Incredible Odin Sculpt

I couldn't NOT share this incredible 70mm sculpt from over on Oz Painters.

Always look to the classics, especially when sculpting on such a large scale.

Sorcerer's Apprenticeship

Those tedious aspects of painting minis: Filing off the flash, pinning the feet for a special base. Priming. The drag work. The boring parts.

If you could have a studio apprentice do one thing for you in your miniature modeling and painting practice, what would it be? This is completely fantastical, use your imagination.

For me, it would definitely be a person dedicated solely to mixing the small balls of Green Stuff I use to sculpt. I would have a far more efficient sculpting experience every time if that activity were done by someone else. Wish they had a machine to do it.

But you know what they say (or as Ian McShane as Lovejoy once said): you want something doing you do it yourself.

Horrors... a Glimpse into Progress

This combo-picture is a bit old but still shows where the Horrors of the Marsh set has gotten to. I've since read about proper photo set-up and will be able to provide better-lighted and more-detailed images soon.

I recently located some of the oddball minis that were based on the same sculpts from the Horrors of the Marsh set but in different poses with different weapons. As soon as I have them in-hand I'll post a picture.

State of Decay: A Favorite Doctor Who Story

"I never drink...WINE"

I enjoy gothic stuff a lot, so a recent request to my brother to pull the classic Dr. Who episode 'State of Decay' from his vast library and pay a visit proved to be particularly satisfying during this pre-Halloween time of the year (in spite of me falling asleep on the last episode).

(Oh, by the way, this post has got sod-all to do with minis)

I like this one so much because of the tasteful blend of science fiction and gothic themes, and its ability to conduct the combination so well into the final product. The design is particularly neat and the Vampire Lords who feature as the first-tier villains would made excellent minis (Uh oh, in addition to the Gibbering Mouther I'm trying to make progress on now I ponder the idea of doing my first humanoid sculpts of the Vampires...).

The above screen-grab came from the Doctor Who Reviews page on this episode.

Creature Comforts, the Overall Environment

My fanaticism with miniatures goes back a long way, to childhood, and because of that the hobby factors into a larger suite of similarly themed creature-comforts (no pun intended) that make me feel right at home, giving a sense of security. But many are all inspired to the same theme, a fantasy, swords-and-sorcerer type environment that was really heavy in the 70s and 80s.

Just imagine an Autumn night in an American suburb, homework done, Judas Priest on the record player, a little time spent painting some minis, watch a movie like Dragonslayer or Conan on the VHS, eat some cookies, fall asleep dreaming about medieval weapons, types of dragons, how a crossbow works... etc.

If you share this same type of sentimentality you need to buy and read the book Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf(and if you're reading this you've probably already read the book).

His story is his own, and gets a little heavy at times because of his situation growing up, but everyone who has ever rolled some dice and drawn a dungeon on graph paper is going to find something poignant in this book. I read it a few years ago actually, and never really thought about posting this until I got a nice comment on my recent post - - - . I should probably read it again. It's fun and interesting, I'm glad he wrote it.

The Little Things in Life

Moved recently, into a new house. Well, it's an old house, but new to me because I just moved there. Accordingly I get a new workspace to set-up in. This is always pretty exciting, to go through stuff, get rid of stuff, organize it, test it out, see where the tools can go, discard the dried up old paints, see how the desk fits best, get the CD player plugged in etc.

It's comforting. It's comforting to know there's a place where I can sit down and pay massive amounts of brain activity to tiny little objects, things often less than 1" tall. It's so strange really, it's a big world out there with a lot of big things, but a corner of my mind is fascinated by the tiny little things. That's at the root of any collector/painter's passion I suppose.

A static miniature, painted up and sitting there on a table is a big idea, an imaginative environment, compressed into a tiny little icon. I like the idea of beholding this tiny little icon, picking it up (with clean hands, mind!) and eyeing it carefully, respecting it as a catalyst for thought, a little three-dimensional illustration of a snippet of a larger universe.

Go into any museum that has ancient Egyptian artifacts: the magnetism of all of those tiny little jewels and sculptures buzzes so palpably. Same thing with a visit to an antique shop that has a display case filled with lead toy soldiers. I love it. I can't define it, but I love it.
If you're reading this I'm sure you do too.

Looking forward to sharing more items soon - thanks for reading!

The Ambull Complete. My First Sculpt: Cast and (roughly) Painted

Here is the Ambull sculpt cast in resin, having been assembled, primed and roughly painted. I was eager to give it a wash to pick out all the details to see how I did sculpting-wise, so it's not given the royal-treatment as far as painting goes. Not bad on the exposure of the details and texture, I'm quite proud of it, and happy to have earned some good Green Stuff experience.

Belched

This blog came to my attention and it's pretty awesome, this is exactly part of what I want to do at some point: take old minis and paint them up real sweet like little masterpieces. Excellent work goes into the minis on Belched From the Depths. Cool stuff.

A Cast of... one, so far

First resin cast was pretty lousy, air bubbles needed some venting, so I cut little v-shaped grooves into the rubber. Second casting came out pretty nice. I've sprayed it with gray primer for the photo (milky-white resin doesn't show much surface detail).

Recently moved living circumstances and am enthusiastic about creating a new work area.

..after a hiatus... Ambull progress

Life went topsy turvy for a while, as it sometimes does, but I'm back with another post showing more progress on the Ambull sculpting project.

I intentionally fused the two halves of the mold together by leaving a small area at the top uncovered by release agent. This helps keep the two sections in register.

The completed mold:

I was pretty satisfied with the detail, only a few small bubbles that would not be so bad to deal with in the final casting:

Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things here and make some more regular posts. I met mold-maker and pewter-caster this weekend who used to work in the miniatures industry. It was a nice opportunity to learn a bit more about the spin casting process. Gave me food for thought about future projects and realizing them in metal (instead of just resin).