to patch up the holes in them (holes that were supposed to look like decayed flesh!!!). They looked pretty crappy but I patched them up with greenstuff and they came out looking okay. There's two of them - One from each sprue.

And I think that's it.