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.
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.
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| Nebula Camera - with LED's lights on |
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| Nebula Camera - LED lighs off |
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”
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.
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| Front View |
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| Back View |
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| Clos up of Front and back |
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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| Ridia and Chrysi |
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.
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| Ink bench preped and ready to go. |
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| Feather (600mm x 1200mm) |
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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...
