I found this on http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/27/purpose-work-love/
Trying to get life back on track
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Tag Archives: Austria
New page
Yes. Just up there. Have a look.
More pyrates?
Continuing the theme we have a pair of shipwrecked pyrates from Reaper.
I have greatly enjoyed painting these figures but time seems to be slipping away and I always seem to get side-tracked by other little things. Here you can see an Oldhammer sign for my display case, some regiment signs for my Napoleonic army and some Black Powder gaming tokens.
But the big news….
…..we finally completed on a house!
With garden,
Mountain views,
Workshop,
and Man-cave.
So no more tiny flat with all my belongings and hobby bits in storage.
Now my time is going to be taken up with getting the house ready and of course my Man-cave.
Continuing the Pyrate theme
Next up we have from Eureka Miniatures a Pirate Teddy Bear.
Just went to the website to post the link and it seems that Eureka no longer stock them. A pity as I wanted a few more. Here is the link to their 28mm ranges, http://eurekamin.com.au/index.php?cPath=87_126&sort=3a, there are some interesting bits and bobs there.
What happened to May?
The answer to that is, not a lot. My Death Korps Riders hardly got touched and have been retired to the cupboard. This month I’ve pulled out six pyrate figures and I’ll tackle them one at a time.
First up is Captain John Finch from Musketeer Miniatures.
I made the mistake of using some Tamiya Flat White as an undercoat. I might as well have painted them with chalk, the stuff just flaked off. I’ll do a bit of reading about it. It was purchased along with a few other pots of clear colour at a Flohmarkt for fifty cents a pot. The clear colours are fine and I already use the Clear Red for blood and gore.
The month hasn’t been wasted though, I’ve added a few more items to my shop. Go on click the button, I know you’re curious. And I won a painting competition. Puppets War http://puppetswar.eu, a Polish miniatures company are running a monthly painting competition. I entered my Ork Jet which I’d finished earlier this year and I won sixty six Euros to spend in their store. Which was nice.
At the end of the month we get the keys to our new house which is kind of exciting and kind of scary. It does mean that I will be getting a permanent hobby space, although for the first few months it is going to be used mostly as a storage/unpacking area as we clear the lager.
Job’s a good ‘un
It’s arrived at last! And it’s huge! Flippin’ huge!
I am of course talking about the Heresy Dragon. I ordered it before Number Two Son was even thought of.
Andy, the creative genius behind Heresy, has had an absolute nightmare producing this. Originally he thought it would take a couple of months to produce. Since then…
http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=260
Here is a scale shot with a 28mm figure just to give you an idea.
The pity is that now it has to go back into the box for a couple of months until my man-cave is set up in our new house.
Did I say, “New house”? Yes, I did. More on that to come.
Image copyright Heresy and is used totally without permission.
Now go to Heresy and buy something!
http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=7&zenid=663b39432d06ba7ae00dc76821cede6a
A puzzling distraction
I had a few requests from relatives after I made a coffee mat for my Brother-in-Law. so you can see a couple at the bottom. The top six are rather puzzling, I hope I can solve it.
A bit more detail about the “Fun”
April saw me not terribly motivated and to try and get out of the rut I decided to paint some single figures that were started or primed but not finished. Just for fun.
First off was this figure: General Sir Eddard Sharp. He was a promo model for the Arcworlde Kickstarter Sculpted by Alex Huntley, basically Mister Arcworlde. Alex’s sculpting is not polished, he is very talented and his style is very characterful and great to paint. Very like the Battleforge Halflings that I painted a while ago. He deserves our support, he’s only twenty and if he is putting stuff out there like this now imagine what amazing stuff he’s going to be producing in ten years time when he’s hit his stride.
Second off was this fellow. Again sculpted by Alex, this is The Big Chief of the Jungle Gremlins of Chaq-Itza.
Then it was my beloved Snotlings.
This guy was a cheap plastic robot that I picked up from a charity shop. He’ll be joining a few others in my “Not” Imperial Guard Army.
Finishing off with this from Puppets War. A proxy Deth Kopter in my 40K Ork Army.
They all need a coat of matt varnish just to seal them.
Splashing paint for fun
I haven’t painted for the sheer pleasure of it for a couple of months now, so today I thought I’d change that. I haven’t set myself any targets or goals this month. It’s all about relaxing. I have been putting in a fair few late nights making artwork for my laser cutting and have been putting painting anything far away.
