Tonight the Northern Lights were meant to be visible so I was outside getting hypothermia trying to spot them. There were more snow showers about which blocked the view North. The stars were quite multicoloured so I reckon there was something happening… lots of photos on Facebook. Living in the bottom of a valley can be a disadvantage…
I managed nothing this evening, my daughter an I were expanding our domain on Ark so I decided to give things a miss, however now that I am writing this I may do something in a bit.
Exciting news from Shetland… you may have heard of the Loch Ness Monster, but have you heard of the Strom Loch Monster… I has photographic proof that it exists… see there he/she is rising through the ice.
It has been a bit chilly of late, and because of this our lochs have frozen over. This sadly has led to people trying to remove themselves from the Gene pool, by strolling out into the middle and one of them actually smacked the centre with a pole or something! Problem was that once people see one set of foot prints, they will follow. Thankfully two guys were down there tonight smashing up the ice where people can get onto the loch easily. If you look at the picture of the boat below you will see how easy it is to just walk onto the ice.
Every loch on Shetland seems to have a tale of people going through the ice and dying, sadly some within living memory.
The sun was shining on the snow today so it gives a nice photogenic scene…
We normally have warmer winter temperatures, but for the last few weeks we have been cold, over the last week sometimes sitting at about 1*C and then dropping to below freezing over night. As you can see from yesterday’s 18.00 temperature it got cold again.
Well tonight I made progress but to be honest I wasn’t really happy with it…
They were all at this stage when I decided to call it a day on this way of doing it and got the white spray can out again.
I also decided to spray these three as I wasn’t happy with the brush on undercoat.
Tonight I do Seem to be unhappy with just about everything.
Today is a very sad day for the Uk as we have now lost 100000 people to Covid. This has come about by the total mismanagement of this Tory government. Now I am not saying deaths would not have occurred, but that bumbling Buffoon who blagged his way into number 10 needs to be taken out and publicly flogged. All that money to the Tory chums wasted on PPE that didn’t exist or was useless or whatever, failed track and trace, bribing people to eat out, I mean for fuck’s sake. Eat out in a fucking Pandemic, are they out of there tiny minds, That smarmy bastard had the audacity to stand up today and make a statesmanlike speech about how much we must value the NHS workers who gave their all, the same NHS heroes that he and his chums fucked over by not giving them the PPE they needed and then refused to give them a pay rise (while at the same time clapping for them). Sorry about the swearing people. Those of you who have followed my blog will know I don’t as a rule swear on it, but I am steaming… I am so angry today with what we have achieved, when he stated the uk was going to be number one, I really didn’t think it would mean in dead people.
I think I need to go and lie down in a darkened room, with chillout music playing. Hopefully a day off tomorrow will get me back in the right direction again.
Apologies once again for the massive rant.
Yes the sisters escaped into the wild before they were rounded up and shipped off to Scalloway, there they were traded for others who would soon face the same fate!
I got this lot to paint next…
There are also the Karskin’s that I painted about ten years ago…
Here is my reward for doing the painty paints (as my kids used to say)…
Not a bad deal from where I sit 🙂. I am going to get the Flintloque minis I started last night Finished first and then I will make a start on the Valhhallan warriors first. At least I do not have to build these… huzzah!
Technically it should be Paint Them Black, but I like the song so now you know.
Yes tonight I decided I had better make some progress on the Sisters of Battle…
That seemed to be the longest painting session ever, Ten miniatures painted black. I would seriously hate to do an army… on the up side the Contrast paint went over the white craft acrylic without a problem.
These things have annoyed me from day one of their builds, hopefully things will improve soon. I am now off to watch a video on how to highlight black.
I was going to get some colour on either the squire or knight but decided that I really couldn’t be bothered.
As I love the far side, I thought I would share another one that I got sent… pretty much sums up my day today…
Tonight I worked on him and his chaps a bit more and nearly got him finished. I will take some proper photos in the light tomorrow.
I am going to try and find my Brettonian waterslide transfers and add some fleur de lis to the shield and the trumpet too.
I made a start on the lady from my Alternative Armies haul from Mike. I think I will repaint her skin as although she is meant to be a member of the Halfling native foot. I just don’t think it works.
The other lady was a Games Workshop one… I am not sure whether she is a vampire or a Brettonian…based on the sword design I would go with the latter.
I also am being side tracked again… more than likely going for an ancient campaign, we only started this conversation about 12 years ago… these were painted then 🙄…
On the up side I do have some pre undercoated…
Tonight I got nothing done on the Green Knight as I played on Ark with my daughter again. It was good fun and we hardly screamed at each other at all, well except when the Rex tried to eat us and our birds… but that’s a different story.
Earlier this afternoon I did some investigating with the undercoat and Contrast paint. I tested the hand shaken paints first off at the tail end… it was dire, so I wiped it off the best I could. Both were shoved in the paint shaker for a good old while and I gave them a go again at the front end this time…. errr Yuk.
So not to be outdone I sprayed it white and retried…
So it would seem that it is the white grey I was using… funnily enough it is airbrush paint, but I wouldn’t have thought it would act like it was stopping the paint adhering if it was brushed on.
I also sprayed this lot at the door, I wasn’t going out into the shed in a blizzard!
They are all Flintloque ones from Alternative Armies. According to an email today the new ones are on the way.
It really snowed today, and then tried thawing and has now decided to freeze solid. Luckily I don’t have any kids in school. Technically I have to drop my son off as he got a place due to him missing loads due to ill health, but I won’t be going if it is a death trap.
Oh I decided to read something to chill out today. After spending about forty minutes stressing over What to read I went for Mordheim. I loved this game and we have used versions of it in club games. It got me thinking that actually I could probably make a few changes and use it for Flintloque. I still have a couple of gangs, well technically four. The original plastic Skaven and Humans, my undead one and a chaos one.
This made me laugh a lot more than it should have done…
So after yesterday saying that I could probably get the Green Knight finished today if I cracked on… well I didn’t finish or crack on for that matter. My daughter asked if I would play Ark with her and we spent a long time doing it. We then played one night as Vampire as a family so in the end I decided I couldn’t be bothered to do anything.
I did however force myself to get the paint out and do something… voila.. a white horse, some white on a Sister of Battle and an arm glued on a Brettonian mounted squire…
The photos look like I haven’t achieved much this evening, I have in fact repainted all of the green on the horse barding as well as the Knight…
I decided to try and do some highlights by drybrushing white over the green and then doing a single layer of contrast…it looked total shite.
So I repainted it all in white again only to find that the White wasn’t taking the Contrast, so as you can see it and still shiny. After much swearing I then overturned a pot of opened Contrast. Luckily I had a big brush handy and saved about 90% of it.
I honestly don’t know what is going on with the Contrast, but I believe that the problem is the white I am using as it went fine over the spray paint and has only really been an issue over the brushed on stuff. Perhaps it is time for a new white.
But the highlight of the early evening had to be trying to clear the header of the septic tank. Luckily I have no sense of smell. It took about an hour before we got it sorted. In the process I managed to badly twist my ankle… luckily I am back to work tomorrow so that should take my mind off things.
Shetland has now hit 84 cases, ten more today. All fallout from the original party.
So when I found my big box of plastic I also found some old tatty drawings that must be at least 25 years old…
This was from when I was in the Ermine street Guard I think, or possibly when I was doing the education pack for Corstopitum Roman fort.
That is me in said group and at said fort… this was my first day at a re-enactment event and the following was my last…
Bogenwald 