Author: greatwallstudios

The game day coverage is bound to start soon enough. Music, lights, and coverage, coverage, coverage. Saccharine stories of players lives, tales of a coaches rise to infamy, and all the shiny tight suit fabric you can handle. It is SuperBowl Sunday in February of 2023! So get your food orders in, if your local restaurants are still accepting any, and finalize those bets, if you partake. Sit back in a comfy chair, and try not to eat yourselves into congestive heart failure. Also, don’t drink and drive today either. Ni nanna ni nanni ni nah nah nah – naaah! *Fox Sports Intro Sounds Off*

Hit a bit of a low point with the model build up yesterday. Had some paint peel from under the low tack masking tape which made me mad. Had some finger nail scratches appear from handling and assembly. Was really getting overwhelmed by how lack luster it all looked. But I pressed on. Got the additional armor panels on, did several spot paint touch ups, and am less upset with the whole thing. It isn’t going to be the glowing bastion of model builds, but it is better than the previous one. I have discovered a new step to add into my process, that can take it all back to step one after priming. A hard lesson to learn this late in the game, but it will make the next one even better. Well two things. First, I definitely need to putty and sand the seam lines, as the thin cement and sanding didn’t hide them well enough. Second, go back and sand again after priming. It made the previously hidden nubs very apparent once the additional layers of paint went on. So, fear not. Go back and sand some more next time. Unfortunate that I had to learn it after spending ten to twelve hours painting over the last week, but… live & learn. I’m in a holding pattern waiting on some fluids to progress through my build. Not far to go now. Panel line. Gloss coat. Decals. Gloss coat, and then weathering & rust effects, and chipping paint to finish it all off. If I had everything on hand, it could be just one more week until I’m finished, but now that I have to wait on some deliveries, it could be three or more weeks before I can even start that weeks worth of work to close this project out. What a pain! I’m motivated now! Could always forgo the new fangled fluids, and go with the usual methods. I’ll have to mull it over and decide. Is finishing the project sooner more important, than trying to make it as close to great as I can make it with the new products I’m waiting on? Hm. A head scratcher for certain. Is the subtle boost in quality from the new products worth setting it all aside for what is essentially another month. Or, is it worth more to me to check a completed project off my list using my previous tried and true methods of panel lining, and setting decals?

Going out in the shop was a bad idea, as now I want to build the Urn, whether they want it or not. I have it on my mind, and I may just keep it for myself if they wind up going elsewhere. A useful item to have on hand. Can always make a newer better one, as the years draw on, but to know you have that settled would be kind of nice. I think. A tad morbid sure. But… we’re starting to hear talk of Avian flu killing upwards of 200 million birds already. And it has been killing seals, and dolphins and such in south american zoo’s. So who knows how long we’ve all got. The birds go, then bugs take off, and the ecology goes bananas, and we all starve to death anyway. Especially if the migrating birds all catch it down south, and die on the way back here, but bring it with them anyway to infect everything else that eats birds, and the non migratory birds catch it too. Ugh. What a nightmare.

So it is a sunny Sunday morning. The SuperBowl will dominate the tv for much of the day. Both Canada and the USA have shot down three (in total) balloon / UAP items out of the sky. Things are getting weird. The Yukon, Montana, and the Dakotas (iirc). Plus a huge toxic air event in Ohio that depending on the wind could potentially blow across Ontario. A train derailed while carrying toxic substances that it shouldn’t have without additional permits & precautions. Another case of money over safety. Pictures below:

So yeah. Lots going on. Take care of yourselves out there, because nobody else will. Ciao Bella.

The paint up is rolling ahead, at least for the moment. That is until I need to start panel lining. The fluid I bought especially for that step has yet to arrive. May take until early March to arrive. Same with the decal setter I need to use for the very next step after panel lining. I do have my old options open to me for doing both, but I bought these new materials expressly because they make the job easier, and do a finer job of it, than my current methods. Seems a shame to spend all that time airbrushing on paint, masking in finer and finer details, spot painting minor bleeds or errors, to just go back to the old way because I don’t have the new fangled *thing* on hand right this second. However, I also want to finish this VF-1 Valkyrie in a timely manner. Now that I am this far in I realize I should have opted for some Milliput and gone back to sanding after I got all the primer on, as I have found some pretty stark nub remnants, and seam lines which ruin the effect. Win some lose some. Learning hard lessons regarding masking, paint bleed, ink dribble, and assembly restrictions i misread, and then had to do minor cutting & reshaping to get parts to fit. Luckily it was for parts that lock together anyway, and you can’t see where I’ve had to chop, cut & weld parts together due to my mistake. I did not realize that certain parts were used to *lock* limbs into their position, so i assumed i could glue, and paint those bits in place, and then reattach the legs after i had completed the painting process in its entirety. Nope! Big no. Gotta look closer at the instructions for any other projects moving forward. D’oh!