This is one figure from the Arcworlde Kickstarter I received a few months ago but didn’t start, well apart from prepping and priming.
Shop
The keener eyed of you may have noticed a new “Tab” at the top of my Blog. Go ahead and browse. Maybe you’d see something you’d like to buy?
A bit of an update
As I said previously, painting has more or less ground to a halt. Not that I haven’t been productive in other areas. My main push was to get stuff ready to sell at the Austrian Salute in March.
That was quite tiring and on the day itself I suffered with fatigue and a nasty gum infection, so I didn’t really see the day in a positive way. I made the grand sum of three Euro but the guy next to me, from Templates and Widgets, also selling some laser-cut accessories told me that at his first show he didn’t sell anything.
A far better report of the show, with pictures, has been written by Sigur of Battlebrush Studios
http://taleofpainters.blogspot.co.at/2015/03/show-report-austrian-salute-2015.html
A 180 degree view of the show.
Number One Son looking after business
The project I have been getting on with is this.
A laser-cut model from the old Warhammer Cities book. The only problem is that I can’t sell it as it is based on a design by GW. I have now started searching the interweb for pictures of medieval timber framed buildings for the next one. If I find the right design I can tap into the historical market as well.
Inertia
Just hitting a huge bump at the moment and finding it difficult to get motivated and kickstart my painting. Everytime I do sit down to attempt something, life comes along with it’s demands. This image is dedicated to Amateur Airplanes and his unrelenting output.
Half steam ahead!
It’s been very slow on the painting front this month. I’ve been out of hospital and voluntarily stopped my pain management medication. I have to say that was really hard. If I had trouble after a week how do people manage who have been on that stuff for far longer. My head is now a lot clearer which is good.
The Austrian Salute is this saturday and it will be my debut. There isn’t much of a range yet and I really hope that people will like what I’m doing. The pricing worries me slightly as my bits are quite pricey. I’m making stuff that I would want on my gaming table, and it’s quite complex and time consuming to make. For example one small 40mm x 40mm x 40mm crate is working out at a sale price of six Euro! This is me paying myself 10 Euro an hour to do the cutting, material (more of which in a minute) and then multiplying by three, which is what they do in the catering/fine dining industry. This doesn’t factor in travel times and collating the big bag of minute parts you are gifted with at the end of cutting or designing and printing labels and buying bags to put the product in.
Material, here’s the joke. I had been buying 4mm ply at the local hardware store and it had been just under a fiver for a metre square and they cut it for free. It seems that the laser-cut industry seems to work on 3mm MDF. So I found a supplier not too far away and online the price was one seventy a square metre. Result, I thought. When I went to pick it up I was presented a bill three times the amount I expected. They charged by the minute for the cutting, by a trained sloth so it appears. Twenty 500mm x 500mm sheets in fifteen minutes! I can understand if I wanted differing sizes. Set stop position, butt wood to stop, cut and check that the first cut is the right size. Repeat.
So I either have to find another supplier or I work in 4mm ply. Which to be honest I don’t mind as ply is a lot more resilient than MDF.
So here is the laser-cutter hard at work. As you can see I don’t actually get that much out of a sheet because of the layers and complexity
Here I am collating components in the front room.
Let’s make a splash!
Image
Maybe something a little new
There has been a reason why I have been a little slow this month, I’m starting on a little side project. Yes soon you’ll be able to buy Grumpy Old Tin Products!
In the past I had access to a laser-cutter and made a few little gaming aids for myself. I missed that moving over here. Looking online at what is offered to wargamers I was really saddened at what shoddy goods were being promoted to wargamers (there are some notable exceptions). If you Goggle, “laser cut art” you will see some amazing and beautiful work. So why isn’t it filtering down to us?
Well the answer is that every Thomas, Richard and Harold who think they can draw a square in a CAD program is getting in on the act.
I want better than that. My aim is to start producing beautiful gaming aids and terrain/scenery and painting aids and you name it.
Everything is possible.
You’ll already have seen that I have started branding myself and have now done the social meejah stuff with a twitter (what’s the bloomin’ point) account and a Facebook page.
Here is the first prototype. Bit of a learning curve and a few rough edges.
The Boundary Country Shipping Container.
genuine grumpy old tin 