Back to Middle Earth

As I have ordered the Seraphon battle tome, I thought I would hold on painting the actual lizards until I see what the different types are. Evidently different ones have different colours.

For that reason I decided to haul the Riders of Rohan and Warg riders out and get back on with them.

There are loads of other bits and pieces that I can work on until I decide upon a colour scheme.

On a totally different note, we now have two confirmed cases of Covid 19 on Shetland. https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2020/03/09/coronavirus-cases-confirmed/ .

So we will have to see what happens next. My daughter says that one of her teachers and his son in the high school are self isolating. A clinic has been set up in the Gilbert Bain hospital. I went to the doctors today and the first thing they asked was had I been abroad in the last 14 days.

The weird thing is that the couple and their nursery aged child were in Italy together. He has come home and has infected a co-worker, whilst his family are fine. It is quite funny that a number of people that I spoke to were convinced that as we were an island that somehow we were immune. They seemed to forget that we have an airport and daily ferry run to the mainland.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some of the white covered up on these miniatures. Until then – seeya…

Big Beasty Comparison

I am really knackered tonight so decided not to pick up a paintbrush.

I got both big beasties out and had a look at them. Looks wise, and not painting or colours, I actually prefer the Sleich one.

Now I know that one is meant to be an accurate representation of an Allosaurus and the other is a made up dinosaur thingy, but I actually like the smaller one more.

This will sound daft, but it looks more realistic! I think I must be going back to the old GW Lizardmen where the cold ones looked like Deinonychus or some other raptoresque beast. The heroes rode things that actually looked like a big bloody dinosaur that you could recognise. Evidently the dark elves are now riding drakespawn they look much better than the Seraphon cold ones.

I do fancy getting some stegadon…. problem is I like the old style that sort of looked like a Triceratops. The pictures below came from the Warhammer Wiki.

I reckon I am just picky! Anyway I have pre-ordered the battle tome. I am glad I didn’t get one when I ordered the box of miniatures as I would have been totally peeved to find I bought the ‘old one’ a couple of months before the new one. The other thing that is on the horizon is a start collecting box of skinks and skinky things. It has a skink priest, a Bastilladon with a big weapon on it’s back. Three terradon riders with big rocks to drop on the enemy from above and a unit of skinks. Now I was going to buy some skinks and at £22 a box they were doable. The start collecting box is £45 (with a 20% reduction) so it is well worth it.

I am going to wait until the book comes before I go for the next box. I have watched a couple of videos on YouTube where the book has been criticised and others where they like it… so I am none the wiser!

I enjoyed archery today. We were given sights today and it took me about an hour to get used to them. For the first time ever I wasn’t even hitting the target. I managed to drop low and to actually go right over the top. Once I got the hang of it I started to group the arrows better. On my last shot I managed to get them all within the size of a saucer. Three were actually touching. The problem is, I don’t know whether I was actually using the sight or using it to compensate for where I wanted the arrow to go. I reckon I will need to try again next week. Next week my eldest and I are going to try on the 18m distance. I reckon I will find out how the sight works then. Both of the girls are still enjoying it. My eldest isn’t too sure about the sight, but my youngest is enjoying using it.

Not sure what I will get done tomorrow, so until then – Seeya.

Big Beasty with Added Colour

Tonight I managed to get a bit more done on the dinosaur.

Still a few bits to do on it, but it is definitely closer to finishing than a few days ago. I have archery tomorrow morning and then have work stuff to do in the afternoon.

I am still feeling anxious and stressed about work. Probably not something that I should put out there but there is a stigma in blokes saying what they feel. I firmly believe that if more people talk about how they feel then it will help others feel that they can too.

Hopefully I will get the painting finished tomorrow. I can then make a start on either the saddle and rider or on the cavalry riders.

Until tomorrow…seeya

Big Beasty… a smidge done

Had another one of those days today, nothing in particular, that has made me wonder WTF I did going for this job. It was what I thought I wanted, but I am now wondering if it was ‘the grass is greener‘ or that I disliked the previous job so much that anything seemed better. Anyway enough of my snivelling and whining… you want to know how far a smidge is…. well not a great deal really!

I managed to get the strap work painted in a fashion. I will need to get some white over the top of it on the other side especially where the turquoise covered the straps. That shouldn’t be too much of a job I hope.

I hope to feel in a bit better frame of mind tomorrow and will get some more done.

We have archery on Sunday so that will hopefully put a smile on my face.. (to be fair the kids in the school keep me smiling). But I thought I would show you a pic from last week…

Bow needs to me more vertical… self taught longbow is the cause of this!

I have been doing archery with the kids in school too. Just little 8lb bows and arrows with suckers in the end, but they do seem to be enjoying it. We talked about safety first and then this image popped up on my feed…

Until tomorrow folks… seeya!

