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Lead Aventure, Lead Apocalypse Entry

I have been hanging out on the Lead Adventure forums a lot lately, mostly because they have a dedicated Old West board. Part of the spurt to get so many Calamity citizens finished was to post in the Wild West Painting Posse thread, kind of a painting club, but with a maximum of 100 entries allowed. There is a new painting club running the Lead Apocalypse club featuring post-apocalyptic miniatures, with the restriction that the entry had to be human or mutated human. So I decided I would try and get a figure done for this one, they were already at 70+ entries when I found out about it. I rummaged through my miniatures and found a suitable Reaper mini, 4 hours or so later I had mine done and posted him to the forum.

By admission he is kind of a rough and ready paint job, certainly acceptable for table top use though. I could have been a bit more precise with the camouflage on the paints and the shirt though. I also tried to give the metal armor a rusted look, which I think utterly failed. I may go back and try and fix that.

So here he is #74 Boris Barayev, from Reaper Miniatures. #50002 in the Chronoscope line (it was even still in the original packaging with the yellow Pro Counters card (the Chronoscope cards were not ready for the initial release at ReaperCon so my first three all have the yellow Pro Counter card on the back).




Posted at 4:58 PM
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Kickstarter Loot

Some of the "loot" from Kickstarters I have supported has started to trickle in. Like most Kickstarters these delivered late, 6 months for the Elmore book and the Foglio books about 4 months late. Really not bad in the grand scheme of things.

I purchased two of the Elmore books in case someone in my gaming group decided they needed a copy after they saw my copy. We hit a stretch goal to add the B&W sketch book along with lots of extra pages in the main book. The Foglio Girl Genius comics is one of the few online comics I follow. This one let me catch up on five books that I was missing along with a hardback edition of volume 12.

I received a shipping notice on the WWI pictorial as well, it should be arriving next week. Pretty excited about that!

2 copies of Elmore plus the B&W sketch book

Girl Genius Extras, books 7 -11, unfortunately softbacks

New volume 12 in Hardback!


Posted at 11:24 PM
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Calamity - Newspaper Office - A few coats of paint

I was able to get some work done on the Newspaper office. I'm not terribly sure I'm happy with it and I think the red is to dark to really let my paint peeling technique really pay off.

I started with a new undercoat. This is the first coat of paint I put on and its suppose to represent weathered wood. I like the color that I arrived and I think I can modify it a bit to get some variations without to much trouble. The issue I had is that the Liquitex ink really has a hard time adhering sometimes, even when combining it with a bit of paint over a primed surface. In this case I had primed all the exterior walls in white and I was still getting some beading up of the mix, which required almost scrubbing it on to the walls. So perhaps more effort than its worth, but I think I will continue to experiment with it a bit. I used 1 part Liquitex White, 1 part Liquitex Carbon Black and 1 part Liquitex Raw Umber along with some matt medium to act as a bit of a binder.





After that had dried I applied rubber cement in random patches on all the exterior walls but mostly towards the bottom edges of the walls. I painted the main wall color over this. This was 4 "drops" of Vallejo Shadows Flesh from their Panzer Aces line along with 2 drops of Liquitex Naphthol Crimson and thinned it down a bit more with water. I like the color, kind of like a box car red (of which there are many variations).





The last step tonight (well after I painted a little bit of the trim) was to fade it. I used very thinned down Liquitex white and applied it in strokes following the "grain" of the wood. I over did this in more than a couple of spots and on the front, I actually managed to expose white primer on the edges of the clapboard siding. I'm not sure if I'm going to go in and fix that or not. I'm also undecided if I liked what I did. Where it was really over down I went back in and made a lighter version of the base color and went back over it (and pretty much the whole building). The lighter version was 4 drops of Vallejo Red Leather, 2 drops of Vallejo Shadows Flesh and 2 drops of Liquitex Napthol Crismson.

The trim all needs one more layer of paint and needs to be neatened up on the doors in particular. I saved all actual wood trim for later.




I think I need to sleep on it at this point and I'll decide whether I like it or not after I have stepped away for a bit.
Posted at 11:25 PM
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Colorado Scenary

I have lived in Colorado since I was twelve. I lived in a lot of other places before my family finally moved here and I have never had the desire to live anywhere else (okay, well maybe New Zealand). Sometimes I take for granted just how beautiful this state really is. None of these pictures really does the area justice, its hard to capture some of these scenes with a little phone camera and my DSLRs are just a bit to big to handle one handed. Colorado is about 1/3 plains and 2/3 mountains and a good chunk (over 50%) of it is made up of state and federal parks. Contrary to popular belief Denver itself is not in the mountains but on the plains and is known as the "Queen City of the Plains" but drive an hour to the west and you are deep in the mountains and coming up on the continental divide. So here's a look at my home state from plains to mountains.

The foothills near Boulder



Somewhere between Boulder and Golden on Highway 93

On I-25 head south to Denver

On Highway 115 going north to Colorado Springs





Somewhere on the road going from Ft Collins to Denver on the way to work

I-25 North to Ft Collins. From here its only about 10 miles or so to that first low ridge of the Front Range, the snow capped peaks beyond that are not on the continental divide. The peak left of center (click on the picture for a larger view) is Long's Peak in Estes Park part of the Front Range. She rises to 14,259 feet. I'm guessing that the peak is about 50 miles away from where I took this shot.

Posted at 6:56 AM
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