Haven’t done (IT) in a while.

My bookshelf of curiosity.

The IT in question is sculpting stuff by hand. Several months ago I began a Ninja Turtle bust on a walnut base plate, but it has sat untouched since there was snow on the ground, and I have gone to Florida twice since that point. I was taking some time to teach my oldest daughter a few things about making an appropriate armature, and building up the rough forms before you get too far into your sculpt. And by too far into the sculpt I mean working in details when the bulk of the forms (read muscle groups, fatty tissue deposits, bones, and general thickness) hadn’t been placed upon the armature yet. It can be pretty seductive, those fun details. But best to get the whole thing in order before you put hours into skin texture, clothes, or artful extras. But I digress.

I have five full blocks of clay left untouched. As a general rule, mainly because I am cheap/not rich, I limit myself to only one block of clay per sculpture. That way I can do more! I don’t always adhere to that rule, and I have been known to try to knock out two smaller items off of one 2lbs block of clay. Living on the edge here people! Watch out.

I also have a stock pile of Super Sculpey which I intend to use on a new fair entry. Not all at once. But I have enough I could do four 6-8″ tall busts along the lines of what I usually do. Ogres and beastmen of all types, goblins and gnomes, evil elves, and sailors alike. I have a minotaur that I sight copied from a fantastic sculptor from Greece. Whose name now escapes me. Fantastic sculptor though.

I could try a faircrow bust, of our event mascot, for this fall’s fair. That might garner some attention. Feels like pandering if you ask me. But whatever, at this point. Sculpting, much like any art form outside of the use of AI, is a use it or lose it scenario. Because I tend to go on a hot streak, and then move on for months st a time, I constantly have to relearn how things feel in my hands, and how the Clay’s react go my touch. If you don’t do it 24/7/365 you lose your sensitivity to it. I’m not paid to do it, so that’s ok with me. I can take a few days or a week or two to get back into the groove.

I do the same thing with wood working, playing guitar, writing short stories, and model building/painting with an air brush. My focus pulls from one to the other, on and on, all year through. I’m ok at a bunch of stuff, but not exactly a killer at any one thing. Duh!

On another note, I encountered a smell/sensation that reminded me of when I was really sick in 2015, and it has me a little spooked today. That was when I had EBV. Really unpleasant 6-8 weeks. Plus a nasty lung infection/pneumonia to go along with it. So… yeah. That’s not cool.

Latest on the bench, been left untouched for months now.

What’cha gonna do?

What’cha gonna do when they come for you… there, have that ear worm rattling around your brain for a bit now. Misery loves company, and my parents taught me how to share. My gift to you. You’re welcome.

Saturday we are in you! Suns up, snow has settled, wind has died down, and the kids are up & fighting. Hard to believe that March Break is here already. Still feels like we should be closing out January, and not be nearing the middle of the month of March. Time is moving along at a great clip. Too fast some days for my liking. But that may just be because I have been busier than usual since January.

Yesterday I broke out my airbrush to prime & get some gradient paint layers on some board game minis I have. It’s the Nemesis expansion pack with Voidseeders. They were primed black. Base coated purple and then over sprayed with magenta. I dry brushed the bases with gun metal, and that’s as far as I got before I had any work related emails to content with. I want to do some edge highlighting around their squid like faces, and then pack them back up into their box. Prior to Christmas I painted the original Alien figures a pale blue grey, with blood splatter accents. It was fairly bare bones. I just wanted some colour, and not a *box art* look. I don’t believe i could achieve that anyway, given how sloppy of a painter i am. My bust sculpts prove that point. My latest Macross build will second that sentiment.

Voidseeders prior to highlighting and dry brushing, and washes.
Macross builds.
Macross VF-1 S Valkyrie.
Ogre Rogue painted by me. Skin tones gone awry.
Ogre Royal Guard. A pretty pink/purple gradient for skin tones.
Warrior bust.
Elf Rogue hybrid.
Stroke victim Hellboy.

