Now as some of you know by now, I only really use GW Contrast Paint. I did do a test run of the Army Painter version and had loads of problems with them reactivating so those were relegated to the occasional use pile.

I saw an advert for some new paint from Green Stuff World… their version are called Dipping inks… so me, being me I decidedto give them a go. Normal price is just over £5, I got them for £3.91 a pot… they arrived today and as you can see from the photo, cost wise they are good value…

Here they are dwarfing both the AP and GW pots. They have mixing balls already inside too.

Now if you remember AP paints were cheaper than Gw ones, but they did reactivate. So I won’t be jumping up and down until I have done a full test of them… so I was going to print some random miniatures, but decided to actually print something useful and went for goats…

I will get these sprayed tomorrow morning and then do a test paint and hopefully we won’t have any reactivation. I will do another set of tests, there are five goats and five paints. I went for five muted colours, they have a load and if these work I will see about buying some more brighter colours..

Fingers crossed these work as they are dirt cheap compared to the other two versions.

So we made it ashore and are breakfasting in Macdonald’s as James has never been in one. We had to be off the ferry by 08.00 but we’re twenty minutes earlier so mooching around the empty streets of Aberdeen until 09.00

Train to Glasgow is 11.45 so we are wasting time … about to head off into the busier streets of Aberdeen now.

So our adventure has begun, with the slight cock up of me leaving my phone on the kitchen table. Technically I could have got home and back to the ferry, but if there had been any delays then I would have missed the boat. Luckily my son has his, and after I added some credit then we are back in communication.

Anyway we did get a nice sunset as we passed between the Shetland mainland and Fair Isle…

Unfortunately James is feeling a bit under the weather, which is a pity as he used to have amazing sea legs.

Internet is a bit naff on the ferry so only one photograph…

Today was digger day and it was good, but a bit stressful, fun. Fun because it was a digger, stressful in case I cocked up and broke it or dug the bucket in too deep.

You can certainly tell where I have been now, but it was a bit annoying that it had heaved it down yesterday so I was playing with a lot of water too.

I could do with a tonne of gravel to go into the few remaining holes, but that will have to wait.

Anyway after diggering I got to open a couple of parcels. The first being a new pair of shoes and the second being some bits and pieces of terrain…

Already have some of the Battle Systems terrain stuff, just never got around to building it or showing it off on the blog…

Tonight I eventually bit the bullet and made a start on basing the undead army…

So this is half of the forces I painted. I will hopefully get the rest done tomorrow and varnished later on…then it is onto the rust and moss effects.

To be honest the Base Ready range from Geek Gaming certainly certainly helped with powering through then.

Well I have achieved very little over the last couple of days, mainly because I am feeling knackered  and lacking motivation. Hopefully I will crack back in with things tomorrow.

Now the regular follower of my blog will know I do like my Samurai forces and indeed I am printing and sort of painting 15mm forces for games of Ronin. So far I have got everything from 6mm – 28mm

So whilst doing sod all on the painting front I have been playing Ghost of Tsushima on the console. You play the main protagonist Jin Sakai who is a Samurai defending his home island from the Mongol invasion. So as the game had progressed I am becoming less of a Samurai and more of a brutal, killing machine. My honour seems to have gone out the window as I throw various explosive devices into the midst of my foes, or drop on them from a rooftop and stick my katana through their torso. To be fair though I am good at saving the peasants from the evil invaders. So they think I am awesome…one of the characters in game did think I was enjoying it a bit much and said as much after watching me take on a Mongol force.

The graphics are absolutely gorgeous and whilst playing it it dawned on me that I have everything I need, except for some Mongols to do some kind of diorama… so watch this space and see if I ever do manage to get it done… remember the woodland Indians diorama from a couple of years ago… nope neither do I… I only remembered about the miniatures when I was hunting for Samurai pictures for this post…

This is the armour I am going to recreate in the diorama if I ever actually get it done… I have a Battle of the Five Armies to do too!

Right off to sneak into a Mongol encampment and emm stop them being naughty!

I really didn’t fancy flocking a pile of miniatures so instead I decided to set about the ruins with a dry brush… I will sort out the oil wash on these instead of the miniatures…

The above shows a before and after version of the buildings. I only had two acrylics handy to go over the updated base coat. I basically had raw sienna and buff titanium available so it limited the colours that I could go for, but I was after a sandstone look so it worked.

The new base coat… some kind of mocha colour I think.

Okay, not really, but a bit pointless when one paints everything in Contrast Paint. So today I eventually plucked up the courage to give an oil wash a go. Now to be fair I went for burnt umber instead of a black mix. As I was slapping it liberally everywhere on some skeletons it kind of dawned on me that the whole point of contrast was to do just what the oil wash would do… but I persevered and did twelve, waited about 20 minutes and wiped the wash off the surface… this is a mix of wash and not…

I haven’t given up on them. I resprayed some of the ruins in a lighter brown and am going to set about them with a dry brush tomorrow. My plan is to use an oil wash for the mortar between the stones.

So earlier on I got some more work done on the Big Beastie… i decided to give my Artis Opus brushes a try… all I can say about the brushes so far is that I need a bit of practice. So anyway here are a couple of shots of the Beastie after a bit of a dry brushing frenzy…

The one on the right was taken outside. I put it on the ground as it was really windy and I didn’t want it falling off something and hitting the floor with a horrible cracking sound…

I also got the 15mm based up… resin printed bits at the back and the purchased metal miniatures at the front…