It is a bitterly cold Saturday morning. My cough is still with me. In some ways worse, and in other ways better. Coughing is far less regular an occurrence during the day, but when it goes off, it GOES OFF! Blah! Tastes terrible too. That’s new. The coughing fits taste metallic and just kinda off now too. Nose is time, and the sore neck & head ache are gone. I’ll chalk that up to a bad nights sleep. Ear is still blocked. Made a bad ear worse, as far as sound quality & volume levels are concerned. Like hearing everything from way down a hallway. Still sound there, but greatly muffled and muted compared to my other ear. So that’s fun. Wee!

Sun is out for the moment. Just going to go stand in the window to bask in it for a second. Ciao Bella!

And it turns out it’s an ink, not a paint. That explains why no amount of adding white paint, and the lightest flesh tone paint you have to it, seems to make no difference at all. Of course it’s runny, if you’re starting from essentially what is coloured water. So, in essence, I might have just buggered the lot of my model kit build by layering on uber wet ink. Damnit. Double damn it. We will know more once it dries and I can remove all of my masking. Goes on lovely, but pools and drips like a MF’r. Oops. Hopefully I haven’t ruined several hours of painstaking painting from the last week. Fingers crossed I did a better job of masking, so the runs won’t kill my paint job!

If it all looks ok, the next step is several coats of gloss varnish to seal in and protect my paint. Or, if I feel like it, a few more panels can get picked out and high lighted with additional colours. Plus the hand canon needs to be painted black in the few spots it has rubbed off. Also, the inside bells of all the thrusters need to be painted yellow too. I thought that would tie them all together nicely. Chrome/gun metal outside, and yellow on the interiors. Really putting some effort into this build. Oh, and I’ve almost forgotten, the canopy needs to be painted aswell. And the cockpit details painted in too. That could be another hour or two alone. Hopefully it will all come together as something I can be proud of, rather than buried at the back of a shelf in shame.

The USAF colour scheme for my VF-1 Valkyrie is finally starting to show some promise. I have the main colours blocked in, and have begun the time vampire task of masking and painting smaller and smaller details. I’m not going to go crazy, but I do want to add some detail to the paint job by switching up colours on the panels etc… given that last Friday my airbrush was dead, and I was certain I’d have to shelve this until March, I am way ahead, and in line to finish by March(ish). I am waiting on some decal setter fluid, and panel link ink, so that portion of the build is on hold until those come in. So taking my time with painting isn’t an issue. As I can not move forward into panel lining, and decal setting, until those two products actually arrive. So a win for me now. No pressure not to spend extra hours fine tuning my masking techniques. When in doubt mask off more than you think, to protect against overspray!

Had several emails come in around midnight, so I know what my morning projects are for today. I hope to get some time to mix up a batch of yellow paint in order to keep the paint train rolling! Otherwise I won’t paint again until Monday, unless Monday is mental too. Good thing is my new air compressor is way quieter than the last one. Offers a bit more control once you get used to the gun mechanics.

Welcome to Friday! You’ve made it this far, yet again. Congratulations! We still have a busy day ahead. Valentine’s Day is next Tuesday, coming up quickly. And the following Monday is a holiday. Family Day for those of us in Ontario, Canada. Usually a bitterly cold weekend deep into February. We’re not going to travel to Ottawa, so we can find something fun to do closer to home. Maybe a movie in a real theater for a change? A different mall to wander around? Air Riderz or some kind of indoor fun park type thing? Who knows.

Waking up from a terrible nights sleep with a sore neck and a head ache that makes you want to vomit. Nice. The throat is still playing around with being either wretched or just annoyingly noticeable. Ear is not quite right still, and now my nose is runny too. Add the cough in and I’ve got my self a real life fiesta! Lovely.

So that was my 7:00am, and then it took multiple tries to get a sock on my foot, and I thought to myself, aloud. This isn’t my day. That’s cool. I can take one for the team. Yesterday was pretty good. Did some work. Did some painting on my model kit. Assembled a new tool in the garage, then spent some time lining up the materials I have on hand in case the Urn order actually materializes. Did a bunch of reading, and spent some time standing in the sunshine while it was 7°C yesterday afternoon. It was delightful. The cough was a hassle, but otherwise, a lovely, well rounded day. Today? Yeah not so much. Raining, with some freezing rain mixed in. Blah grey sky outside. And a touchy neck with matching head ache. Yeah. Not my tempo.

