1st Cook

 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.

Summer holiday projects

 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. 

PreChristmas shopping

 

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.

Two girls print

 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.

This is the cut board which I stained a very ight red/pink before carving.

Cad Bane

 

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.

Captain Rex

 

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.

 

Skateboarder

 

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.

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.

A-A5 Speed Truck (W.I.P)

 

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.

A-A5 Speed Truck cockpit W.I.P

The Bad Batch

 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.

undercoat prep

The Bad Batch

Crosshair

Echo

Hunter

Wrecker

Man O'War

 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

Judge Dredd

 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.

Looking forward to some more games and a small campaign in the coming months.

The Fatties read to roll

 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.

Judge Dredd - Fatties

Here's the list I'm going with, hopefully the lack of long range weapons wont cripple me too 

Fatties on a Roll

 

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... 

A littel bit of Cubizum

 

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.

Sonic Pad camera

 I finally got around to getting a new web camera for my 3D printer setup that works with the Reality Sonic Pad. I discovered the Nebula Camera by Creality which was pretty much plug and play with the sonic pad. What I didn’t realized when I purchased it is that it had night vision which is actually really really good. A bit more expensive than my other web cams, but easy of use and timelapse are really nice so definitely thumbs up from me. Only thing they could do better is give some optional mounting brackets, so you could mount it to a wall instead of just tripod mount. But really I’ve got a 3D printer, so pretty sure I can manage to make my own wall mount bracket.

Nebula Camera - with LED's lights on

Nebula Camera - LED lighs off

Broken

 

Yep, almost broke my finger the other day, thankfully the fan gave way and broke first. I was adjusting the position of my resin printer in the cabinet after doing a bit of cleaning and managed to accidentally put my finger to close to the fan, which clipped my index fingernail. After a lot of cursing and swearing I checked the fan, it had broken off a few blades along with a good chunk of my finger nail. To my surprise no blood, just a nice black and blue finger tip a day later.

New fan ordered and installed… with a guard this time. …my wife calls it experiential learning

I just call it was it is …. “ F@#$%ing idot”

Paint Rack for AK, Army Painter and Vallejo dropper paints

 With the addition of AK paints to my collection I found that storage has become an issue, since my existing storage rack didn’t fit them, thanks to the large cap on the AK bottles. After a bit of searching around online there wasn’t a lot of options, so I started designing my own to take all three brand that I use, Army Painter, Vallejo and AK paints. After printing off a few squares with different diameters I figured out the best diameter for the front and back support. Did a couple of test prints of a holder for one bottle then used the scale to a whole row of 10.  Still needs a little adjustment as I keep forgetting about the PLA expansion and end up sanding parts back a bit to make them fit. Overall, I’m happy with the diameters and the slight drop from front to back to help keep the paints in the rack for when you bump the desk etc. Last thing I need is paints falling onto freshly painted resin miniatures. So one more test print before I expand out to printing a rack of for 50 paints.

Front View

Back View

Clos up of Front and back 

AI

Learning to embrace the new technology, I’ve been playing around with AI generation for a few different things both for work and personal. I managed to get it to create some nice images, haven’t quite got the hang of getting it to converting them into usable images to create some lino-cut prints from. Here’s a few that came out rather nice. Pretty crazy what it can generate.

Goth Girl Itza

Work in progress on my current model from Ronin Arts Workshop - Goth Girl Itza. Had a real issue getting the arm join right. The resin I'm using has a bit of expansion and the parts didn’t fit well, needed a bit of sanding and putty. This photo of the base colours really shows it up. Think I’ll need to put on some tattoo designs to help hide it.

Switch box

 I finally got around to making a proper switch box for my painting desk light that I made. I designed the cady for the power converter and switch in tinkercad ... easy to use online app. After the first design and print was a bit to small and some tweaks it came out nice and works well. Still need to tidy up the LED mounting and cable, but eh light is so much brighter and even that have two lamps.

Masina Island Rogue

I finally got around to finishing off and mounting the Masina Island Rogue model. I had picked up an odd ball offcut from some wood from my father some time ago had that I knew one day I'd find a use for it in a base. It fitted quite nicely with the model.

I decided to use most of the offcut and leave the base rather large for the one model. With the intention of finding a monster or some type to have at the base is a challenging style pose. I'm been thinking of maybe a lion or big cat of some type. Yet to find a model suitable.  But very pleased with the outcome  

Ridia and Chrysi

 A busy couple of weeks with work and family stuff, but today I finally got to finish off the pin-up set Ridia and Chrysi which I started some time ago. Quite a learning curve with using different paints and having them react to each other creating a bit of cracking in the sink. In the end I just left it as trying to fix that would be a complete start from scratch and I decide it wasn't bad enough for that. Still got a lot to learn on the airbrush, but the biggest thing I learnt from doing this set was I need to improve my painting mounts to hold the parts as I paint them. Ended up losing a finger on one of them due to poor mount and dropped a part breaking off a finger.  Models are by Hector Moran @ RoinArtsWorksop.

Ridia and Chrysi

Feather

 Today I took my first go at printing my largest ever Lino carving.  The Feather is 1150mm in length by 600mm which was a bit of beast to handle in printing. My printing bed is 600mm x 1200mm, so was basically as big as I can print. Then using a paper sheet cut from a roll of Fabriano Accademia which is 1.5m long, the physical sizes was a bit of a challenge, so I did a dry run first to get the order and process on how to handle the paper. Using the Cranfield inks are just so nice, mixed with extender and wax dryer they don’t dry to fast and with the size of the print and multi colors and mixes I was using, I didn’t need to rush. So overall I’m pretty pleased with the outcome of colors, even with the learning curve of printing such a large print, there is always more things to learn. I’ll need to cut away a few more sections that were picking up a bit too much background chatter and work of my blending of colors.

Ink bench preped and ready to go.

Feather (600mm x 1200mm)

Waterfall Landscape

Went back and cleaned up my Waterfall Landscape carving and printed off a few more using the Cranfield inks which I am really loving now that I’ve got it matched to some good paper. Mixed up some of my own colours with some wax drier and extender and getting some really nice prints now.

Shina board carving print.

 Forgot to post about my last Shina board print which I finished the first print run just before starting on the feather project. First Print came out ok, I was expecting the chatter in the background and wasn’t shaw how it would turn out…. Don’t quite like it that much, so going to go back and carve it out more and reduce it, not remove it all.

Still on the fence if I like Shina board more than lino

Feather

 Been busy planning and starting on my largest linocut print to date, its 1200mm x 500mm. Took a few weeks of trying out different papers that came in large rolls before taking the plunge and buying a roll. Ended up going with Fabriano Accademia Drawing paper that comes in a 1.5m x 10m roll, for just over $100, so that should keep me going for a while.  All the time testing small sheets of paper I’ve been slowly working on the feather carving.

Picked up a really large permanent marker which makes checking my carving much easier. Been steady progress so far, so should have finished the carving in another week or so.

3D printed Chisel shelf.

Finished up 3D printing my chisel shelfs today. These are for all my Flex-cut chisels for carving that I use for my woodcut and lino prints. A pretty simple design overall, that I managed break one when I tried to drill a couple of the holes slightly larger to accommodate my latest acquisitions. Nothing a bit of super glue couldn’t fix. 

Makes it way tidier and easy to find the right tool when needed, plus stops me knocking them onto the floor and impaling my feet ... which I've managed to do twice now.