So I have shown a few photos and videos showing the light levels we get in the summer. Someone just shared this with me. It is a time lapse of over 2000 photos taken at Muckle Flugga at the far north of Unst.
Muckle Flugga was the most Northery manned lighthouse in the Uk. The outer stack is the most northerly part of the Uk, and is beyond the lighthouse.
Tonight was tedious in the extreme. Painting teeny tiny faces and weapons white on 6mm miniatures.
Tomorrow I will need to get them all painted too. I am thinking the Ashigaru helmets will be a different colour just to break up the blue a bit. Yumi will be red, teppo brown and the naginata light brown and silver. The sashimono will be black with white. The helmets will also not blend in with the black too.
I now have three more days at work, not that I am counting 😂
I must admit that I am a little bit excited about the resin printer. I am also going to be working with the children with resin too. They want to make things out of it, so I might as well start them young 😉 (with all safety measures in place of course).
So those of you who have read my blog regularly will know I love my Ender 3 Printer. Yes it has Wobblies every so often and I have to take it apart and put it back together again once in a while. But I have now had it 18 months and it is still pretty much as it came (apart from a new bed plate and also an aluminium extruded.
Yesterday I took a next step on my journey and pressed ‘purchase’ on a resin printer. Will I be getting rid of the Ender? Hell No. it would be like getting rid of your old dog because you got a new puppy!
So I am now preparing for another learning curve. The interesting thing about the resin printer is that height determines the time of the build. So printing one thing takes the same amount of time as ten, if they are all on the plate together. The down side with resin is the fumes, so I will have
to think of where to put the printer. Probably my toy shed. It was originally set up for me to do things in, so it will probably work in there… just a long way to walk…
So after much backwards and forwards between brands I eventually went for the Proton Zero, cheapest of the ones I was looking at.
Tonight I even painted some things…
I decided that all of my Ashigaru would be employed by the same daimyo therefore they would be all wearing the same coloured armour. The samurai would all be wearing their own clan armour so they can be more colourful. The one thing I like about the Banzai rules is that the edges to the bases are different colours to help with weapon and troop type identification.
Tonight I started on the samurai infantry. Again I went for the different coloured armour. Part of me thinks they are a bit bright, but with all of the white bits showing too then they aren’t exactly looking the best. The other thing I did was paint the undercoat in for all of the flesh on the cavalry
The other thing I think is the problem is that there is a lot of solid colour without a break. Once I add weapons and flesh etc it should look better… I hope 🤞
It was a nice day today so we went just over the hill to Catfirth. The kids went for a paddle and err, as you can see it progressed a bit…
Please note, the pile of clothes, by time we remembered, they were somewhat damp and my daughter’s leggings floated away! Not a bad place to live really!
As my Samurai army were already undercoated white I decided I would make a start on them.
I really hummed and hawed about colours, and in the end I decided that the samurai were going to be different colours. In my 15mm army I did three coloured clans. This time there would be lots of variation across the miniatures. For some reason I decided to start on the cavalry. Most of the horses are bay or chestnut, with a smattering of black and other colours too.
This is them looking a bit untidy as I just went for it, I will paint in faces, hands and weapons in later on. I have decided they will all have a black sashimono to tie them all in together. I haven’t decided on the mon yet,but it will more than likely be a dot!
The Ashigaru are my next problem… do I go all coloured natural browns and greens etc. Or do I go for a single clan colour… I will have to think on that one.
While I remember one of the ‘elf’ bases sneaked in for a white undercoat and they are very obviously skeletons with the undercoat on.
I gave them a quick blast with skeleton bone as well as grey for the cloak. I actually think they will look fine.
Or a happy little accident as Bob Ross would say. Today my good lady moved my figures and one of the Oni slipped off so she picked it up and put it back on the box file that I use for my paint, it was then that something struck me… I know have giants to go with my Fantasy Japanese forces!
As you can see from the photo, I spent this evening getting the bases painted and then getting them flocked. Once this lot is dry I will get some tufts and pebbles on the bases to match in with the lizards.
I also spent this evening looking for my super magnifier headband thingy. I was having problems with the next army to paint as I couldn’t actually tell what they were. I have spent the last few weeks calling them elves, well I suppose technically they could be long dead elves as they all seem to be skeletons. I am really not sure how I am going to paint these when you cannot actually tell what they are! I will have to try and do my best, but I really do feel that there is some swearing ahead.
Whilst looking for my magnifier, I came across this lot…
The mammoth were used in mammoth racing game, the ogres and giants were got to go with the ork and goblin army, they evidently got separated a good while ago.
Woah, I have just reached a milestone I never, ever, ever thought I would reach. WordPress has just informed me that I have just done my one thousandth post.
Although I decided early on that I was going to blog regularly, I never thought that this would ever happen. The one important thing is that I wouldn’t have managed it without you fine people reading it and commenting. Before this blog, the longest I ever managed was two weeks with one post a week. On that blog I had the grand total of Zero followers.
I therefore want to say a big thank you to everyone who has come and commented or liked or even just popped in to wonder what this weird blog was all about. The other thing my stats told me was that I have written at least one post every day for the last 325 days.
I will probably need a lie down once I hit the 365th day 😂 The following photos were the first on the blog. One even has the blog name on it 😂.
I still haven’t finished basing these miniatures!
All finished apart from the bases and no doubt all of the bits I will have missed and notice in the photos.
I will get them based up the same as the Lizardmen and then make a start on either the elves or the samurai. The samurai will be painted up like my 15mm ones. Instead of three colours I will probably just go for one.
Here are a couple of close up shots…
As I said in yesterday’s post I really like the colours here. On my way out to work this morning I saw them in the sun and they actually looked even better. I will try and get them photographed outside tomorrow.
Tonight I worked some more on the 6mm Forces. To be honest I was Nearly gnawing my own arm off, but at least I cracked on and got within spitting distance of finishing.
I am pleased that they have pretty much come out how I wanted them to look.
I decided that each Nobori cluster would have different Symbols on them, for no other reason than I wanted them to look different.
To be honest these aren’t the best painted 6mm I have ever done, but there again the details on these was a bit tricky at times. In no way is this a complaint against the sculptor, the best I have ever managed were pumpkins. Obviously I liked them as I bought lots of armies from Ian at Irregular Miniatures. I just suddenly remembered, that when I moved to shetland that my 6mm Napoleonic’s went in the bin, as No-one wanted them and I needed to reduce the amount I was bringing up here.
Okay, if truth be told it should be the Ronin hair, as that is all I did on them. I spent a lot more time on the 6mm stuff.
The sashimi are all painted black as are the Nobori , bows are done, just a mon to do on the black, weapons and faces on the infantry. Hopefully will be finished soon.
I was relieved yesterday as I managed to get more Spray paint… five cans of it (including a one with filler in). I thought the latter might be useful to fill in the lumps and bumps on the prints…
I gave some roads and my map tiles a few coats and it wasn’t that impressive…
Now to be honest, this could be a case of user error as Although I shook it a fair bit, I didn’t do my usual warm it up too. I will give it another blast tomorrow and see if it makes any difference.
Bogenwald 