The Man Cave

Since I moved late last year I have not really had anywhere to paint, and my work space (real work that is) has been limited. Well that's all changed. For the last two weeks (not solidly off and on) my dad and I have been converting part of the houses loft into a home office and painting station for me, and another desk (not pictured) for the wife to use.

I'm seriously happy how this one to one modelling project turned out!

As I work from home I needed a proper home office space, so I have a 1.5 metre long stretch of desk along the back wall with my computer on it . To the left of that I have another 1 metre (or thereabouts) section of worktop with all my painting stuff set up and ready to go! I've even got some shelves under my desk for all my work reference material and  a good number of my modelling reference books (ospreys etc)

The art around my desk was painted for me by my wife over the last few years. The coat of arms (fictional) was painted and made up for me by my wife a couple of years ago and I thought I would share it. Sadly its one of the last things she painted for me as she is now suffering from a medical complaint which prevents her from completing such detailed painting.

The sharper eyed of you will probably also notice I'm using my Xbox 360 as a monitor stand. I bought a new computer monitor and needed it up a bit higher, and it turned out the xbox was the perfect height . I never used it anyway so no loss really.

Oh and most importantly of all there's plenty of room on my desk for a large Gin!

Hopefully I should now be able to get more painting done.

Funny looking cannon

Now those of you who follow my ramblings will recall I had said I would be painting my renegade miniatures 18pdr to accompany my crew. However upon getting the bits out to assemble and base ahead of undercoating I discovered I didn't have a suitable sized piece of MDF for the base. Being a bit busy I can't be arsed cutting and sanding a base at the moment, so I decided to paint these lovely figures instead. 

The models are the first five of 12 which I purchased from Eureka Miniatures (based in Australia) I have fancied getting these since I first saw them and upon finding I had some spare cash last month I decided to order them. The service was great and despite coming from the other side of the planet they appeared in the post within a week! 

I think the figures are amazing, really sharp clean sculpts with very few mould lines and those I found were tiny. I'm definitely going to order more figures from Eureka in the future. 

Paint wise I just went for a standard 80's era green, the eyes of the gas hoods are interesting. Most manufacturers usually fill the eye piece so you just paint it like a reflective material or similar. Uniquely (as far as I am aware) the sculptor has left the eye holes open. I opted to paint the flesh and then layered some PVA glue in the eye holes. This has left a pleasing reflective finish as though there are plastic eyepieces in the mask. I think this makes the figures look really nice as the lack of depth that some other figures have in the mask area can leave them looking a bit vacant. 

Guncrew

 

You will have to excuse the odd posting of the pictures, I didn't have access to photoshop this evening so I wasn't able to combine the 5 individual pictures into a single image for uploading.

This is the guncrew from Renegade 18Pdr which I have had knocking around for a while, I'll paint the gun up later in the week, or the weekend depends how busy I am. I like the figures although they have some pretty heft mold lines and flash here and there. I've not done a great job of painting the spotter/officers binocs, equally for some reason in the pictures the arty shell that one figure is holding has come out like a bar of gold! It dosen't actually look that golden so I presume its a trick of the light situation.

Generally they look okay, but I don't think I gave them my all as they look a bit scrappy in places, still will do as I don't have any arty at all without these figures!

Back in the saddle

Well its been a while hasn't it! As I think I mentioned in earlier posts (around December) I have been moving house (and countries) changing jobs and sorting out a whole load of other dull rubbish. As a result I haven't felt motivated to paint, and as I don't currently have a dedicated modelling area (as I did in my other house) I have found it very difficult to get on and paint.

Today I bit the bullet and painted up this Ottoman Turk officer from Gripping Beast. The figure has been lying in a box, under coated since I painted my other Ottomans. He didn't get painted before because I left him to dry in the garage after undercoating and as a result the paint didn't dry smooth. I therefore hadn't fancied painting him at the time.

If you look closely you will note the paint finish is sort of dimpled as a result of the poor undercoat. But putting that aside I was pleased with how he came out as I haven't painted in circa 3 months! I'm currently waiting on some American GI's in 80'S MOP gear from Eureka miniatures to come through. But I'm thinking I need a more long term modelling project.

Looking over my collection I don't really have any WW2 Yanks, I have always like the range Offensive miniatures produce so I'm thinking I'l collect a 1to 1 US airborne platoon. Aim is to have it painted up in 6 months, I could do it much quicker but I have a lot of crap going on so motivation is still a bit of an issue!