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Elves All Finished

Well, as I wanted, I got them finished and added them to the rest…

So that is them all finished… and then like an early pantomime Joke … oh no they aren’t!

I opened a box and found another 45 sitting in bare metal… I said a nice line of expletives and got down to getting them stuck to their bases.

So tomorrow I will get these sprayed white and start getting them painted.

While I was waiting for the superglue to dry I got some paint on a parasaurolophus and some alien plants.

These were painted in Contrast paint, I thought I might as well give them a go on the dinosaurs.

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Managed a smidge of Painting Tonight

Woah, three days of painting in a row, looks like I might be getting going again.

Okay to be honest I tried out some more Contrast paint on the Proxy MI.

And to be even more brutally honest… I painted their boots and faces with contrast paint… not exactly the height of achievement, but at least it is something 😱. I do quite like the blue-grey on the body armour. The green on the radio op and engineer works quite well too. The flesh wash is ok, but I went over my flesh wash so that might have made a difference.

What I really want is a black (but they didn’t have any) – I have 25 odd arachnid warriors to paint up and I reckon that the Contrast paint would speed them up a fair bit.

I will see what I can get done tomorrow. I would like the elves finished. I think this is the last of them, but knowing my luck there will be another 60 hidden somewhere.

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Painting, Pufflings and Radar

Well, I managed to get some painting done over the last couple of days…

I decided to have a bash at the 10mm elves. As I had some contrast paint knocking about I decided to give it a go on a smaller scale.

Now if you remember, the last lot of these that I painted really ground me down (https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/back-to-the-elves/ ). Now I don’t know if it was the different paint, my state of mind or a combination of both, but basically I enjoyed painting these. The contrast paint really worked on them. As I only had three pots of it I painted with washes as well just to keep the momentum up. They have come along a bit since this photo was taken this evening. All that is left now is the metalwork, washes on the hair and then the bases painting.

I decided to get some new contrast paint ( the eagle eyed mathematicians amongst you would have realised that I had more than three pots in the photo above)..this was used on the 10mm stuff as well as the 28mm MI. Now to be fair I am still getting to grips with this paint, but, it does definitely seem to be helping speed things up a bit. Some of it seems to work better than others, but it could be that I haven’t shaken it up enough, or that perhaps a grey undercoat (in the case of the MI) isn’t the best.🤔

We have had a house guest since last Friday, today was his last day and he really, really wanted to see some Puffins… he had been to Sumburgh the day he arrived, but they were all out at sea. Today was a nice sunny day… 22.5 degrees which was a bit warm for us hardy northerners 😂. We took him down to see if the blasted birds had come back, luckily a good dozen or so made an appearance.

I forgot the camera so had to make do with my IPad. Here we have a phot of a pair, the one on the right is flaring into land. Then something amazing happened…

A chick (puffing) appeared, this is a lot more rare than one might expect. Bonxies (Shetland name for the Great Skua) would have him in a flash so they normally appear at night to have a bit of a wing flap (you can just see him at the entrance to his burrow).

As for the radar… Fitful head had a radar station set up during WW2. This helped foil a Luftwaffe raid on Scapa flow in Orkney. They picked up the raid and gave the AA gunners in Orkney a heads up as to direction and speed.

Being a bit exposed on the Southern point of Shetland, sometimes grumpy German gunners would vent their spleen as they flew past…. you can see the effect here…

So that is a little bit more on the out and about on Shetland Blog 🤣.

Not a bad place to live really…

Next stop…Norway
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No Painting Tonight

This is my residence for this evening ….

A spur of the moment decision to go camping. No room to bring anything faintly hobbyesque. Luckily my IPad has loads of reading material…

Tonight I am having a gander at the up and coming Aliens RPG that I pre ordered…

I am cold an uncomfortable already …wish me luck….

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M.I. – Work in Progress

I managed a bit of painting tonight (shock, horror). This was after going to a concert a couple of my kids were in (more on that later).

The bulk of these are standard infantry. They were painted in the Leviadon blue Contrast paint. It is sort of working over the grey primer. They will have the dark grey armour and helmet like the previous ones. The one in green is a Pathfinder sniper. His uniform is camouflaged and his armour etc is a dark green. Their faces are white as I am going down the paint with a wash for the skin tones. Still a very long way to go but at least I am painting again.

As for the concert. It was the end of a week long (we have broken up for the summer) creative project including dance and painting etc. It was all to do with the red necked phalarope.

Which looks like this:

We have a small breeding population on the island of Fetlar (which I knew) and they migrated South (which again I knew) however what I did not know until this project is that they don’t head south to the Med or Africa in fact they head pretty much West then South then west some more until they reach the Pacific Ocean off Peru.

You can read about it a bit more here: https://www.bou.org.uk/red-necked-phalarope-pacific-ocean/

Tomorrow I will endeavour to get some more paint slapped on the miniatures.

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Trains, Drains and Migraines

And I am back….I would like to say new and improved…but sadly not.

My time as acting deputy head has ended – the six weeks flew by, I came out the other end knackered but a whole lot more confident… so confident in fact that I managed to get a headship in one of the west side schools. The interview was about an hour and a half long, but according to my initial feedback, I wowed the panel and it was a unanimous decision. I then had to do another two and a half days before the end of term. We made it… it was pretty close to a crash landing but that’s a whole other story.

So where do the migraines come in… on Monday I suddenly started having a weird blind spot in my left eye, it was as if someone had placed a sparkly c over my eye. I lost peripheral vision completely. Evidently it was an occular migraine (never even heard of one before) no pain, no yucky feeling, just a weird loss of vision. They last a while then go away, and it did indeed last a while and then after a couple of hours it went away.