I like to paint, I’m just not that good at it, as of yet. I certainly improved over the course of my two Macross build ups. So that is good to see. My masking was a bit better with the thinner low tack tape. Though, I will say this, it still pulled some paint off ruining hours of layered painting. Which I was not happy about. But I got it all sorted out. More of a time suck, than a project ruiner. Glad I wasn’t doing gradients, as that would require an entire repaint of the whole part. I have fun painting, namely because it isn’t my job, and I don’t really need to stress about it. I try to do a good job, but it’s not a big deal – to anyone else – if I cock it up. That’s on me. I have a box of more than 100+ minis coming my way in the next year or so, that I ordered off of Kickstarter. So I’m trying to figure out an easy way to achieve decent results without having to devote an hour or more to each individual figure. Base coat black primer, and zenithal grey highlight, with a white dry brush does much of the heavy lifting for me at this point. So that might be as good as it gets for a while. I don’t see myself dropping other hobbies just to be painting miniatures as well as their box art. I like to see others doing so. But not for me, thanks. Good on the table from 2 or 3ft away is my objective.

My oldest would like to start painting minis with me some time soonish. So I’ll need to figure out a good way to show her the process I follow to prepare each item for the real paint job. I’m not sure if she will want to be a part of the priming, zenithal high lighting, and white dry brushing process. Or if she wants to slap colours on, and do edge high lights and detail work. Maybe I’ll wind up doing the prep and she will excel at the colour/detail portion. Tag team duo! Tackling monsters, space aliens and soldiers alike! Deftly and with aplomb. A dad can dream. Ciao Bella!

This ear infection brings back a memory from my youth.

Not of the intense inner ear pain, but a memory I had following a surgery to have tubes placed in my ears to shore up the collapsing inner walls of my ear canal. It was late in the evening, I was getting over the anesthesia from the surgery, in my own bed at home and I was crying because there were noises keeping me awake. And much to my surprise my mum told me I could hear the birds outside my window, and the rain on the glass. Two, usually too soft sounds I didn’t really take much notice of before, and were so new I couldn’t place them. Mind you I was drugged to the tits for a six year old or so, but it was still pretty startling. How can you live like this, hearing all this weird shit. How do you know what to pay attention to? If I can hear a fan, cars, mumbled talking, phone notifications, birds, and what not, odds are I can not hear you talking to me from several feet away. It’s all one jumbled mass of noise to me. Write that shit down. Text me!

Weird memory to have late last night as I was putting antibiotic drops in my ear. But a vivid one at that. Never can tell what you will remember about life. Happy Tuesday all.

Ps. Yes I did lose the airbrush compressor. It has died a death. I’m now on the lookout for a higher quality replacement that offers slightly more versatility. But which does not break the bank. I know the top of the line Iawata guns and compressors will cost over 1K. Too rich for my blood. I need a mid to lower mid tier set that will last five to ten years of intermitten, sparse use. Any recommendations from out there in internet land?

What to build next…

I know I have a model kit on my work bench at the moment but I’m starting to think about building a small self contained terrain piece. Like a specific set of ruins for a church or temple. I have a couple of good chunks of foam board left, and a whole bunch of air dry clay that I recently recieved. I guess if I can find a brick pattern stamp I could do the flooring aswell inside the terrain piece. Then using industrial adhesive, super glue, and a hot glue gun, I could put it all together pretty quickly. Give me the chance to try properly ruined architecture.

I don’t have any more trees on hand, but I do have grasses, scrub brush, and a few shrubs and flowers. So it’s not like it’ll end up barren looking. I have sand, stone and grout too. I could do something from a desert climate. This is when I wish I had a closet full of rock moulds, plaster, trees, and static grasses & an applicator. Damn!

Half full bags of materials.

I don’t have a whole lot of room left to store stuff, so it’ll need to be shoe box size or smaller. My shelves aren’t that tall, so I can’t make the whole temple or church ruin. I guess it would be more of a diorama piece. Damn. Now I’m excited about it. It’s going to stay on my mind for ages now. But I already bought a new paint series of eight colours for my VF-1 Valkyrie model. I should really complete that first. I should… but.