Big Beasty…Colour Test

I actually ended up coming home earlier as our geese had gone wandering down the stream and were about 600m from where they should be.

This mission involved piling along there in the 4 wheel drive as it has leather seats and can get closer down the track to where they were. After a bit of a false start we got them both.

On the way to the car…

My wife and daughter had one each in the vehicle. We were nearly home when the gander stuck his head next to my ear and honked extremely loudly.

A second or two before the honk of doom!

we were nearly home when the poohnami hit! You wouldn’t believe how much crap can fit in a pair of geese.

They are now back where they should be, I can hear them honking in the darkness.

So tonight I decided to think about the colours of the big Beasty. I had decided on a yellow underside and was thinking blue or purple when I inadvertently picked up ‘Terradon Turquoise’. I thought what the heck, and gave it a go. I am really pleased that I did as I really like it.

I will consider what colour to do the eye crests as well as the face flash.

Next thing I have to do is to either print a base, make one out of EPVC or get Martin of Dragon Frog Games (https://www.dragonfroggames.co.uk/) to print me one. Luckily we game together at the club so there won’t be postage costs 😉.

Roller… out for a spin

So tonight I didn’t have much time to get much modelling done so I decided to give the GS textured roller a go.

I am rather pleased with it. These three were rerolled a fair few times. There are still some blurred bits, but they will do for what I want. I will get a base or two out tomorrow and put a layer of Greenstuff on and then roll it out in situ.

I did consider getting some colour onto the big Beasty, but decided that I would try to cover over the permanent marker with brush on paint and then have an early evening in bed.

It didn’t really work….It spread it around a bit though!

Going to be a late night in work tomorrow night as I have bucket loads of things to do. So I am not sure what, if anything will get done in the evening when I get home.

New Delivery

Yey… a new box arrived today!

I really couldn’t pretend this one was tool parts 😂😂😂. So what was in the box…

The Aztec Greenstuff roller and associated rings, the leaf punch and branch punch as well as some soft foil too.

I decided to give the punches a go.

A Tesco cookie packet makes a useful test piece of paper. The foil even though quite thick worked too.

The roller has some nice designs on it…

I will give it a go to tomorrow evening.

I also sprayed everything white…

Sharpies are great for marking things on the models, but not so good for getting covered over with spray paint…

I will give it a go with brush on Army Painter white and see if it covers over. An interesting idea crossed my mind, would it be possible to add a dark bit with a sharpie, spray white and then have it showing through a light colour. I may have to investigate!

More Greenstuff Shenanigans (sort of)

Okay, so not the greatest amount used. I used a smidge on the Kroxigor weapon haft and a bit more on the top of the saddle.

I have decided to spray them separately as it will allow me to paint both in isolation… meaning I can get to all bits easily. I still have the shield to add to the rider so that I can get into his belly etc.

The rest of my basing supplies came…

This is a nice light colour which will be added onto the Lizardmen bases to add a bit of interest.

I did put an order into Greenstuff world and will add leaves etc onto the bases as well. All in all these bloody lizards have cost me a fortune😂😂😂

Reins and 3D Printing

I did a quick addition of reins to the dinosaur.

What I need to next is to add some Greenstuff onto the saddle to look like the two bits are joined together. My original idea was to keep the saddle and dinosaur separate and spray them in two pieces to aid painting. The problem with this is that the reins will not join. If, however, I glue the saddle down then I can build up the Greenstuff and blend in the reins.

I also fired up the printer and did a test print or two…

This was to ensure things were working before I started on this guy…

Complete with tree support

There was an awful lot of support on this miniature. I decided to give tree support a go. He looks like this when he is freed…

This chappy took 2 hours and 50 minutes to print. You can really see the amount of support in the background, along with a cold one to show scale. This is the first of my Kroxigor that I can print. Unfortunately when I was taking the supports off I managed to semi snap the weapon haft. I might get the Greenstuff out tomorrow and strengthen the break by adding some cord (or something similar). The thing on the floor sits on top to make a rather large and scary hitting thing.

I will see how this paints up before I print any more off – but knowing how I tick I will no doubt forget this and print all six off before it dawns on me that I did indeed have a plan!

Let me know your thoughts on whether or not to glue the saddle on before spraying everything white.

Saurus Cavalry

Tonight I spent a bit of time getting the remaining five Saurus riders glued together.

I would have got some of the other ones done if it hadn’t been for these being terrible to go together… well it wasn’t that they were tricky, it was that they pinged across the table and onto the floor. They dry fitted together perfectly and when the glue was added they wouldn’t go together at all!

Next problem was balancing the riders on the mounts. I would just get them all on then one would fall off and knock the rest off too.

I managed a quick thirty second job by adding the two banners onto the hero seat.

We are off to Archery tomorrow morning and I have a cack load of work to do for school in the afternoon. Hopefully I will get some time to do something tomorrow evening.

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