Tag Archives: Painting

Easy Win

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It’s a sportsball sounding kind of title, but it doesn’t make it less true. Sometimes when you’re in a slump or you can’t seem to shake out of a rut the thing you need is an easy win. Take on something that’s not part of your regular list, your massive project or the thing you’re blocked on and just do something smaller and less stressful. Take the easy win.

That worked for me. I went out and watched the **ULTIMATE** newbie crash course. I don’t know that I’m a total newbie, but I’m always happy to look at videos talking about basics. The foundation or fundamental pieces that crafters start from are often very different from each other. I don’t necessarily follow all the terrain advice shown in Wyloch’s Armory, but there was a bit in that video that reached me. Quick and easy doors.

I hadn’t thought about doors in dungeon terrain specifically. I’ve got grand visions of foam mountains and elaborate set pieces with months of build time involved and it all just seemed to be a bit overwhelming. I needed to step back and take on something smaller and easier in order to get into the work. Doors. The video series creator has a really great take on using a flat washer and some smaller craft supplies to create these doors. I stopped by the hardware store on the way back to the house one day and dug in.

I did not stick to the pure basics as shown in the video, but used the simplicity of the design concept to push forward a series of doors that I could use to advance a story. I was really happy with the result and at the end of the afternoon I had nine pieces I could add to my terrain library for future use. I didn’t grab pictures of all individually, but here are a couple of my favorites:

The Collection
Rusty Cell
Rotten Core

If you’re stuck or have writers block or can’t figure out what to paint or build or whatever your hobby is – sometimes it can really help if you take the ‘easy win’! What sort of things fit this description for you?

Still Not a Pro

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I’m still sitting clearly in the amateur section when it comes to my miniatures and crafting hobbies. It has taken me longer than it really should to make any sort of tangible progress, but I am in fact making progress. I’m also learning and enjoying finally digging into my giant pile of shame (all those unpainted minis that have been sitting around for sooooo long).

This fine fellow will likely be raging out of the earth during some Dungeons & Dragons campaign in the near future:

Earth Elemental

What are you working on these days?

Cover Art

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As this week winds down we’re closing in on the end of the nomination period for the Hugo awards. For the past 20 years Watch The Skies has been publishing a fanzine that is eligible for the award. For each of those fanzines, cover art is needed. I’ve done a bunch of them.

Lately I’ve started to move back toward creating art that is NOT strictly digital. The cover art for this month’s edition actually started as an acrylic painting. Yes, I needed to get a picture of it and add some digital things like a border and title, but the base is still a painting.

When I say in my bio that I’m a fan, author and artist… it’s not always in that order. I know I’ll never win any awards, but it’s still important to create. Here’s the painting with out the border or text (high res photos do my no favors – this actually looks better in person).

Draw! Paint! Create!

Hobby Time

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Yeah, yeah, yeah… patience. How long does that take?

That’s one of my favorite quotes. It comes from a comedy sketch by a group called the Frantics (Boot to the Head). It has become something of a constant call back in this house. Having and expectation of being immediately good at something and the reality of how good you actually are at something are two circles of a Venn diagram that don’t always cross.

I’ve had some longer posts recently about things that are depressing, particularly those related to fandom. I was not actively seeking out “feel good” posts, but found one anyway. I watch a number of different YouTube channels that involve painting, miniatures, crafting and table top gaming. I have some favorites and some that I only glance at from time to time. All of the ones I watch have a level of professionalism that I admire, right along with the actual skill connected to what they’re showing.

Here’s the feel good part: this artist saw a fellow gamer that was being forced to sell the miniature collection related to his hobby. His heart went out to his fellow gamer. He decided to recreate this army of minis, paint them and give them away. It was a cool video if you want to watch the whole thing, but that’s the short version of it.

Check it out here:

That’s a LOT of miniatures!

Back to the patience thing (see how waiting can pay off?). I took note of what the creator said in this video. He’s a pro, meaning this is how he pays the bills. I did a rough estimate based on a typical work week here in the US. I figure 8 hours per day would be considered a “work day”. The paint job being done in the video above took about 16 days. After the 5th day, an assistant joined in. I have no idea how long the helper worked, but let’s say it was 4 hours each day for 10 days (because I like easy math). Adding it up: 16 (8) hour days = 128 hours + 40 hours of helper time. That’s (checks calculator) 168 hours of prep and painting time.

