After some hit and missing printing onto the t-shirts I did
some more research and ended up getting myself some Essdee fabric inks along
with a Essdee fabric roller. What a difference that made, the ink is quite
different from the speedball ink I was using and the roller worked some much
better.
To do some more testing and experiments I stopped into the
local Hospice Shop and picked up 4 second hand t-shirts and 1 ladies top.
Had my first game of 2025. Starting in a League game of
Blood Bowl. My GutterBlade Skaven up against Keven’s Chaos Dwarfs. Had a good
start and was up 2/0 after turn 4 with a sweet perfect pass over several of the
dwarfs. But with Kevin’s dice rolling I got stomped on big time, with 5 of my
guys getting injured and several K.O’s. I couldn’t touch him with only a few
knockdown the whole game. Ended up playing the last 4 turns with only 5 on the
pitch. Gamed ended up 2/3 to the Chaos Dwarfs. Four of my guys missing the next
game and three with niggling injures.
Was a fun game to get back into play Blood Bowl on my
awesome home made pitches.
Just need to get the last few models painted before the next game.
T-Shirt time again. I’m still struggling with getting consistent prints from using the Speedball Fabric inks. I watched a few videos and picked up a few tips, but still getting to light patches coming thought. A lot more experimenting required I think.
Takes a bit of getting use to using and I can see myself modifying
the stick with some felt or leather to soften up the stick part that your hand
rests on. I may even need to go for a
thicker dowl, but I’ll give the home made one a bit more of a workout. Main
thing is that it works and I’m not smudging the drawing.
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| Home made Mahl stick |
Started drawing again over Christmas, trying to improve my skills, especially with drawing the human figure. So found a random picture of a lady and got stuck in. Did a few small sketches which were terrible, and then busted out the old drawing books and got back into it with a A3 size drawing.
A couple of progress shots of the drawing so far, still got alot to do
2025 and the start of a new year. Been relaxing and
not doing alot, other than the usual family catch ups. I have just finished the
first carve of a new lino print, another large print at 500mm x800mm. I’ve cut
out the sun and a large part of the lake so they will stay nice an white (or
paper colour). I may even try airbrushing in some colour post printing. I used
a super-sized sharpie pen to blacken the print as I carved.
I’ll do a test print in the next few days, but expect I’ll
need to tidy up a few parts and make the call on whether I add in some more detail
or not.
1st day of holiday and I stripped down the old mangle, scrubbed and washed it. Then setup some parts in the first cook. Good old electrolysis doing the hard work for me.
Well I managed to pickup another 1900's mangle, this time a smaller version to do a restore on over the summer and convert it into a printing press. With over 50 meters of 1.8 meter fencing to paint and 100 meters or so of post and rail, i'll need something to break up the job and hide from the mid day sun.
The pile of shame also needs some attention, but that can
always wait, its summer after all. But I really do need to get some paint on
the Shatter Point terrain and the many boxes of legion I have stacked in the
corner.
After many years of good use my Momentum Head phones finally
have started playing up and dropping in and out. So for Christmas I decided to
shout myself a nice pair of headphone. With my use case changing a lot since I
purchased the Momentum’s and not wanting the headphones for noise cancelling or
wireless, I ended up getting a pair of Audeze MM-100 Manny Marroquin’s and also
a desktop headphone amp for my mancave. That way I can listen while in the cave
and also in the lounge when listening to my records.
The upgrade in quality is A-mazing and they are so so comfortable to ware. I spent a good 2 ½ hours in at Addicted to Audio store trying out headphones. The HiFiman desktop amp I got also came with network connection so I can cast to if from my mobile phone which is awesome.
Looking foward to getting some time in at Real Grovey records for some new tunes to listen to on these.
Been a busy month and a bit with the end of the year
rolling in way to fast. Been back onto the Shina woodblocks and giving a
multi-block print a go. First test print using a water colour paint just to
make things even harder for myself ...hindsight and all that ... wasn’t the
best option. Sharpened all my tools and man did that make things easier, must
remember to do that more often.
Haven’t gotten around to trying out my standard inks, which is on the cards this weekend, but heres’ my first print. I over inked/painted it a bit with the water colours bleeding, but overall happy with how its come out so far.
Tonight’s effort was to finish off my Cad Bane carving and
do a first print. Needs a bit of tidying up but pleased with the results. Defiantly need to try out some blue tomorrow after I complete the clean-up.