In other news my eldest brother has once again made Team Canada for the Invictus Games 2023. He’s off to Germany come September to compete for Canada as a wounded veteran of our Canadian Military. You can catch his news appearance from last night here:

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/mobile/video?binId=1.1777487

I do have some paid work to dig into this morning, but I’m just waiting to see if my appetite makes a come back before I log in. The cough & cold medicine does a number on my insides after a day or two, so I’m seeing if it’ll settle enough to let me eat something. Had a glass of juice which went down smoothly, but no desire for a meal as of yet. I have some time, so no rush.

If you told me today was Friday I would believe you, but no, sadly, today is only Thursday. A somewhat relaxed week this week, in retrospect. Trying to manage my time between non paid projects a bit better this year. Get some reading in, model kit building, sculpting, painting, guitar, and wood working into the mix. Takes some planning. The weather, atleast this deep into winter will dictate what I can and can not do in a day. Sometimes it’s easier to plug in and jam on the guitar, than it is to go measure, cut, and hand work a bunch of hard wood pieces. The path of least resistance towards one of my many hobbies on any given day or week seems to work the best. With such a sunny day yesterday, it really was great to get out in the shop and tinker for an hour or so. Doesn’t take much to satisfy a creative itch. And on that bomb shell, I’ll bid you adieu. Ciao Bella!

Not that 420, it’s not April twentieth, nor is it 4:20pm. The day has yet to go up in smoke, rather just another day on the writing journey. Day four hundred twenty to be exact. I keep meaning to have something extraordinary to do for days like this, but then those thoughts and ideas come head to head with reality, and I need to put my focus, and energies elsewhere. But I’m not a travel blog, nor a tech blog, nor do I do reviews of movies/games/tools either, so I haven’t a clue as to what would best exemplify “extraordinary” for writing in my case. I can hardly skip town for a wistful romp somewhere just to write about it. Nor would I make a major purchase just to give myself a basis for *content*. I’m a rambler. An inane, day to day, beige, suburban work from home dad kind of guy. I don’t discuss intimate details here, but I have covered Crohn’s disease a few times, and my hearing loss. But that’s not what brings in the readers. It was the collection of short stories that was driving growth here, and I’ve felt a bit tapped out on written creativity as of late. Reading was helping to rekindle that need to tell a story about what I wanted to hear, see, feel and do. It just hasn’t manifested as action – yet.

I wonder if work will slow down at all for a few days, or if we are going to run full tilt into Spring, then Summer at this pace? Who knows? I sure don’t.

One week until Valentine’s day, so get your finger on the pulse, and get ahead of the rush. Or don’t, up to you. I’m just sat here having breakfast making marijuana jokes, so what do I know.

My left ear is still a dull throbbing ache, so I have that to look forward to today. The ear drops help a bit, but no major shift either way. Towards getting better and going away, or rupturing, oozing out, and then going away. I’d just like it to choose, and get on with it. The waffling of will it, won’t it, annoys me to no end. Do the *thing*, and piss off!

Getting a jump on priming my model when the compressor gave iut. Felt a bit hot, so hoping it was just a safety shut down to cool off rather than, say, ruining the whole damn thing. Best case, as it was, as about 30 seconds later the work started pouring in, and I’ve been going all morning without breakfast. Time now for lunch! I got’sta eat!

Some new projects, some old projects, and some items that just won’t die! A good mix for a Monday morning. Plus my Daddy duties of laundry, tidying up, vacuuming, and refueling the vehicle for this afternoon’s extra curriculars. Sorting out uniforms, active wear, and making beds, fixing lunches, and school drop offs. It has been a bit of a blur today. Not to mention the ear infection my youngest passed along to me this weekend, with a minor cough, to round out my morning. It’ll hurt like a bitch until it ruptures, then the oozing, weeping mess will feel oh! so much better afterwards. Can’t wait. Feels right now as though I have gauze in my ear, and what was impaired to begin with is even quieter now. Fun times.

Looks like an early February thaw, or a pre-thaw going on these next couple days. What a messed up winter this has been. Glad my kid managed to get out on the slopes to enjoy snowboarding even with this winter being all out of whack.

Just finishing up lunch, and then back in for edits & change requests until late afternoon hits. Ciao Bella!

**I have an update!** yeah I pooched it. The compressor is kaput. Dead. Died. Deader’n a door nail. This complicates matters. A choice is to be made. I now need a new airbrush compressor, and possibly a matching set of guns with which to use said compressor. Some of these brand have proprietary connections to their hoses. So… damn. Not what I wanted for my Monday. Or any day for that matter. I finally had it up and working properly. Painted some models, miniatures, and sculpted ceramic busts, and plop. Dead. Decisions need to be made. And quick, spring approaches rapidly!