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Working on Harlequins

Tonight the plan is to finish my Wild West Exodus abominations so that I can have all my stuff based to demo the game to my wife and bro inlaw at the weekend.

Little do they know that cowboy hats are mandatory!

Today I wound up not feeling like doing much painting, so instead I picked up a couple of lengths of balsa and made some shipping pallets. I did start on a Centaur from Fallout too, as I wasn't happy with the first two I made. As I write this I'm about to start on an alleyway piece to go along with the modular streets that I've been making for my Fallout stuff as well. As it'll just wind up being used as an alley I'll bung on some extra rubbish to make it look the part (hey there's a use for those shipping pallets).

Besides that I had a game of X-Wing. Its not something I've played before, and whilst decent enough I don't think I'll take it up. The models are too expensive for my tastes, partly because I'd feel the need to repaint every one of them so they look properly beat up. =P

Well, just got another awesome project on the way so I need to get to work on some of my older things laying around first. So the Steel Legion are on hold and all night I will be working on the Thunderbolt.

finishing up my entry for para's contest. I've got until 7 pm my time, if I've done the conversion right. time's slipped away from me a bit this month.

If you need a few hours extra, don't worry! So long as the pics are up before I put the final thread together (tomorrow afternoon my time) then it's fine!

Getting the armor painted on the rest of these space wolves.

I also finished my entry for Para's comp, but I'm waiting for it to dry before taking the last few pictures. Hopefully the tudor stain cures properly this time, I had a couple of bones minis end up in some kind of permanently sticky state with it, seems like just a fluke though.

I'm gonna count sewing tiny skull shaped buttons onto a Mordian Iron guard hat as hobby related.
I tried wearing it with the default circular buttons and I just looked like a tired chauffeur.

[sigh] May I take your bags IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR?

Painting my skitarii .... Still...

Glued the bodies and legs together. Annoying how they only fit one coat each, but they do look cool.

Then I need to pick out heads and arms, paint them, and then base....

Gah...

headed down to the shop for a bit, got started on my sporocyst.

Over the last few days I've done a lot of Priming bug today meant j got no progress though. Maybe tomorrow

Going to work on my sporocyst some more today. Looks like I need to pick up the datacards for my knight at least today. I don't feel like ordering the codex or new models though. I still feel like I got burned on that one last year. See if I can get some games in down at the shop today...

I see the leadbelcher spray is sold out online, I'm going to have to see if I can snag a can someplace :(

Plotting my next move.... Not sure what I can do after a space dragon pirate king...

Maybe some terrain.

I'm going to start painting my Chaos Raptors for Para's painting competition today. I just finished assembling one of my chaos rhinos, still plenty of stuff to put together for my Khorne Daemonkin army.

Putting the finishing touches on my Terminator Assault Squad vets no. 26-30. My Crimson Fists 1st Company are shaping up nicely!

Spent way too much money in GW on paint and models. They are right when they call it plastic crack.

Other than that, I've been cleaning up some more minis ready for painting, and had my first experience with Green stuff. It's a useful tool, but I'm going to need more practice before I'm happy doing anything complex like a cloak.

Got talked into looking at the Osprey Ronin rules and then I spent the afternoon making lists

I also managed to pick up some materials, I really want to make some agri/biodomes and I think these plastic mixing bowls will do. May end up giving them a blue glaze and calling them energy shields instead of glass though.

Bought a couple of mini display boxes from Ikea, me likey.

Did a little shopping at the local GW today. Picked up the latest copy of WD (mostly got it for the poster).

Gave Phranq da ork a wash of Agrax Earthshade when I got home.

Will add some layers on some of the surfaces to him later today.

making some bamboo stands

Fancy

Gotta keep those Samurai safe from teppos!

I'll drop a photo later maybe, but I've been exploring the basic structure for some oxygen producing bio/geo/agri/whatever-domes to use for a space/future gaming table. I'm thinking to set them at various heights on a few modular tiles, probably 2x2' foam panels. The domes would provide a playable upper tier (the domes will be more of an energy shield to protect the plants, probably considered permeable to infantry and such) with the interior area and gantries around them. Under the domes the various board sections would be themed.. kind of a slums/shopping center combo, an grungier district like akihabara, maybe a train loading depot...

