Nocturnimal

Thongar

2010-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

mahrou

2010-11-21T22:46:00.000-08:00

Figure for Mahrou the Sage

Hook & Hookmaw

2010-11-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

He knows what you did last Monday.

Hookmaw

2010-11-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

A matter of scale

2010-11-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

A picture showing the scale of these things. The Hook with a normal wine bottle cork.

Beastie close ups

2010-11-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

Beasties

2010-11-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Some beasties playing in the snow.

Celestial 2

2010-11-21T20:57:00.000-08:00

Different lighting on this miniature

Celestial

2010-08-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make a starry pattern on her cloak.
Snow is a slurry of PVA glue + baking soda.

Fire Effect

2010-08-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

Another miniature for a friend, with fire as focal point.
I tried the method of starting at black then building through red, orange and yellow to white.

Tiles

2010-08-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

I painted this for a friend, and got the idea that it should be based on a tile floor rather than the tiny mound of dirt it as in the cast. So I built a floor out of modelling putty.

The Hook

2010-07-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

"I know kung fu"

2010-07-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Panzerbjorn

2009-08-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

I am pretty happy with how this bear turned out. Sculpt makes me think of the panzer bjorn from The Golden Compass / His Dark Materials series.

I tried to build up to something I was happy with via layers. I did added coats to lighten the fur and darken the armor. (The spikes on the armor are the remains of the original color for instance).

The "target area" for the paintbrush on many of the details was incredibly small.

The chain mail on the kilt was dry brushed, which took two attempts before it came out acceptably.

This miniature is pretty incredible. It looks like the concept art was done by Chris Walton, who has a deviantArt blog. I haven't found the sculptor yet unfortunately.

Druid #2

2009-08-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

I next painted the second of druid pair I bought. More practice. Instead of dry brushing the raised texture on the arm, leg, chest and shoulder armor I directly painted it.

I somehow never took a picture, so will update this once I get one in tomorrow's daylight.

First druid in macro mode

2009-08-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I got some help on how to get macro mode and re-shot the first mini I completed. Clicking the picture shows it in detail.

I wanted to record this green one again on the blog because up close I can see how when I tried to dry-brush the gold raised edges of the armor over green, the result was a bit sloppy. It looks good on the table though.

Tale of Two Drakes

2009-08-15T23:53:00.000-07:00

Next I wanted to add some detail to a guard drake mini I had been getting some fun out of, by doing a simple wash and brightening up the colors. The difference on a table is pretty striking.

Notice the as-is drake doesn't have eyes!

2009-08-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

After that one druid with the green & gold armor, I fished out a plastic mini that was strangely unpainted despite being a bit detailed. The paint job is obviously pretty flawed, though I did get some experience with watering down my paints and trying to get better with my brush control. When I saw the photo I noticed I completely missed the detail of the broken heart on the giant thing on his chest.

To be fair, the thing looks okay set on a table from the distance of actual use, which is the quality standard I am trying to meet with these things.

Big Mini update

2009-08-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

Some miniature painting I've done. Documenting my learning curve. Older stuff first.

About painting... I like the focused state involved, both mentally and physically. There feels like a transition to go from normal movement to the ultra fine motor control, and an interesting perception shift where the area being painted seems to fill the visual focal point. It isn't the same as using a magnifying glass.

The pictures on the blog page can be clicked to actually see the blown up version of the image in detail.

First (Two) Miniatures

2009-05-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

#1 Finished Front

#1 Finished Back

#2 Cloak washed with watery black

#2 Cloak with reddish wash on fur trim

First Miniature

2009-04-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Basecoat vs Primer

Basecoat close-up

50% grey 50% water washes

Proto Mash-up

2008-09-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

A Frank Sinatra & Elvis medley where Elvis is singing Witchcraft and Sinatra Love Me Tender.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UtgLF7pjc

2008-08-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

San Jose Earthquakes 3, LA Galaxies 2!

A fun time, even if some miscommunication meant I ended up with a sunburn.

Noticed some great footwork by forward #17 (Arturo Alvarez), who also made one of the goals (with another player).

Couch to 5k

2008-06-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm starting up a couch to 5k program, which uses interval training to slowly go from not running at all to a 3 mile run, over 9 weeks. Still on week one of the schedule from the Cool Running website. I had to buy new shoes and went with some great Nike's, part of the Nike+ line that has a wireless sensor insert in the sole of the shoe that sends info on the run to a "sports band", a small lcd watch band. The great part is the main part of the band detaches and has a usb interface, so I can plug it into my computer and upload stats to Nike's run tracking website.