Box of parts that need to be cut off sprues, and partially assembled before I can prime & paint them.
Shoe box sized self contained dungeon.

The other day I had an idea for a new sculpted bust too. So I’m going to need to make a bunch of new bases on the lathe. That takes a day or two as I have to glue up a bunch of Walnut pieces, or find a suitable maple log portion to be turned into fancy rounds. That’s a good way to get my wood working fix in without having to touch a hundred icy cold hand tools. If I use a long enough chunk of wood I can get at least four or five bases out of it. Plus sanding and slicing it up, more sanding and finish. That will satiate a bunch of create pangs I’ve been having.

I think I am slightly more interested in painting my model kit, than the initial (and very important) build up. I need to be more slow and methodical, so that it looks better generally than the last one I constructed a few years ago, and only recently painted. I can see several rough spot where I didn’t cut all of the tabs away. And my build was sloppy. Forgotten pieces, and glued on elements that shifted or fell over entirely. My decal application left much to be desired as well. Yikes.

Previous build up, with recent amateur paint job.

Plus a new larger paid project came in so I can’t jump on any of this stuff right away until the majority of my day job projects are well under way. Glad for the work though. So now I just have more time to day dream about my hobbies before I actually start any side projects. Not to worry. Once I’m in a comfortable spot with my open design jobs, I can pick up a brush, nippers, or a file and chip away at all of this stuff. Plus somewhere in the middle I will find the time to play guitar/bass and the keyboard songs I know. Sometimes I think I have too many hobbies, but they really do add a dash of something extra to my daily life. So not all bad then eh? Right.

Beaten by the elusive Skin Tones…

Started the Ogre Rogue paint up today. It was supposed to look mostly human, with a hint of a blue wash over top. But I washed out all of the skin tone variation flecking of Mahogany, Red, Green & Blue by spraying too heavy on the high lights. And then the very thin blue paint washed away much of what was beneath it, into one flat drab monotone. So there is 2.5 hours wasted. Now I need to have a think on whether to prime it all black again, and try once more from the start. Or. Here’s a big, ‘or’, add more flecks of colour over top ever so slightly, and just continue on. As I do have a ticking clock counting down with more reports coming on my heels. You know what. I think I can salvage it with some slight flecking of different colours. I won’t have the highlights I was hoping for, but it will at least look less flat.

See if you can spot where I bungled the whole thing.

Rose red brown base coat.
50/50 Red and the next colour
100% second colour. Then, flecks of mahogany, red, blue and green.
1st high light. A tad bold.
Second high light – can still see flecks- kind of.
Too far. Got heavy handed with the paint.
Blue washed out all details.
Pooling starts to get really noticeable.
Pulled colour off the face – tried “something”, it did not work.

Yeah – so… not impressed with myself right now. I was a bit heavy handed on applying the high lights, and I washed away all of the depth. And my thinned down blue ran, and puddled, and looks pretty bad. Oh well. Still lots to learn. I should have used a clear coat at some point, most likely just before the heavily thinned blues. Live and learn.

Experience is gained through stupid mistakes. So I’m pulling in XP like nobody’s business right now. I really should have stopped once my high lights had totally covered the flecks. I’m always rushing. Rush, rush, rush. For some reason a sense of urgency permeates through nearly everything I do as a hobby. I managed to quell it in my wood working, namely because table saws, and blades are waiting for a moment of inattention to take my fingers. And I know how to be calm when I work my day job. But man, do I ever get impatient when painting. Chill out my man. It’s not a paid commission. Take your time my dude.

Somehow it’s only Tuesday. American Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday, so there must be football, and parades and such coming up soon. I need to eat some breakfast, and think about this painting mistake. Airbrush compressor is now making a different sound than usual. Not sure what to do about this. Excuse to buy a better one should it crap out entirely? Or is it finally breaking itself in. I have no idea whatsoever.

The SlapDash Painting Episode, No° 108.

