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 · 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 · 2 Comments

Firefries Finished

‘Twas a long day today, but I did manage to get some painting done.

I redid the feet, tail spike and mandibles in white then added a flesh wash to the feet and tail and red to the mandibles… I am calling these done.

Yes I could spend a few more hours highlighting etc, but to be honest these will do. Once they are varnished they will do the job on the table.

As a total aside, my Facebook feed popped up with a post from ages ago, this is the forerunner of the Algy Lacy comics using our Pulp RPG and Lego miniatures.

Tomorrow I will make a start on more Proxy mobile Infantry…I think!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Firefries Making a Start

Well I decided to make a start on the Firefries.

This is them after their initial green wash, I wasn’t sure before I started, but to be honest, I like the way they are looking. Various spot colours to add, but to keep them muted I might actually redcoat parts in white and then use the washes to add the extra colours.

These were undercoated white and painted with Army Painter green wash.

When I have painted with washes in the past I have used a darker colour for an undercoat and then give them a light coloured dry brush, then paint with the washes.

This time I wanted a quick effect hence the wash straight over the white.

I will try and crack on with these tomorrow night.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Fleet Rescue – Almost Done

Tonight I decided to paint… to be honest I reverted to my childhood and used my fingers… or finger to be more exact.

I have the security and marine contingent completed now (apart from the bases). These will go with the two pilots to give me a full crew.

I was reading my set of four graphic novels/comics and noted that the unarmoured minis above could also act as police officers.

I dirtied up the ship a bit as the only place it could ever possibly be clean is in space…. but once it hits dirt then it will get grimy fast. I started with a brush and it looked like I had painted it on with a brush so out came the finger 🖕(I used that one as I could hold a paintbrush too).

To be honest I don’t know whether I overdid it or didn’t do enough… but you know what, its where it is and I am not going to repaint it as it has taken me long enough to get the brushes out. It still needs a mat varnish cover to hide the shine in the transfers – speaking if transfers I have a packet full of the things from when GW sold them for their 5th edition Brettonians… I could only find one and it was blue and yellow. I actually wanted black and white 😱.

On the painting front, I followed the advice of Tangibleday and got a nice painting light.

It is an Ottlite. It has a white light and us handy for taking with me wherever I am painting. Not the cheapest thing in the world. But works well and is small enough to carry about.

Next up will be the Firefries, I think, as I want something a bit quick to get me motivated again. Just under two weeks left of this job, but I have an interview for another school on 3rd July.

Finally… we got a second hand fridge on Friday as the one we had was too small for 5 of us. So we got it home to find the dimensions weren’t exact… to cut a long story short, after removing all of the cladding in the passageway and chipping stones from the wall it still didn’t fit! Luckily we managed to get it into the porch. The joys of living in a 200 year old Croft house!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Fleet Rescue… Some Progress

Hello lovely people, long time no see… the job front hasn’t settled down any put in a couple of 11 hour days lately, but tonight I rebelled and left at 17.00. We’ll okay to be honest the only person keeping me there is myself. I am doing things in work rather than bringing things home. My main bugbear is finding supply cover, they are elusive beasts the supply teacher, especially in a secondary department on a small island… (which I found out today has 11000 occupied dwellings) 7 Secondary schools chasing one maths teacher. I have been coming home and basically flopping for the evening, but tonight I decided I would get some painting done.

I started on the rescue vessel, got some paint onto that.

I would like some transfers, so might have to have a shot at the transfer paper and see what I can come up with. I decided to make it bright as it is a rescue boat, one day I might actually get round to finishing the designs for the combat ship.

One another front, my 3D printer hasn’t been on since I started this job. I have got so much to print (the last things were the worm/leech things)

I also got some more bits done on the troopers….

Finally In my slob state in the evenings I have been playing Ark on the console and it suddenly dawned on me I had a nice reference for skin tone….

I can never work out where to place the highlights, but I think the above might help…. not that I will be painting any topless blokes anytime soon.

I am going to try to get back into painting at least 30 minutes a day and getting something on my blog more regularly too.

The bugs I built are now sprayed white as I want them to be bright… question is do I do down the speed paint by using a wash (or layers of washes) or do I go for a proper paint job, or yet again try some of that new GW paint… only time will tell.

Till next time (which hopefully won’t be too long).

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 10 Comments

I’m Back

The question is have you missed me?

So I haven’t blogged for three whole days and I reckoned I should get my finger out and write something again… the reason for me absence, well actually there hasn’t really been one apart from getting tired and going to bed to write something then falling asleep.

So what have I been up too?

First up..I finished the pilots…

I also made a start on the Mantic Deadzone GCPS booster pack. Never have I sworn so much. Luckily there were only 10 miniatures as I reckon 6 heads pinged across the room to superglue themselves to various bits of furniture, curtains and perhaps the dog as no matter how hard I looked they never reappeared!

The Star Saga minis were, if you remember, a single piece casting. The new lot comprises legs, torso, head and weapon/equipment arms. Some of the ones in the pack are metal.

I decided to go for one ranger and made him a sniper. The other guy kneeling is a comms operator. The final one with metal arms is an engineer. The rest are a mixture of carbines and assault rifles. I also built a flamer and a grenade launcher.

The biggest Pain in the Arse was this…

Absolutely no instructions and it came looking like this…

Bits were sticking out from every bit. Now to be fair after a bit of head scratching I worked out what went where, but it did take a bit longer than expected.

I am getting there just the weapon to add to him and then all of armour for the shoulder and the knees. As the arms are in two bits each and then it is causing a few headaches making sure that it is going to fit together.

I decided to go for the big gun, but could have gone for a flamer and chain saw. I felt the former was more Mobile infantry, but I may add a second one to the force at a later date.

My horse went out into the summer paddock yesterday, I started off the journey as a cavalryman and ended up as an infantryman as I had what is technically called a saddle malfunction. Luckily I was able to get off before it went completely awry!

Here he is having a little excited charge about…

He is the black in the foreground.

Right off to tame a triceratops in Ark (our new game for the console).