Friday past was Matariki holiday, so the guys thought it appropriate we play Blood and Steel ruleset for the Taranaki wars. Steve with his English, Kevin and myself with Maroi forces. As there was three of us we dropped the random scenarios and just played kill points, one point per kill in an all-out brawl.
Managed
to get a really nasty sinus infection that flattened me for a week or so, only
just coming right now. I did get a bit of work done on my largest linocut to
date and pulled a print off it yesterday. Still has quite a bit of cleanup work
to do on it but it’s coming along nicely. It’s also my first landscape style
print.
My
father also made a really nice handle for my restored and converted mangle press.
Trying out the second Shina
board I got a months back, this time carving an image that I transferred onto
it with the Mod Podge. Being a large area and not as detailed compared to my
last one using the Mod Podge method, it really worked well. Found carving it
much easier this time around after sharping my tools, which always helps.
I got inspired from a picture
on my physio's wall of the muscles of the body, then found some illustrations
online in different poses to use as reference. Haven’t made any prints of
it yet, but pretty please how it’s come out so far.
Another small lino cut, 100mm x 100mm based off an image I created in AI and then transfered to the lino using the Mod podge method.
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| Valkyrie |
I signed up to Hector Moran @RoninArtsWorkshop to get a few models to test out and improve my airbrush skills. Still struggling a little bit on the paint consistency and getting that just right every time. More practice needed and more often I think will be the trick.
So spent a few hours playing with AK paints and skin tones and mixtures of flow improver and thinners. It's quite amazing how different colours need slightly different mixtures. I think I'm slowly getting better.
This is the NSFW version - 3D Printable Ridia and Chrysi - Double Pin-Up (NSFW) Set by Hector Moran (myminifactory.com)
So my second attempt at using Mod
Podge Matte-Mat-Mate as an image transfer to the Lino worked out quite well.
The image transferred really well and leaving it for 24 hrs to fully dry before
using water and rubbing away the paper seemed to work the best. Just have to
take it slowly and not get it to wet gave the best results.
The one issue I did have is
with a small detailed 100mm x100mm square was the thin coating of Mod Podge
with the image in it, started lifting as I carved, making it rather difficult to
see the patterns and lines so I ended up guessing where I was going in some
cases. Once I carved out the main image I just removed the pealing mod podge
and free handed the rest. The end result came out rather well.
I also did a bunch of paper tests of different cheap papers I have at the moment and a couple of specific way more expensive printing papers on my Mangle press. I then tested some of my home made paper and quickly found I have to prime my paper first as the surface becomes to sticky and parts tend to lift as you remove the paper from the printing block. All a fun learning curve
Dusted
off the old Viking 15mm figures for a couple of games of FOG (Field of Glory)
at the club on Sunday, using the version 3 rules. Been 9 plus years since they
have seen the light of day. Brain FOG was the biggest challenge trying to
remember the rules and use the new tweaks and updates which have been done to
the rules. It was a good day and nice to get some gaming in. Couldn't find my
camp for the army, so improvised with a little putter Viking ship.
Won
the first game and then worked out a few things we were doing wrong, a hollow
win, but I’ll take it. Then got my but kicked in the second game.
Also been doing more AI
generated art and tried out a transfer method to a bit of lino using Mod
Podge Matte which I'd seen done in a YouTube video. Took a couple of goes to
get the method right. The real test will be how the Mod Podge changes the
carving of the Lino.
After a lot of elbow grease, electricity, washing crystals and a good drop or two of my blood the old washing mangle is restored. The metal parts anyway, still got the wooden guide boards front and back to make up. Pretty pleased with the outcome, so really really hoping she will work well for printing my lino-cuts and etchings.
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| Beforehand |
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| Restored |
With a very sore thumb after trying to grind it off the other day I'm on a slow and easy for the next while. So did a bit more drawing on my first A3 sized lino cut of a New Zealand Falcon.
My latest lino-cut of a dragon based off a plant image. Used a new
ink I picked up today from Cranfield, which I had seen at the Printopia exhibition.
First print using it I was impressed, I was expecting good results since the
ink isn’t cheap.
Steel wire brush on power drill vs Gloved hand ... ouch
Glad I was wearing gloves. Safe to say the first thing I did after getting patched up was down to the hardware store to get some new.. better gloves.
Finally
got to try out carving on a shine board for the first time. Quite a bit
different from Lino and yet still different from my other wood cut prints that
I've done on various particle board wood panels. It’s nothing flash, it was
more of a trial with different tools and cuts to get a feel for what would and wouldn’t
work. Defiantly need good sharp tools. Carving was much easier that the particle
boards I’ve tried. Can’t wait to see how they go thought the mangle press once
I finish restoring and convert it.
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| Cara |
Tonight I managed to completely strip down one leg of the Mangle with quite a bit of elbow grease, power drill and Dremel. That original layer of green enamel paint was well and truly stuck on. Still got a bit of light sanding to remove the rust off the wider parts of the legs which I'll hit with the multi-tool and sanding head tomorrow, then onto the final leg.
Hoping
for some more fine weather tomorrow so I can maybe get the other parts sprayed
with the first enamel coat.
Got the mangle parts
mostly done, all bar the legs paint striped and cleaned and now undercoated
with CRC rust converter ready for a test assemble before I apply a epoxy paint
coat. Still got some sanding of the rollers to complete, but they are getting
close to finishing.
Very happy with the outcome so
far, really looking forward to getting the legs finished and it put back
together.
Did a tiny first print to get the settings for the new PLA and then a larger print only 3mm thick at full size and the result was awesome. Using the Poly Lite PLA Pro the first print came out ok (needs a bit of tweaking in the printing settings) but fit the existing cog almost perfectly when doing a free hand rotation.
I'm sure it will need more work once I get it put together on the full mangle. Worst case is I will have a nice template to give a fabricator to make once from stell for me. But I'm hopefully that a 3d printed one will be good enough for the pressure I'll be putting thought the mangle.
Started playing around with AI generation using some of my very old photographs from art school days, the idea was to simplify them down so I can use them a base for some woodcut prints. interesting results, found that AI really struggles with hands, guess that will come in time. I really like the Saxaphone and the way it came out, will be a good challenge to carve that out.
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| Heather |
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| Cara and the Saxaphone |
Also tested some of the CRC rust converter on a couple of small parts which worked really well, then hit them with some Epoxy Black Gloss spray paint. They have come up looking really nice, so tomorrow once the paint has hardened up fully, I’ll do a few scratch tests and see how it goes. Pretty sure the combo will work well, just not sure how many topcoats I’ll need to do.
After testing my light arch for
a bit, the direct light coming off it was a bit blinding, so it needs a shade.
I design a simple little shade to test in tinkercad online and will printed it
off to test it out.
I did a small bit only 20mm high
to test the sizing and a few parts with angles, once I get those printed and
tested then I can print the long lengths. Meanwhile good old Octoprint updates
have broken my led setup in my printing box, so will have to sort that out at
some point.
Also printed the base with a
full back to airbrush a background on. It came out ok, part of the curve is a
bit rough due to the stepping of FDM printing, but nothing a light sand won’t
fix.
So today I kicked off some more electrolysis cleaning on some larger parts of the Mangle press, using a large fish bin. I'm still blown away on how easy this is and how effective it is for cleaning paint and rush off metal. You can see on the long bar in the photo that only half fit into the bin the difference the cleaning makes. Only took about 1 minute of scrubbing with the wire brush to take off the residue paint and rust.
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...
