Them flippin’ mounted Wights

So, here I am still painting ’em! The undercoating was a failure (didn’t cover enough area), so I’m having to essentially paint them black, and then put the colouring on. The mounts are sorted (except for the leader’s horse).

The wights themselves are getting there. Exposed bone done, just starting on the material (scab red) and then it’s a case of touching up the black armour and dry brushing silver.

I swore I’d finish them today, but it’s taking ages to put the scab red colouring on them, and then it needs a black wash, and then drybrushing, long before I get to doing the armour, so I’m not sure now.

We need a bigger house.

Does anyone want to buy a house in Stockon on Tees? £33,950, 3 bedrooms, mid-terrace. Let me know if you do.

She’s back :)))))))

The skeleton mounts for the Wights are coming along ok. Black undercoat, bleached bone liberal dry-brush, wash with a flesh ink, and then another bleached bone drybrush (less liberal).

Seems to get the desired effect. Now I need to work out the details, teeth, eyes, hooves, etc.

Grete is still at Karen’s, working on the dress for the banquet tomorrow night. I miss her.

Weird isn’t it, some people enjoy doing something, without a care in the world for how good they are at it, able to look at the efforts of others and think “nice” without ever wondering if they compare.

Others look at the work of people in their hobby and think, “wow, I’ll strive to be that good”.

Yet more look at high quality work and think, “uho, I may as well give up, I’m never going to be that good”.

I wonder about painting miniatures, I wonder about which category I fit into. I think mostly the first, I enjoy it, and the efforts of others isn’t going to stop me, but I look at some of the stuff other painters achieved and I wonder why I bother, because I’ll never be that good. I know it’s a combination of talent and the amount of time they have to put into a piece. I guess you never know if you have the talent unless you spend the time putting in the effort.

I’ve certainly improved since I started, and I know that if I paint for a few weeks, I’m better at the end than I was at the start, and then a long break sets me back again. I should do an hour or so every day I guess, to keep my skills current. I want to, I just can’t seem to motivate myself, instead I stare at this thing wondering who will communicate with me next.

Ah well.

Well, done a bit of ‘painting’. Undercoated some wight cavalry and the Black Coach (which is currently white). Stuck the tail onto another piece, tried my hand at using some ‘pinning’ but a) used a piece of metal too thick and short and b) got it at the wrong angle. I guess what you need is thinner wire you can perhaps bend a touch when the glue has dried?

I think I’ll make a post to the min-painting list about that.

Anyway, may do some more painting in a bit. (You can check out previous efforts here).

Well, it’s another slow day in the office.

Friends are busy tonight, so we’ll have to amuse ourselves again. Guess we could watch one of the DVD’s, although no doubt we’ll spend the night staring at the PC’s.

I need to tweek NewsMangler some more (is tweek spelled like that or like tweak? and is it spelled or spelt?) so that it doesn’t try posting to general groups on servers which only carry specific ones.

Ah well, might do that. I want to start painting again if I can get my mind into gear. Could do that tonight I guess.

And then, there’s the eternal question. What do we have for tea?

Why is Netscape so bloody fragile? Eh?

Well, I think I’ve got newsmangler handling ISP specific newsgroups now. It can cope with,

1. grabbing newsgroups from one server only
2. grabbing only a specific sub-set of groups from one server
3. posting to groups handled by only a single server

Not sure if I’ve got all the permutations covered, but we’ll find out I guess.

Well, back to newsmangler – I’m trying to add code to allow me to restrict which groups are collected/posted to which servers (so that I can stop sending my NTL newsgroups postings to the rest of the world!)

It’s weird how much of an effect getting 0800 Internet access has had. Grete has had it before of course, but for me, not paying for any time on the net is a novelty. I wonder if it will wear of.