WQRob’s blog

Good advice for lottery fans

4 days ago
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If you say in your sermon, "I'm not going to win the raffle," then you'll win the grand prize, in this case a $250 gift certificate to Home Depot. That gift certificate will probably become our emergency home repair fund and allow us to finally get an artificial Christmas tree this year. We've considered one for a while but never could quite bring ourselves to pony up the cost.

Having not won a gaming-related prize means that the field is either wide open or completely shut, depending on your point of view. I really, really want to get the Marauders finished, but for some reason have become bogged down. Last weekend, when I thought I'd get more done, I ended up spending time doing other unplanned things. I did manage to squeeze in a lot of casting, though. Not too much hope for this weekend, since I'll be at Diocesan Convention, but I am gaming on Sunday which should be really good.

In other news, our houseguest had a promising job interview on Monday. The job wouldn't pay well I suspect, but it'd be money.

Bop 'til you drop

Oct 6, 2009
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Well, first off, some more dipped miniatures I completed:

marauder1

marauders3

These turned out well, and I have five more of their brothers primed on my worktable.

But in the midst of all this I had one of those great moments that makes me glad I surf the interwebs. I was reading a "Painting Blog" post over at DakkaDakka by a pretty familiar guy there named "Malfred." Malfred used his thread just to post pics of whatever he painted. And by "whatever" I mean "whatever he felt like in the moment." He would randomly jump from army to army, unit to unit, miniature to miniature. He isn't a great painter (I might even be better) but he cranks away at it like a machine, working his way through his pile of unpainted lead and plastic.

He actually asked me a question about the speed painting, and I told him I was taken with his random approach, mostly because it looked like I tend to paint--sporadically and randomly, but that I was trying to focus on getting one project done before starting another. "No, Bop 'til you drop," he said back,"paint whatever interests you in the moment, and you'll come back to other things. If you keep the pace up, eventually you'll have three painted armies."

It's a neat idea, and honestly quite freeing. It seems better to me to continually paint that to try to push on something and get burned out and sloppy. I think I will try to finish the sixteen Marauders because I feel so good about how good they look and how easy they were to paint. Once that's done, who knows what I'll paint. Zombies? Dwarfs?

Dipping

Sep 14, 2009
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Despite saying earlier that I wanted to become a better painter, I'd also like to make some headway on the giant pile of unpainted plastic and metal in my basement. As such, I've begun to explore "dipping" which is using wood stain to ink and seal a miniature. After a few failures, I've finally struck on a good look.

Ranger1

What's even lazier is that I just sprayed the figure gray, basecoated a few details, and then dipped it in Minwax Polyshades (Pecan, in this case). No highlighting or nothing. It won't win me any awards, but it looks presentable.

Going the wrong way

Sep 6, 2009
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Oddly enough, I think I'm become a worse miniature painter than I used to be.

I was digging through some old stuff and came across a bunch of old miniatures. I marveled at their tight appearance, my attempts at doing eyes, etc. Then I looked at the one I just did and sighed heavily.

Now I know that my vision may be getting worse, but I think there's other reasons as well. For one, I tend to paint more quickly now. I try to paint a single miniature in a day, usually Friday when I'm jugging other things on my day off. I'm also using garbage paint. I'm a cheapsake, but I really think that the level at which I would like to paint means I need to be thinking about things like flow enhancers and the like. It also means I need to slow down and do a good job. It also means practice. I paint so sporadically that I just need to get back into the swing of things. Just build up a list of miniatures that I experiment on, one after another.

Eladrin Paladin

Sep 4, 2009
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Addama1

"Elladan of Silveroak" by Reaper Miniatures.

Reading, chapter by chapter

Aug 24, 2009
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I've purchased two books for myself, one work-related and one not work-related. The work related one is The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball. The other is The SAS Urban Survival Handbook by John "Lofty" Wiseman. I've jokingly wondered which one is for which.

