Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Scalians – Making a Start

I cracked on this evening and got the minis glued down onto the MDF bases. This took a bit longer than expected as these minis are large scale 15mm. So my normal 3 or 4 to a base looked wrong.

I got out the bases that I had and had a play about.

In the end I found some 25 x 40mm bases and went for two to a base. There are sixteen to a pack so two’s worked well.

In the end I ended up with eight x bows and eight x swords as well as a general and a large beastie thing.

As you can see from the photo above the large beastie had a bit of a makeover. This was because he was a bit lacklustre – to be frank he was actually boring and crappy. Which is really weird as the rest of them are lovely miniatures.

Where I put the saddle/pad were a set of straps from the legs that just fizzled out. It was almost as if a saddle was an optional extra. I checked on the website and I can’t find anything to go on it. He is a mix of lizard and mammal and there is very little texture to the skin, I really should blend in that tail section when the superglue has cured fully (who would like to bet I forget before spraying).

My attempt to titivate him is a bit off scale, but it was what I had lying around the shed at the time.

I have my source material ready for colour ideas!

The Lizardman Army was my favourite alongside the wood elves and definitely my favourite in Warmaster. Sadly they went the journey, but the Warmaster army did make me £250 which was used to buy a second hand SLR camera.

I will get these sprayed tomorrow morning and start on the painting tomorrow evening.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

More Work on the Elves

Okay yesterday, I foolishly said it was warm, but not South temperature… foolish me!

Taken in the garden at 11.00 this morning.

it was still 26 degrees at 18.00 this evening… anyway onto the elves…

They are pretty much done apart from the bases, so I did indeed manage to get them finished by the end of the weekend.

I am honestly not sure how I am going to base them…I might stick some of my home made flock into the coffee grinder and get it a lot finer. I will have to have a think.

So, apart from the shields, hair and the metallics, these were painted in contrast paint. I do quite like it for this scale, I am still a little ambivalent about it in 28mm. Tomorrow I think I will make a start on some 15mm Lizardmen. I have just remembered that I have a ‘Tin Soldier’ 15mm Aztec DBA army sitting there too. They would make a nice opposing force to the Scalians.

Shortly after taking the photo above – this happened…

These lucky ones hit the table, the unlucky ones hit the floor. I think they all survived.

Tomorrow I am helping my in laws dismantle a lean to and put another one up in it’s place. Wish me luck, if the temperature is anything like today I am not going to be a happy bunny. I have become acclimatised to a Shetland Summer.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

More Work on the Elves

Today has been a warm one, nothing like the silly temperatures down South, but still warm enough for us. So this afternoon, as promised, we went of for a game of hide and seek in one of our few woods up here. I am pleased to report that my Ninja skills have not left me.

Anyway…Elves. I blasted on with these again tonight and managed to get them to the nearly finished stage. Basically weapons, metalwork, hair and hands to do and that’s them finished.

Looking closely at the actual bases, I have noticed that some have bi coloured trousers that need rectifying.

Hopefully I will get these finished tomorrow, then potentially move onto some 15mm Lizardmen (Battle Valour- Scalians) that I won at the HOTT tournament earlier this year.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Elves…An Update

Got the elves sprayed white and decided to give the new ones a Contrast paint job too.

I am really warming to these paints especially for the 10mm minis. This is the Plaguebearer Flesh over a white undercoat, I really like the way it is a very yellow green. I gave the faces a quick blast with the Guilliman Flesh. It really does bring out the detail. The red colour is the Blood Angels Red.

I will crack on with these tomorrow and hope to have everything completely finished by the end of the weekend.

Today I promised to take the kids to the loch. It is really shallow, especially when the tide is out.

Not a bad place to have on the doorstep.

It was a little misty to begin with today, but still very warm. When the sun came out it made really pleasing patterns on the water…

And on a totally different note, we had a massive visitor to Shetland today…

For those that watch ‘Shetland’ (never seen it myself) but Jimmy Perez’s house is second from the left.

Sadly I cannot remember who took this photo, it definitely isn’t mine.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

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
Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

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….

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

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.