As for the drains… hold your noses (luckily I have no sense of smell 😁). I decided to do my regular septic tank header check and it was in fact backed up… luckily a 30m long piece of 40mm plastic water pipe is ideal for shoving into the ‘water’ and with a bit of vigorous hoiking about it generally gets the message and drains into the tank as it should.

And trains…. I have somehow made it to 53 and with my birthday money I purchased Ticket to ride. 3 hours later I emerged victorious….

The kids very kindly got me a couple of pots of Contrast paint for part of my presents from them.

I decided to give it a go on some of my proxy MI. As it was going on (I shoved it over a grey undercoat) I was honestly not that impressed, but when it dried I could see what it was meant to do.

I then decided to have a go over a white undercoat, the only thing I had was an alien plant….

This is the same blue as the infantry, I gave the top a shot with some of the red. The blue works better, I think because there is more detail to sink into. I will carry on messing about with it before I decide whether or not I like it.

Before even opening the pot I printed off a paint holder….

I didn’t want to spill their presents all over the table.

Finally (you will be pleased to know) I managed to finish painting something…

I will try and catch up with whatever everyone else has been up to over the next little while.

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Firefries Finished

‘Twas a long day today, but I did manage to get some painting done.

I redid the feet, tail spike and mandibles in white then added a flesh wash to the feet and tail and red to the mandibles… I am calling these done.

Yes I could spend a few more hours highlighting etc, but to be honest these will do. Once they are varnished they will do the job on the table.

As a total aside, my Facebook feed popped up with a post from ages ago, this is the forerunner of the Algy Lacy comics using our Pulp RPG and Lego miniatures.

Tomorrow I will make a start on more Proxy mobile Infantry…I think!

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Firefries Making a Start

Well I decided to make a start on the Firefries.

This is them after their initial green wash, I wasn’t sure before I started, but to be honest, I like the way they are looking. Various spot colours to add, but to keep them muted I might actually redcoat parts in white and then use the washes to add the extra colours.

These were undercoated white and painted with Army Painter green wash.

When I have painted with washes in the past I have used a darker colour for an undercoat and then give them a light coloured dry brush, then paint with the washes.

This time I wanted a quick effect hence the wash straight over the white.

I will try and crack on with these tomorrow night.

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Fleet Rescue – Almost Done

Tonight I decided to paint… to be honest I reverted to my childhood and used my fingers… or finger to be more exact.

I have the security and marine contingent completed now (apart from the bases). These will go with the two pilots to give me a full crew.

I was reading my set of four graphic novels/comics and noted that the unarmoured minis above could also act as police officers.

I dirtied up the ship a bit as the only place it could ever possibly be clean is in space…. but once it hits dirt then it will get grimy fast. I started with a brush and it looked like I had painted it on with a brush so out came the finger 🖕(I used that one as I could hold a paintbrush too).

To be honest I don’t know whether I overdid it or didn’t do enough… but you know what, its where it is and I am not going to repaint it as it has taken me long enough to get the brushes out. It still needs a mat varnish cover to hide the shine in the transfers – speaking if transfers I have a packet full of the things from when GW sold them for their 5th edition Brettonians… I could only find one and it was blue and yellow. I actually wanted black and white 😱.

On the painting front, I followed the advice of Tangibleday and got a nice painting light.

It is an Ottlite. It has a white light and us handy for taking with me wherever I am painting. Not the cheapest thing in the world. But works well and is small enough to carry about.

Next up will be the Firefries, I think, as I want something a bit quick to get me motivated again. Just under two weeks left of this job, but I have an interview for another school on 3rd July.

Finally… we got a second hand fridge on Friday as the one we had was too small for 5 of us. So we got it home to find the dimensions weren’t exact… to cut a long story short, after removing all of the cladding in the passageway and chipping stones from the wall it still didn’t fit! Luckily we managed to get it into the porch. The joys of living in a 200 year old Croft house!

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Fleet Rescue… Some Progress

Hello lovely people, long time no see… the job front hasn’t settled down any put in a couple of 11 hour days lately, but tonight I rebelled and left at 17.00. We’ll okay to be honest the only person keeping me there is myself. I am doing things in work rather than bringing things home. My main bugbear is finding supply cover, they are elusive beasts the supply teacher, especially in a secondary department on a small island… (which I found out today has 11000 occupied dwellings) 7 Secondary schools chasing one maths teacher. I have been coming home and basically flopping for the evening, but tonight I decided I would get some painting done.

I started on the rescue vessel, got some paint onto that.

I would like some transfers, so might have to have a shot at the transfer paper and see what I can come up with. I decided to make it bright as it is a rescue boat, one day I might actually get round to finishing the designs for the combat ship.

One another front, my 3D printer hasn’t been on since I started this job. I have got so much to print (the last things were the worm/leech things)

I also got some more bits done on the troopers….

Finally In my slob state in the evenings I have been playing Ark on the console and it suddenly dawned on me I had a nice reference for skin tone….

I can never work out where to place the highlights, but I think the above might help…. not that I will be painting any topless blokes anytime soon.

I am going to try to get back into painting at least 30 minutes a day and getting something on my blog more regularly too.

The bugs I built are now sprayed white as I want them to be bright… question is do I do down the speed paint by using a wash (or layers of washes) or do I go for a proper paint job, or yet again try some of that new GW paint… only time will tell.

Till next time (which hopefully won’t be too long).