Yay! Summer is here

Posted on June 21, 2026 by grumpyoldtin

It’s Summer! Hooray a nice thirty degrees in the shade. This is just the start, it has been forecast that we are going to have a hot dry Summer. I don’t mind as it stops various joints from aching. The joys of ageing. Time for a bit of gardening, well I am English after all.

Time for a nice cup of tea while I write up what I am going to say.

Not sponsored, but if #waghbakritea want to send me tea to appreciate I wouldn’t complain.

RIP John Blanch

One cannot underestimate the impact he had upon the look and feel of our hobby. Although not a fan of all his output (which was prolific) there is still plenty for me to admire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blanche

This is a good source of information with useful links to his work.

Painting has been slow, but steady. My trouble is that I keep getting distracted by shiny things rather than keep going and finishing existing projects. Looking at you Tau! And of course Forza Horizon 6.

Part of my HeroQuest. Dwarf character fron Stone King

Looted Ork plane

Imperial Guard Orks from Mr Modulork. These are supposed to be Grotz but by the time I had printed them I realised they were too big.

The Failed Prince. This had been cobbled together from 3D printed bits years ago, but not painted. When I heard the news about John Blanche I was inspired to paint it.

War Lord for Anglo Saxon Warband. 3D printed from Last Sword who produce some absolutely stunning models. This is another example of me getting distracted and then making a totally over the top base.

Most of this was painted to The Rivers of London audiobooks by Ben Aaronowich.

I am still continuing with my daily photographs on Instagram.

@grumpyoldtin

An unexpected painting challenge

Posted on February 20, 2022 by grumpyoldtin

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.

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

Posted on February 6, 2022 by grumpyoldtin

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.

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

Posted on February 5, 2022 by grumpyoldtin

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.

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.