Tonight winter arrives with a vengeance and with the big car having a flat tyre and the little car waiting to be picked up from the garage then I had to drive the hire car into town, drop it off, walk across town in the driving snow and pick up the repaired car. I just about made it to do the horse as the roads were getting , and to quote me, “a bloody nighmare”.I then had to go back to town to pick up my eldestfrom Drama, who kindly volunteered to leave early so we could get back. The 15 minute journey took at least twice that…
The joys of un gritted roads In a blizzard. At one point I missed my exit as the snow was that bad I couldn’t see it. The police have issued a don’t drive request until 10.00 tomorrow.
Anyway I couldn’t really be bothered to paint anything tonight, but I did did get these beauties off the build plate…
The Kelenken are to make a diorama, but jus thad to have a smilodon and dinocrocuta wearing armour… I am too excited by this! Must think 6mm Italian wars!
Well we are now free to go gallivanting all over Shetland again as the PCR tests came back negative… so another’s were still feeling poorly then I had to go shopping, so no painting, but I did manage a bit of printing…
Do you ever have one of those days when you end up just messing about and actually not getting anything done…today was one of those days.
I got nothing at all achieved this evening.to be fair some of it was taken up with my eldest’s parents evening which was really positive and then my other two wanted me to watch the Pirates of the Caribbean with them. I suppose it gave me a chill out time.
Five litres of ISO were delivered today’s oil can wash my prints in brand new cleaner rather than stuff that has been strained multiple times.
Still no PCR results so it is likely that I will be working from home again tomorrow. If I am then I will try and do some test prints of some of my latest acquisitions.
After a day of working with the comedic thumb protector on I decided I would try some painting. I managed to get the grey basecoat on the 6mm forces Ihad chosen to make a start on. I also managed to get some colour on some too. Sand has been added to hide the bases.
What wasn’t expecting to do was to repair eight of the twelve 28mm pikes after one of the kittens decided to leap on them. I luckily managed to find most of the bits. It was total carnage…these four had the pikes snapped off at the hand. Some lost arms or hands, one was snapped off at the ankle.
One of the Pike tops was a metre away from where the cat landed. The one with the red hat has lost his Pike butt. The one on the left needs his feathers adding to the helmet again.
I had moved them out of the way in case I knocked them off with the other things I was moving around. I certainly wasn’t expecting a cat to land directly on them.
In other news… my family is awaiting on another couple of PCR’S. I am seriously getting sick of this effing plague. To make matters worse I have actually hired a car as one of mine is in the garage with a problem. I had to pick it up yesterday as I couldn’t do it today. At 09.30 today we had to call the NHS for a couple of Covid tests. Needless to say with all of this I am having a bit of a sense of humour failure.
Well today the toothache arrived back with a vengeance. Not sure why, but my emergency appointment from a couple of weeks ago seems to have not worked. That is annoying enough then somehow I have managed to try ripping my thumb nail off… I now have a home produced comedy thumb protection system in place…
Problem is it is really difficult to hold a paintbrush now! I am going to attempt to paint stuff this evening but I may not get very far.
This evening we are in the grip of storm Arwen, its a bit windy even for us up here. We also have snow showers to add a bit more excitement to the evening. My good lady does not enjoy driving in the snow, but has had to go into work this evening as no-one else could or would do it, so being a jolly decent chap I said I would drive her in and pick her up. After doing the horse a then a bit of shopping it actually wasn’t worth going home for an hour. So here I am sat in Mareel drinking very strong coffee and eating cake, which to be honest I shouldn’t have eaten as it was a bit sickly sweet…
This means that my painting plan for tonight has gone out of the window. I doubt I will get anything done tomorrow evening as Joe is coming over for a game or two of HOTT. I might have the ironclads done by then and if so then we can have a go at that.
As I am sat here wasting time, I am wondering where to go with the blog.
