Product of the Year 2015

Posted on January 21, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

This year there are two products of note.
The first is something you wouldn’t normally think of: yoghurt pot lids.
As I have two boys with rapacious appetites I tend to buy half litre pots. They come with plastic lids for resealing. Presumably the manufacturers don’t consider that their product will be consumed in one sitting. Anyway they make ideal one shot palettes, especially when using oil paints. I don’t have to worry about cleaning up, I just toss it in the recycling.
The second product is a paint from Vallejo, Dark Blue Grey.
I have been using it a lot on my Imperial Guard Army and have started using it on my fledgling High Elf Army. I wanted to steer away from the standard Games Workshop blue and white and head for more sea-like greys and blues. This clour just fits the bill.

Return

Posted on August 28, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

As some of the more observant of you may have noticed I haven’t blogged much recently. My energies have been diverted elsewhere and have been dealing with some minor depression. The reason for all this is that we have moved. Now we have somewhere permanent to live and I can put down some roots and get settled.

There is a bit of time to wait until I can properly get to work on my Man-Cave as a new boiler and radiator systems have to be installed. Then I can lay a new floor and give it a lick of paint.
Once that is done it will be time to bring everything back from the lager and unpack. I can’t wait to see what treasures I do have.
One thing that I have done is to bring back my glass display case and put my painted stuff in. It is very gratifying to see my work in one place rather than wrapped up in boxes.

I have managed to spend some time on the hobby though. Earlier this year I entered my Ork Jet into the bi-monthly Puppets War painting competition.
For those of you who are unaware of Puppets War, they are a Polish company specialising in resin models and extra parts for wargames figures.
http://puppetswar.com/
Can’t recommend them highly enough, some very nice models and a good price!
Anyway, I got a first prize, a voucher to spend in their store. Which I did.
And here is what I got…..

Soaking the parts in washing up liquid solution

After a rough assembly I thought the turret wasn’t imposing enough

What to use?
In the bits box was the lid from a baby food sachet.
Seems to work.

Figuring out where to drill the centre hole for the turret

The roller at the front was too close. So I built it out a bit. More rivets!

Extending the arms as it was otherwise going to look like a Tyranosaurus.

Finished arm with cables

This is the nifty device I used for making the cables. The Tentacle Maker from Greenstuff Industries
http://www.greenstuffindustries.com/

Turret.
Puppets War sent me a few extra bits in the box and I thought it was only fair to incorporate some into this model.

Undercoated

Base colour

A different base colour. I wanted the machine to look cobbled together.

A bit of rust

Starting to paint

Mud and dust

A bit of colour

Putting it together

And the finished result

Trying to get life back on track

Posted on August 28, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

I found this on http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/27/purpose-work-love/

New page

Posted on July 1, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

Yes. Just up there. Have a look.

More pyrates?

Posted on June 26, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on June 16, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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?

Posted on June 13, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on May 21, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on May 20, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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”

Posted on May 7, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on April 16, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on April 15, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on April 15, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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

Posted on March 27, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by grumpyoldtin

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.