Hello readers! Again quite some time has passed since my last blog post, so there’s some stuff to catch up on.

First of the painting studio is back in use. In the last post I told you about some ambitious I had setting up my painting desk again after my home renovation. Well in the end I stuck to “never change a winning team” and ended up with quite a similar setup as previously.

I made some small alterations however. The Ikea desk I use has an optional shelf attached to the back of the desk. This was useful to put another row of paint bottles on, but it also hindered the access to some of the paints below this shelf. Because of that I moved this shelf to my left now, and raised the paint rack which was on their previously, so all of my paints are now lined up in a stadium-like layout. The shelf itself I use to put work in progress and finished figures on, to keep them out of the reach of exploding paint bottles for example 🙂

In the previous blog post I also talked about creating a layout for the entire desk with Hobbyzone’s modular system. After counting how many paints I have I concluced that this was going to be quite an investment to buy paint racks for all of them. So I decided to only buy the tool rack, and re-use my previous paint racks, which I built myself out of left over floor planks. Actually they do just fine, except for the fact that some paint bottles fall over in a domino-like fashion when I clumsily take one out.

In the image above you can see some miniatures I am currently working on. I just started another batch of Mordor Orcs for my Lord of the Rings army. I am also picking the Age of Sigmar project up again (yeah still working on the 2 year old starter set 🙂 ) Quite some time went into painting this Lord Celestant on Dracoth, better pictures will come at some point in the future.

Another figure I finished is the Imperial Space Marine you’ve seen earlier this week. Kind of a quick good gaming tabletop quality paint job. Fun miniature to assemble and paint. I also filmed the entire process. For this I bought a new webcam: a Logitech C920, and a miniature tripod. In the past I used a regular compact camera for this, but this seriously limited me: I could not position the camera optimally since it was on a regular tripod and I was limited by the battery and storage capacity. Recording with the webcam is much easier, and the files are immediately where I want them: on my hard drive 🙂

The only thing remaining now is the editing of the 3+ hours of film I have. This process will be hindered by the fact that I am suffering from tendonitis in my right elbow, probably caused by using a computer mouse daily for the last 20 years. So I have cut down computer usage at home. The 8 hours I spend behind a computer at work each day should be enough for weekdays 🙂 This means I will only be able to work on the editing (and this website and my other social media ventures) during the weekends. But I hope to get it edited in the end…

That’s all for this blog post, see you soon!

Hello readers! As written in a blog post back in November my painting desks had to move to make place for a temporary living room because of the renovation works on my house. The renovation itself is going well, although we have a long way to go still. It’s difficult to make predictions right now, but as it stands now my dedicated painting setup won’t return before March. But as mentioned in te previous blog post I compiled a little survival kit to be able to some painting now and then. Let’s have a look.

Basically everything I need is in the box, except for the lamp. My tri-tube light took a bit too much space, and also isn’t as easy to setup quickly on our dinner table.

The top level stores most tools, brushes and glues, as well as some work in progress miniatures.

The insides of the box itself contains a plastic bag with some of my paints. Since the only project I am currently doing is my Mordor Lord of the Rings army, I have all the paints I need in here. Other contents: cutting mat, lamp foot, my recipe booklet, pallet, water cup.

So that’s all for this little wrap up. I have all the gear necessary here, but I noticed that the fact that I need to unpack all of this stuff, install the lamp, get some water sometimes keeps me from starting a small painting session. While previously I just had to sit on my desk and I could just resume painting where I left off without any hassle. But I understand there are plenty of you who don’t have the luxury for a dedicated setup, so all the more respect for you.

Anyway I made good progress on my Lord of the Rings army, but that’s something for a next blog post.

Oh and by the way good luck in 2017 😉

Hello readers, Corvus here. Yes it has been a while since my last blog post, after which I actually did quite some painting, but never got around posting here.

The main project I have been working on is a Lord of the Rings army. Ever since my painting workshop back in April, my interest in the game and its miniatures grew, to the point which I ordered 500 points of Mordor miniatures. I only played a game with a part of this army once, the plan is to paint a couple of extra miniatures before trying my luck again. Looking forward to my next visit to a Fellowship of the Miniatures club evening 🙂 A picture from my first game:

But the last month or so there hasn’t been much painting going on. Reason for this are the renovation works which are going on around my house. Because of this we will have to move some stuff around the house, since we will not be able to use our living room and kitchen for a couple of months. So the studio will have to be disassembled for now, making room for a temporary living room. This is a picture from last week, everything was packed up, the painting table itself already removed from the room:

I spent quite some time cleaning all the dust from my display miniatures, moving the display cabinet and making it dustproof. It is now located in the hallway upstairs:

Will this mean no painting at all? Of course not. I made a little “survival kit” with necessary supplies to work on my Mordor army, and the paints are still within reach. I can sit at the (improvised) kitchen table to do some painting of course.

I will keep you updated and hope to see some of you at CRISIS 2016 next week!

Dropper bottles are great but when you are using them as well you might know they get clogged up now and then. To fix this I always keep a needle somewhere handy, just insert it into the tip, wiggle out some dried paint, and you’re good to go again.

So I don’t really understand what got into my mind a couple of days ago when I decided to squeeze my bottle of Vallejo Model Color Ice Yellow as hard as I could. What followed was a small disaster: the tip dislodged itself, sending bright yellow slamming down with considerable force down on a small bit of paper towel, where most of the paint landed.

But there was a lot of collateral damage with paint on my favorite hooded sweater, in my hair, on the curtains and on my Age of Sigmar Liberators (6 of 8 were hit) which were nearly finished and still sitting on my painting desk. Yes I know it could have been a lot worse, gaming models like the AoS ones are easier to fix than with a better quality paintjob, and other stuff like my phone and glasses were miraculous saved from the flying paint droplets.