How does this related to patience I hear you asking. Well, sometimes I get frustrated that my miniatures don’t look quite as good as some of the pieces I see online, as painted by the pros. Shocking nobody but myself – mine don’t look as good. I don’t have the hours in the chair that they do. Sure, maybe over the years I might come close to a reasonable total, but painting and crafting is an active skill. It’s something to be maintained and worked at. If I get, let’s be generous and say 4 hours each week where I can sit and really dig into my hobby, it would take me (goes back to the calculator) about 42 weeks to accomplish what they did for the video. So a couple months short of an entire year. Even a year from now I’m betting I won’t have that many minis painted.

Decidedly NOT like the pros.

I need to learn patience and practice. IF you’re creating something, don’t get down on yourself. Keep doing what you love. It will come around. Even if you never “go pro”, you’re still doing and creating something you love. If you get really lucky, you’ll find a way to share that with the people you care about.

What are you working on these days?

Off The Rack

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I have been side tracked lately with a lot of projects / work stuff that amount to not doing the stuff I really enjoy. One of those things I really enjoy is painting. I have a fair number of acrylic craft paints that come in these little round tubes. They can be a challenge to store in an easy to see and access way.

We had this wire rack system from years ago. My wife saw a video that showed a great way to reuse some of the panels from this “build it yourself” paint rack display. To be honest, we still have a number of these in use – they are shaky, but standing and holding some lighter weight things. We did have some leftover panels. Time to make a paint rack!

I watched a couple of videos that gave variations on how to connect the two wire bits in a way that made sense for hanging or mounting the rack on the wall. I don’t consider my art supplies to be art in and of themselves most days. I wanted a “floor mounted” model if you will. I was also not a fan of finding properly sized plastic pipes in white, finding matching caps or any of a list of other things. I wanted this to be something I could do at home with what I had on hand.

I needed a spacer that was about the right size and stumbled onto a video where the woman making her version of the rack used a child’s alphabet blocks. I didn’t have alphabet blocks anymore, but I did have a scrap chunk of lumber. I grabbed the saw and cut some little blocks (about 1” or 2.5cm). How to hold them? Zip ties of course. I drilled a single hole through one corner of each block and fastened it once in each direction (up/down, left/right) for stability. Spacing achieved!

Sanding and painting would probably help the blocks

Next up was the other side. My initial thought was to make a solid wood piece, but my woodworking skills and tools have a very low limit. Cutting and drilling was about as far as that was going to go… BUT I have XPS foam! A-ha!

So I carved up 2 slabs of foam and cut grooves into one side. This is one of those times when I wish I had a hot wire cutter for the foam. Doing this by hand with a hobby knife was rotten. It’s gouged, uneven and not pleasing to the eye. I wasn’t overly worried as the grooves should be on the side you wouldn’t normally see. I painted them up and waited for them to dry. I still hate waiting.

A hot wire tool would have made this so much better!

Next step – attach the foam. What to use? Hot glue. It’s what I have and it shouldn’t need to stand up to a ton of abuse. I should just need to make sure the top edge stays in place. Once the glue was dry, done!

I should work on my glue gun aim too…

In practice, when my wife started filling the paints in the rack fell over. She was not pleased. The position as shown in the picture is less than effective for actually standing up while holding paints. Solution? Turn it over. So, the smooth black painted foam is now on the desk acting as the stable foot and showing off all the nasty glue work, the parts of the foam that didn’t get painted right and the unfinished side of the wood block. In the end it is not about the look of the this rack, it’s about the function. Now I’ve got a pair of paint racks that will hold the majority of my paint collection at almost no cost ~ and I didn’t have to leave the house.

Right side up – as intended, not as in use LOL

Onward to the next project! What are you working on?

Miniatures and Crafting

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In my author bio one of the things I list is that I am an old school gamer. Along with being an artist (loose, but relatively true). Those two things actually collide in the crafting and miniature painting realm. Because I’m not busy enough.

In all seriousness, Dungeons and Dragons has been a love of mine for a very long time. I play when I can. I world build, I run games, create adventures and… once upon a time I painted miniatures and built terrain to play on. It’s a fantastic creative outlet and doubles up as something to add to my game sessions. It’s also fantastic practice for other kinds of art. the miniatures have always inspired flights of imagination for me.