At the minute I have done at least one post a day for 843 days and have done 1562 posts since I started in late 2017. Considering my first two attempts at blogging didn’t get past three posts between the two of them the I think I haven’t done too bad.
he question I am asking myself is do I keep going with a post a day or ease back a bit. The post a night has become a habit and sometimes I think I need an early night, but end up staying up to write a post. I will keep up,Painting most nights but am considering combining a few evening’s worth into one post. I still haven’t decided on what way I am going and indeed I might fret if I don’t get a blog post done nightly… you will be the first to know… well actually you will be second… I am probably going to be first.
In terms of the hobby, there is the never ending Italian Wars project… I do have 28mm as well as the 6mm too..
I have 6mm Samurai to finish as well as 2mm Ancients
And let’s not forget this poor lot….
This was them back jn June, they are now chipped and need a bit of TLC to get them back to a ready to carry on level. At least the ones in the background have had some progress made.
I do of course have a cyber mountain of shame with so much to print there and then of course paint up…
My mate asked me to paint up a pile of his Sengoku monster hunter miniatures too. Some should be quicker than others… but first things first…
This evening I decided to spray the Ironclads bases black as well as make a start on the remaining Italian wars bases… you will be pleased to know I got this far…
Well I managed 50% of my plan so that is something I suppose.
Hopefully I will get my butt into gear tomorrow and do something on the 6mm.
Well it 20.45 and I am not long in. So I am going to throw some paint on some of the bigger miniatures and call it a night.
I am trying to get the old blog done earlier in the evening as it us usually a race to beat midnight. I am going to endeavour to be in bed early tonight. Let’s see how that goes…
As you can see from the above, I have undercoated the 6mm remnants of this army as well some 28mm stuff too. These areall for my mate apart from the ancient plastic Goblin from Advanced Hero quest.
I also set about making some shallow boxes from my kitten food boxes…
Somebody came to check that there were no pouches still in it. These boxes fit in my painting station nicely and my contrast paint fit in them. This means instead if rootling about on the shelf I can pull the box out and choose the colour I want.
Whilst waiting for the undercoat to cure, I set about doing some more on the British Fleet. I am nearly there with these…
I want to put a black dot on the portholes as well as paint the funnel a different colour. The kickstarter for these goes live on 13th December. There is a little YouTube video Here .
And finally, I would have got more done, but my son and I were observing his ants very closely with his digital microscope…
We got a pile of cool videos as well as some other photos. They are difficult to photograph when their antenna keep getting into focus.
As some of you may or may not have guessed, I do love my contrast paint. The rest if the GW paint range I can leave behind, well apart from stuff like this which is ancient and I am still using it!
In case you were wondering, where it is used….
Here…
Anyway I think I need to spread my wings and try some original painting using my Army Painter paints… problem is… I have developed a hate, hate relationship with them as no matter how hard I shake the bloody things then they never, ever mix….
So I splashed out on a cheapish vortex mixer…
In the background you can see my photographic test subject. Here it is close up…
As you can see from the whitish fluid there is very little pigment mixed in. Thirty seconds later, this came out of the bottle…
Apologies for the blurred image.
I used this paint to highlight the bronze on the British Ironclad. So there was a success there. However this was not an AP paint so I grabbed a white…
On the left pre shake, on the right after 30 plus seconds on the vortex mixer. Now this was still quite thin, so I gave it another 30 seconds. I then used it to go over the dark green on a British Ironclad. One layer just about covered it and a second totally did.
I decided to print something different last night. I got these off the printer today…
These are from the Lord of the Rings Patreon that I support. These are from the Rohan range.
And finally I have backed another kickstarter. I have absolutely no willpower at all, in the slightest it would seem!
15mm Samurai can be found at the kickstarter page. Now some people have said that these look a bit monopole and the faces are a bit cartoony, but they will fit jn fine with my Tin Soldier ones. I also want to play Ronin by Osprey Games. Being able to print the factions will be good.
Bogenwald 