Working like a dog

My hounds seem to have a starting role in this blog! They have by far the most pictures. Sorry for the poor quality of these ones. I can't seem to manage to edit them in any form before putting them up. I shall have to experiment a little more I think! Here you can see what I am going for on the bases. While they are not completely finished they are close. Only one or two more additions of materials and that will be that. The forest theme hopefully comes out well enough? The grass is a little too pale. There are actually three variations in the colours put here as I was experimenting a little. I doubt if anyone will notice. The first colour used is GW dead grass (Totes Gras when I asked for it!). It is really uniform and looks like a Teddy Bear's shavings. I wasn't convinced with it so when I was home last I picked up what I normally use. This consists of years of mixing various grass products and when applied here came out too green! I finally arrived at a mix I liked when I combined the dead grass with Noch Conquest Grass. I applied this around the other pieces on the bases to make a subtle shift from the completely dry to a more living green colour. With that done I just needed to add some small green clumps for undergrowth, some moss to the logs and then some leaves to give a more forest feel. That is basically how the armies bases will look. Once I get the final pieces on the base I will go back and add more leaves to get better coverage.

The marauders have continued despite the gloom. I managed a really early start on them today and got a lot done. I have only a little to do with them now which is nice. I guess by tomorrow they will be completely finished apart from the bases. I suppose I should go and order what I need to finish the bases. I guess it won't just arrive by itself! Anyway the marauders have taken me a little longer than expected. Thats due to my own laziness. Expect an update soon, maybe wednesday, on these guys.

Suprisingly I have found a job! A real one at that too. I am pretty suprised as I have only been in Germany for two months now and my language skills are still rather poor. The best thing about the job is that it is for a games company! Thats a huge departure from the previous career but a welcome one. So this means I will have a lot less time for painting and that I will have a far different schedule for when I can paint. At the moment I am only painting during the day when I can get some good sunlight. As I will be working during the day now I will only have the evenings to paint. I went out and got myself some daylight bulbs. This is the second time I have bought some. The last time I never even managed to use them once! I have been looking around for some lamps I can put on the desk but haven't found anything useable. All the lamps I find are for 60W bulbs while the ones I have are 100W. I will have to cast my net further afield and see what I can come up with. I really don't want to have to invest a lot of money into two lamps for the desk.

Another things I am going to be constructing is a wet palette. I always wondered exactly what they were and when I saw Noeste's wet palette guide I finally realised I can make one! I thought they were some really specialised and hence expensive piece of equipment. Thankfully they are not. As I will soon be painting the larger Marauder regiment of eighteen this will be useful. I have been painting the smaller regiment in groups of three and this can lead to variations in the colours achieved. The skin on some of them has come out lighter or paler than others While this is actually not such a bad thing especially as the colours are only subtly different I would still like to keep a uniform appearance as much as possible.
Hopefully this experiment works well...