Thinking thinking..

Built three thunderwolf cavalry, going to base coat them and some Raging Heroes TGG, and more armor paint from my sphess wolves.

 oadie wrote:
Do you use magnification when painting fiddly details, BeAfraid? Seems to me that hand tremors are the only reason you'd need to change brush size - deteriorating eyesight should only change how you best view the parts, not how you paint them. A visor-style jeweler's loupe or a swing-arm magnifier (plenty of options are lighted) might be in order, if you aren't already using something similar.

Personally, I find working under magnification disorienting, but my eyes are still plenty good, even if they aren't still the best they'll ever be. Plenty of aging (depending on genes, that can mean anything from early 30s to late 50s) painters swear by them, though, and I'm sure I'll need to grow accustomed, some day.

I have recently begun using an illuminated magnifier.

I know completely what you mean about it being disorienting.

This is because it produces a disconnect between our visual and somato-sensory cortices, whereby our proprioception which usually measures distances by how far joints have rotated is corrupted.

Like anything like this (the most famous example is of an experiment where people were asked to wear goggles which either inverted th scenery, or flipped it along the left-right axis: people usually accommodated to the new orientation with a day or so), one needs to emmerse themselves in the use of a magnifying glass in order to learn to overcome the perceptual disconnect.

There are artist's calisthenics which allow one to accommodate to new media, or new tools more quickly (Wacom Tablets come with videos showing these calisthenics to help people translate what they see on their monitor to what their hands/arms are doing, for instance).

And tremors are not the only thing that comes with needing to reduce brush size.

With failing eyesight also comes failing connections in the occipital to parietal lobe pathways between visual and somatic cortices, whereby your hands might be stable, but accurate placement of a tool becomes more difficult with age, as the Proprioceptive Sensors again lose acuity (for example, it becomes more difficult to quickly point precisely to the center of a circle).

So using a smaller brush allows for the increased "tolerance" (like on a machined part, which might have a tolerance of +/-0.1") of errors in our (my) hand's inability to precisely place the tip of the brush where I need to place it.

Another part of the problem is a change in how Tom Meier has sculpted certain details, like eyes. He used to sculpt just a basic, blank sphere, with no surface details on it. Now, he has some fethed up Iris/pupil sculpted as a raised feature in the eyes, making it nearly impossible to paint the whites of the eyes. And there are "rivets" which have nothing but an extremely fine line outlining them (anything but airbrushed, or very expensive model primers completely obliterates these details). Painting these "rivets" is nearly impossible without taking an exceptionally long time to paint the parts, using incredibly tiny brushes, with very thinned paints, and a lot of retarder (at least for the fastest method I have found so far - which involves consecutive dry-brushing of the areas with these details to build up the color, or shade, and then picking out highlights by hand and then blending them into the rest of the surface with a dry filbert brush).

I have spoken to some people on professional large-scale figure painting sites about these problems as well.

They recommended adjusting to the fact that Tom's work on toys is bleeding into his work on gaming miniatures, for the specific miniatures.

And for the overall problems... Get a magnifier and just get used to having to work with smaller brushes for things as you get older.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I really wish that people would add large photos to their posts as attachments, so that the text on other posts can be reach without zooming in 10x to be able to read what has been posted.

Painting cardboard grot tanks for Paradigm's challenge.

BeAfraid wrote:

And I really wish that people would add large photos to their posts as attachments, so that the text on other posts can be reach without zooming in 10x to be able to read what has been posted.

Didnt realise that was happen. For whatever reason it doesn't seem to have that effect on my browser. Will resize them in the future.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Image has been shrunk.

I think its only an issue when reading on phones. And maybe when taking photos from places like facebook that tend to have the larger photos as the ones you get when you link to them.

A couple of photos for what I'm working on, do you guys favor the taller or shorter domes?

 GrimDork wrote:
I think its only an issue when reading on phones. And maybe when taking photos from places like facebook that tend to have the larger photos as the ones you get when you link to them.

A couple of photos for what I'm working on, do you guys favor the taller or shorter domes?

Spoiler:

I actually think a mix of both would be nice, but if I had to choose I'd say I liked the shorter ones.

Taller with cross walks between them

Working on my Sicarian Warlord!