Did up a small carving today of Star Wars Clone Captain Rex’s Helmet. Came out well, although I haven’t got the hang of printing on fabric yet. This is on a cheap T-shirt using Speed Ball Fabric ink, which I’ve only used a couple of times. It’s very different from my normal printing inks, so I’ll most likely be killing a few more t-shirts in the near future. Need to get some Blue ink to do a two tone version.
Star Wars Captain Rex T-Shirt Print
Now working on Cad Bane print converted from a nice drawing I found online.
I went back to doing some carving yesterday and finished off
my skateboarder in cubist style. First prints came out ok this morning. Noticed
that the image transfer using the Mod Podge has caused a little bit of rippling
on the wood in places so gave the ink transfer was a bit weird in spots, but overall,
I like it. I will have to see if a we bit of sanding can take out some of the
ripples.
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| Skateboarder |
Going to have to try out some multi-coloured prints with
this one over the next few days and even might try out some T-shirt prints with
it if the ripples come out with some sanding.
Started on my A5 Truck speeder quite awhile ago now. It’s
been sitting on a tray in parts begging to be completed. So finally getting
around to trying to finish it. The one thing that has struck me is that every
model of it I’ve seen is setup on the base the same way in the default position.
So thinking when I get to the point of mounting it on the base I will go for
something non-standard. Just haven’t quite worked out what. Still quite a lot
of painting to go.
At this point just focusing on the interiors as I have both
doors open and was thinking of magnetising the roof. So perhaps it could also
be used as a terrain piece as well as a vehicle in a game play.
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| A-A5 Speed Truck cockpit W.I.P |
Been a month since my last post, what a month it has been. Minor surgery on my arm which took me out for a week and now the brutal flu, which turned in sinusitis and bronchitis. Now finally on the mend after pretty much 6 solid days in bed.
Been chipping away at some Star Wars Legion since I’ve been just
started watching Bad Batch.
Had fun painting this unit since they are all different. Decided
to try something a little bit different and try a multi-coloured undercoat with
a theme of Episode 6 season one - Decommissioning. Replaced the bases with some
nice sci-fi resin printed ones with the idea they were in the decommissioning
plant with the orange and yellow glow of the furnaces.
A lot of the undercoat gets covered of course but I managed
to keep some showing though as I used a combo of Army Painter speed paints, Vallejo
and AK paints thinned down with speed paint medium. Pretty pleased with the
outcome. Omega eye’s weren’t my best work.. I always struggle with eye and had
issues with the undercoat on Tech cracking. Nothing to world ending and overall
result looks really nice on the table top.
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| undercoat prep |
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| The Bad Batch |
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| Crosshair |
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Echo |
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| Hunter |
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| Wrecker |
Did a little bit of trading with Steve who was
offloading some Man O'War stuff for some 3D printing. I just couldn’t pass up
the chance to get some good old school original models.
All up I got a good army, so will have to get back into some
painting.
High Elf Eagle Ships
High Elf Hawk Ships
High Elf Dragon Ship
High Elf War Eagles
High Elf Dragons Riders
So after what seems forever ... 2015 actually, was the
last time we played Judge Dredd. So its been well over due for a game or
two.
So we managed to get some games in at the South Auckland Club
on Sunday. I rolled out the Fatties and their fans. Steve had the Judges, Kevin
with his East Meg Judges, Jason with his Angel gang and Kavin with the Klegg.
I was in epic form, my ability to roll 1’s was breaking laws
of statistics, I’m sure of it. My poor old Fatties got mowed down. Didn’t help I was
using the rules the wrong way, but that’s all part of the fun.
So I've just managed to complete the 6 Fatties for the Judge Dredd games tomorrow. Just now finishing off the Fat Fans to go with them. Thes guys and gals are all 3D resin prints. Should be good fun to play.
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| Judge Dredd - Fatties |
The guys at
the gaming club are wanting to roll out some Judge Dredd next month, a game we haven’t played
in very long time.(9 years or so I think) So I went and found some Fatties to 3D Print for it and hopefully
should get them completed in time.
3D files from PAPSIKELS MINIATURES - THE METAHUMANS JUNE 2021
Work in progress...
Got my next woodcut print all prepped for carving last night and ready to start. Thought I’d go for a bit of a cubist style image for a T-Shirt. Going to change it up a bit as I decided I didnt like the skateboard as much as i did on screen. I'll let the wood decide how it will end up.
After some hit and missing printing onto the t-shirts I did some more research and ended up getting myself some Essdee fabric inks along w...