I have recently been revisiting my old no name air brush. I picked up a wide variety of Vallejo paints, primers, thinners, and washes so that I could paint my latest round of bust sculpts. It has been a trying time, to say the least. But as I progress through my eight recent builds I am finding a stable, and repeatable method to getting half way decent results.

I am working off of the following methodology. A flat black primer over the whole bust, followed by a grey primer that I spray top down for stark contrast high lights. Then I use a mid tone, straight from the bottle to cover the whole sculpture. I use a darker colour to then paint from the underside only. Then I use a 50/50 mix of mid tone to first highlight, spraying top down all over. Then the high light colour at 100%, top down only. Focus primarily on head shoulders, and ear tips, and maybe belly if my character is fat/barrel chested.

At this point I pick up a tooth brush and then fleck a deep red, blue and green paint all over the bust, avoiding armor if at all possible. Once dried, I go to my last 100% colour and knock those flecks back a tad. And then use my final highlight colour to brighten up the face and very tops of the shoulders only.

After this point it’s all brush painting for metallics, leather straps, skulls, and anything else that wasn’t skin tones.

1.) Flat black primer.
2.) Grey primer, top down only spraying
3.) Mid tone all over.
4.) Darker under colour that is sprayed bottom up. 5.) First highlight sprayed top down and all over.
6.) Second highlight colour top down. More focus on head, neck & shoulders.
7.) Flecked red, blue & green paints for skin variations.
8.) Knock down flecks, and add next highlights for face, and shoulders only. 9.) Begin brush work for metallics and all other elements.

I’m not actually finished with my Ogre royal guard yet, so I’ll have to cut it here. I should note I’m using craft paints that I have thinned with a Vallejo acrylic thinner. I wanted something a bit different to my regular green, brown, red or blue palettes. Looks nifty. I think. Still has a long way to go. Catch you around.

Was it something I wrote?

Not gonna lie, big shock to see the amount of traffic that came by here yesterday. Nice to see, but just goes to show I have no idea what anybody likes, or enjoys about my blog posts. Though: I will say this, anything to do with wood working will get at least a handful of views. Maybe not the day of, but eventually it will. That much I know. So, there is that.

I don’t have any immediate wood shop plans, except to make myself a smallish air brush painting cowl, that I can wrap in plastic, and run a vacuum out the back to trap any overspray. I don’t think the build will be very interesting, or complicated, so I don’t,  as of yet, plan to document it. The reason for the build is that I finally broke down and ordered specific air brush paints. So instead of painting into a cardboard box, like I used to do, I’ll make a sturdier wooden box, lined in plastic, and with a plastic hose adapter embedded in it to contain the mists. It’ll be covered by an open cell foam pad to soak up particles, that can be replaced. But I don’t forsee myself suddenly becoming a painter of many things. I have my busts to do, and a few miniatures laying around to finish up, and then it’ll sit in the closet for a long while. Actually I bought Fantasy Series Two from a kickstarter that hasn’t released yet, so when those 200 models show up, the air brush & cowl will get some serious use. I call it a cowl because it’s so small, and not quite a full booth. Semantics I suppose. Cowl sounds cooler than spray booth to my ears.

On the sculpted bust front my Hellboy is coming along. Trying to take my time with this one. I had done an interesting bust of him several years ago, which I was hoping to recreate, but the armature was incorrect, so now I’m doing just a head and neck version. It’s a work in progress, and still needs a fair amount of work. Like reshaping the planes of the face, smoothing, texturing, adding hair and a pony tail. Pores and veins, and whatever else that can make this as high quality as I can manage right now.

It still seems oddly flat in the face, so I think the planes are off. Probably needs to be drawn more front to back, from nose to mandible. I need to consult my physiology reference books to see where I went wrong. But it looks like an angry guy with horn nubs on his forehead, so I have that going for me. The red Sculpey feels more like oil clay, which while icky, feels like a return to Chavant. I dig it. Now I wish I had bought more of it. It was like $10 cheaper than any kind of Super Sculpey. And that’s something that I can really get behind.

Already have some work lined up for this week, which is always good to know. That’s it for now. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!