Anyways, I'm reading these books chapter by chapter, much like I did with The Fly in the Ointment. None of these books is particularly lengthy, and reading it in small chunks lets my "T" Myer-Briggs type process what I'm absorbing thoroughly. At this rate I could probably get through the books in a week or so.

On a sadder note, my cousin is not doing well health-wise. His liver is not functioning and a transplant is highly unlikely unless one of his close relatives does a living/node transplant. I'm hoping that something changes soon, but the outlook is very depressing.

And finally, some guy posted on TMP that he wanted to do a flooded city terrain table, which just gets my imagination going, but I'm telling myself to just hold off.

A Simple Truth

Aug 18, 2009
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Sometimes I find myself composing a massive amount of text that says nothing at all. I've begun deleting those tracts lately. Five hundred words on "should I build more fieldstone ruins even though I don't really need them" just seems like a lot of really navel-gazing.

Okay to say no?

Aug 18, 2009
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With many favorite hobby bloggers (hobloggers?) launching new, big projects this year I have found myself being once again tugged in the direction of setting some sort of hobby resolution-thing. Also pushing me in this direction is finally completing several big projects on the worktable like Kent's ranch house and Ellis' sci-fi set. The table is (virtually) cleared, and I've been wandering around thinking what to do next. I had several ideas:

Paint 100 miniatures in one year. I realized that worked out to one every 3.6 days, which is pretty quick for me I must say.
Have hobby-related income equal hobby-related expense. Hobby related income would be things like honorariums or selling stuff on eBay.
Complete another set of terrain like the fieldstone ruins.

But all of these things have their drawbacks, like the whole "painting one miniature every three days thing." I could just track how much I spend and try to keep it under a certain amount, but since I'm not a careless spender on hobby stuff, this hasn't really been an issue for me.

What I've really just been thinking about is resolving to not take on any hobby tasks for anyone else for one year. No competitions, no deadlines, no auctions. Just build what I want for myself at my own pace. No stress, no guidelines, no sense of being behind. No obligating my fulfillment. I have this sneaking suspicion I'd actually get more done because I'd just be doing what I wanted. I appreciate setting goals and meeting them, but I don't know if it belongs in my fun time.

Although I should once again resolve to watch less television.

Problems with zombies

Aug 17, 2009
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On my last trip to Columbus I picked up a pack of zombie miniatures from Wargames Factory (24 to a pack). There's several problems with them.

First, the detail is sorely lacking. I have heard that WF use a CAD program to design miniatures and then miniaturize the sculpting process and that in the process they lose a lot of definition as elements essentially dwindle away to nothing.

Second, I decided to do something different and prime the miniatures with gray primer. Huge mistake. Despite specifically being primer the gray paint lacks any "teeth" to grip paint. It isn't quite gloss, but it almost has a satin-like finish. As a result paint tends to run right off of it and look really poor. Thankfully I only primed six of them gray, but it is still really unpleasant to paint them.

Oh yeah, I do things for fun sometimes

Aug 14, 2009
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Ranch6

I built this for my friend Kent over the summer. He commissioned a ton of buildings for a huge gaming table he's using both for a convention and for his own D&D campaign later. When the table is done, it'll be 12' by 8' and in its own room of of his house. To cover the commissions Kent sunk a lot of money into prizes that'll be raffled off to participants. I've told myself that I'm not going to win (it's statistically improbable) but I'm still holding off spending any hobby money lest I win a $50 gift certificate to ChaosOrc or something.

The pleasant feeling of accomplishment I'm getting from this house finally being done (versus the stress of "OMG, am I going to get this done by the deadline?!?" that I had earlier) has been nudging my hobby switch from "RPG," where it has been resting for a while, back towards "Terrain" or maybe even "Miniatures." The problem with RPG hobby time is that it doesn't quite feel as productive: "look, I imagined something!" Plus I tend to then say things like "hey, I imagined RPG stuff while waiting in the lobby of the doctor's office. I've had hobby time."

Speaking of which, time to go get the kids from the YMCA. More later.