Supposedly I can embed my stats in a webpage, so I thought I'd try that with this post. Not so impressive but this is my first week of running in maybe 13 years.

Caldo Verde... delicious

2008-06-04T23:39:00.000-07:00

The Portuguese stew Caldo Verde plus cornbread, from Cook's Illustrated Soups & Stews magazine, was a big win for our side*.

The stew was mostly kale and chorizo, with chicken broth thickened by potatoes (mashed up) and starting from onions and garlic. The local grocery had Niman Ranch Chorizo without nitrates, everyone was low sodium, and the strong flavors from the kale, chorizo and potatoes came together in a savory wonderland.

Alongside I made cornbread, which turned out to be very simple and came out with a golden brown crust and strong corn flavor and more bread-like consistency. It wasn't the small crumb, un-browned, somewhat bland brownie size cornbread that shows up in restaurants.

The entire meal was very easy to make and mostly was collecting + combining style cooking. The mini prep again made for fast onion chopping and garlic mincing, while a blender did the combination work for the cornbread.

All together it made 4 large meals with a bonus plate stacked with spare cornbread, which I confess I ate 3 pieces late one night as a snack. Everything was so good!

* The good guys of course!

Chomps So Far...

2008-05-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

Comments on recipes from the Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe book:

Tuna Noodle Casserole
Tasty but different from my casserole experience by having no cheese! Featured lots of mushrooms and peas. Prep work took a long time, partly due to a mistake in measuring at one point.

Classic Brownies
Unlike thick or fudgey brownies these were incredibly cake-like and crumbly. So while they couldn't be eaten without a fork and bordered on dry eaten alone, they were incredible with vanilla ice cream.

Served without roasted walnuts because I failed at three attempts to toast walnut chunks I bought. It seemed like an outer husk or layer of the walnut was separating and burning which gave them a charred popcorn taste.

Gazpacho
This was perfect for the warm weather the past month, and the easiest to make so far. Without the mini-prep I recently picked up at Target this would have involved a lot of tedious chopping and tears from the onions. This is definitely one to make again, though I need to buy some containers so I can freeze portions.

My Dreams My Rules?

2008-04-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Sleep during this on-call period has short and frequently interrupted. But I've done a ton of work and problem solving both for the job and apparently in dreams. I had a persistent anxiety dream that I edited my way out of twice, without going fully lucid and without rejecting the premise and exiting sleep.

You know the character in Heroes, Claire's Dad, the person with the wire rim glasses and large, sort of creepy smile? Well I started in a giant empty drugstore to refill a prescription or something, as the store announced it was closing and the lights went off. And standing between me and the exit was that character, frozen with one arm raised and illuminated by pale light from through the sliding doors, highlighting the glasses and the smile. It was a surprise appearance straight from a classic pop-up-style horror movie. But I was immediately confronting it and saying "I know what you are trying to do... you think you're doing that so well don't you" as I approached. He was kept frozen as I carefully walked around and outside, and any sort of anxiety by prevented activity or confrontation was preempted.

The follow up was being in a room and feeling that somehow I had left my backpack in the store, now closed, and would lose my notepads, sketchbook, etc. The things were lost, what would I do style anxiety. But then I sat in a chair looking at a spot in the corner, and with focused concentration repeated "the bag is not there, it is here... the bag is not there, it is here". And it was there.

Afterwards things went to dreams as dreams.

For my fifth year service award...

2008-04-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

You'll be traveling the post apocalyptic wasteland in style with your new Jensen Radio Ensemble! Fall asleep to the soothing sounds of the automatic emergency broadcast recording. Find fuel, water, and non-radioactive dinner scorpions with your self powered flashlight. And be prepared for some playtime in the snow as your portable weather station lets you know when nuclear winter fun is about to begin. Ear buds and carrying strap included.

Dream Travel

2008-03-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

I spontaneously learned to teleport in a dream last night, while walking in the crowded downtown of "non-specific dream city." After teleporting a block the surprise of what happened made me lucid enough to look ahead another block and think I wanted to be over there. And it worked.

With dream changing lucidity there seems to be a threshold where too much awareness feels like it will lead to waking up. Like in this case after the second teleport the dream started to come apart, but by looking down and just thinking about the small movements of turning, it was possible to let go of lucidity and go back into the dream.

First Post

2008-03-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

Night-time walks, raccoons, deer, friendly cats, computer games, pretzels.