I’ve started getting back into this. When I was painting miniatures before it was a deeply solitary thing. I found a few others locally that were painting as well, but we never connected really. I didn’t reach an extreme level with my painting, but some of them were pretty nice. I even started trying to build my own layouts and sculpt some things on my own.

The module with the monster description in it!
Modeling clay and glitter (because glitter = magic, right?)

I hope to add these projects to the blog here as part of my art. Plans, progress and all the stuff that I do when I’m not actively working on a writing project. I gave a moment of consideration to making this some kind of video compilation, but I am not a video editor. I am at heart an analog kind of guy. I believe that writing and pictures will do what I want to convey the process of the art I create. So – I’ll share progress here as the work takes shape.

I have a list of projects (shocking, I know) and (even more shocking) I have a plan for a major project. I have a diorama that I want to create as a gift to a dear friend. It’s going to be a massive learning curve for me. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride.

I jumped back into things today. Not some massive art project or novel length writing, just something simple. I had this box laying around from when I got a new set of headphones. I didn’t want to just throw it away. It’s a hard board and has magnets as the closure. It’s quite nice for simple packaging. I decided that I would spray paint over the product information and use this excellent sturdy box as a backdrop for taking individual pictures of my miniatures work. It works ~ that’s what the mud men are standing on / in. Easy peasy for a first project, right?

First lesson – wear your painting gear even if “it’s just a quick little thing” and avoid ruining a shirt.

Second lesson – look at the weather report. Your paint will run if you have to move it / hang it up before it’s dry because it starts to rain (spray painting is not an indoor sport).

It really is a cool box. I’m totally NOT a hoarder… totally.

In the end, I mostly succeeded. I have a painted box to use as a back drop and a single, starting project under my belt.

Do you have anything you’re working on?

Art and Technology

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A scientist at work - a fitting subject for this post
The Astronomer by Vermeer

When I put out my mini biography for different publications part of that bio says, “author, artist, fan, usually in that order”. There’s something about knocking together words and attempting to tell a story that really works for me. I love a good story. Thing is, my first love has always been creating art.

Art is by no means easy. Over the course of my life I’ve heard a lot of people talk art down saying things like, “my kid can splash paint around…” or “he just crapped on canvas”. Art is subjective in the purest sense. Things that I love, other people hate. Things I revile have been held up as master works. It’s all still art. Some of it sells, some of it languishes, some of it is created purely for the sake of making art – never meant to be sold or reviewed but simply enjoyed by the creator and those the creator chooses to share with.

I have attempted to create art for many years with varying levels of success. Some digital pieces live here on my web site (and should be updated). Some digital pieces go to the cover art for Watch The Skies (and many should be forgotten). Some pieces live in my sketch books and in my storage area only for me to reference. I am, on a good day, an amateur artist. On a good day. Most days I’m a savagely poor hack, an imitation of what an artist should be. I keep doing it because it was my first love, but for a very long time I have known the frustration of not being able to take the vision in my head and put it forward in a medium that conveys the right look or feel to others. It is frustrating, but I still take a swing at it regularly. You can’t get better if you don’t work at something.

In my professional life I mix the very technical with the artistic on a daily basis. I interpret the designs of napkin sketches and transform them into the reality of the built environment. I use various computer programs to create what does not exist and show it to others. It has taken more than two decades, but I am finally reaching a point where I think the computer programs and the knowledge I have of the built environment have reached a point where I can actually create something truly artistic. I hope, after much more practice to create something memorable.

As it turns out I am not the only person to be interested in this combining of art and technology. I have been meaning to get around to viewing a film called ‘Tim’s Vermeer’ for quite a while. Now that I have had the opportunity to see the film I would highly recommend digging up a copy of this someplace and taking a look if you’re interested in art or technology at all. The subject of the film became obsessed (there is no other word for what he did) with the look and make up of Vermeer‘s paintings. He contended there was some kind of technological aid this most famous of painters used. In order to gather as much proof as he possibly could, he attempted to reconstruct the method for creating a painting he thought was how Vermeer worked. It’s fascinating because when we think of technology we tend to tie the concept specifically with the ultra modern. This experiment is all conducted using methods that would have been available when Vermeer was working – around the year 1650. I was amazed to see the result and the rediscovery of technological innovation after more than 350 years.

If you’re at all interested in seeing what I’m talking about, the trailer for the film is here. As is frequently the case I found inspiration in this study of art. I’m off to attempt to create more art.