An unexpected painting behind the scenes

Primed and ready to go
This was my original idea for colours. Sadly a bit bland so I went my own way.
First colours blocked out
Wash. Horrible! Make it go away!
Stop staring
Flesh done
Hair today
Almost there

An unexpected painting challenge

Reddit is my default opening page on my interwebs browser. When I opened it yesterday at the top of the feed was an interesting post. One of the feeds I am subbed into r/PrintedMinis had a post from u/PrintedEncounter. They had been challenged to speed sculpt. Printed Encounter took it on and produced a sculpt of Bilbo Baggins in two and a half hour.

A link was posted to it on Thingiverse. And a challenge was posted that if someone wanted to paint and post it they could suggest the next sculpt.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5253332

Well game on! Challenge accepted.

Model printed out
Not enough supports
Milliput to the rescue
Working on the base

I will post in a couple of hours when I have applied some paint. I aim to have this finished by the end of today. First I have to help my youngest in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey while I wait for the milliput to dry.

Life in the time of Rona

I have been under the weather for a couple of weeks now but have been testing negative. Earlier this week Number One Son tested positive and I was still negative. Upto this point I had been the only family member to be free from the Rona.

Thursday night I had a bad night with breathing difficulties and a savage sore throat. Not to mention sweats and chills. Friday morning I tested again.

Arse

Got booked that afternoon for a drive thru which has confirmed that I am a positive person. Just waiting on the variant.

About two weeks ago, before this all kicked off, one of the Patreons I sub to posted this picture.

Image copyright Knucklebones Miniatures.

I saw this and had to have a variant of it. Knucklebones had made some scuttling bug-like legs for a previous model. I chopped them up in Meshmixer and cut’n’pasted the bits to extend them. With this I lasercut some bits to make two open troop carriers. I’ll show them in a later post.

That idea lead on to me thinking about about an armoured variant. More parts were lasercut then Papa Nurgle visited. Not really having the strength or motivation I pottered a bit each day making it.

My little spot in the sun
My view

This is the result

The main body is lasercut mdf and card. Bolts are lasercut card. There are resin greebles from Ramshackle Games and 3d printed ones from Knucklebones. The legs are 3d printed and are derived from Knucklebones.

https://www.patreon.com/knucklebonesminis

Narrative to my painting

Like most of us, I imagine, I make little stories about the project I am painting and I try and picture the piece in an imaginary world, how it would look and why it was there.

Somehow I stumbled across this model railway enthusiast and the way he writes is so eloquently beautiful.

https://www.ostpubs.com/the-first-encounter/

The way he talks about when he came across articles in magazines that were light years out of his league as a beginner but we’re so inspirational. This reminds me of looking at figures and dioramas in White Dwarf as a yoof.

A resolution for 2020

I have decided this year to have a resolution. Normally I don’t. They generally last for a couple of weeks and then fizzle out. Like gym attendences after January.

This Year’s Resolution is….

REPAIR, MAKE, STRIP AND SORT.

The plan is to do one of these activities a week throughout the year. I have made fifty two tick boxes in my journal.

There are odd little repair jobs that have been mounting up in my workshop for the last couple of years. Now is the time to get on and do them. Most will only take a couple of hours to do and I have been putting them off. If I do them it will make more working space and earn brownie points with the family.

I have started so many little projects and then left them when something else pops into my little head. Again more space in the workshop.

Figures sitting in jars of Methylated spirits. I have three jars on the go. Some of them haven’t seen the light of day for four years.

Boxes of random stuff from the move from England. Containers full of mixed screws. I have homes for this stuff, now.

If I do more than one of these tasks in a week then I will tick as many boxes as jobs done. The target is fity two tasks by the end of the year and if I do it sooner great!