Paint Racks

04.30.2024

I have paint. A lot of paint. The main reason for my lofty oversupply of paint is that I can't really tell shades or hues that are close, so when a paint scheme spells out the colors to use then those are the colors I have to use. I also like any paint that brands itself as making painting easier - I'm looking at you shades, washes, contrast, and speed paints. It's only natural that when Army Painter came out with a new.., well, line of paint that I would wonder how I could live without it. I mean, their last Speed Paint line made painting soooo much easier, just imagine what this new line would do. Plus, it's made for hue and shade matching impaired folks like myself as there are tips on the label for what paints match for highlights and tones.

But the problem this begat was... were to store this stuff? Currently (well, at the time) all my paints and paint related tools are in the closet. Mainly on 2 wire shelving racks on casters, each rack is 14" x 16" footprint and about 6 feet tall. 1 rack is all paint in shoe boxes, which I've sorted into boxes in categories that make sense to me. The other shelf has some scenery, bases, and cast-off test minis that will never get finished. I've wanted to use some proper paint racks for a while, but I just haven't had the desk (or wall) space. But maybe I could make something utilizing the shelf racks I have?

Well, not the actual shelf racks, but the footprint they take up. The Litko paint racks are 22" wide. That's too wide for a 14x16 shelf. I did a quick test, using the center handle on the paint rack. I quickly found that is not a spot of structural integrity to support all the weight at 1 point. The paint rack has holes for screws/mounting on the outer corners to take proper weight distribution into account. So I need something wider. And everything still needs to fit in the same space and through the closet door. With the door open, that doorway is just under 22" wide. The paint racks will have to go into the closet length-wise... The paint racks are roughly 5" deep, which gives me a shelf that needs to be at least 22" long to support the paint rack, and no more than 17" deep for everything to fit through the door. It's a shame I can't just merge the 2 shelf racks I have now. But I can do the next best thing and order the 14x30 shelf rack on Amazon!

The new shelf came in and I assembled it, all while not telling anyone my plan since it started out so half-assed I had no idea if it would work. Thanks to a recent liberal use of zip-ties, I wanted to try using them to secure the paint racks to the wire shelves. But (vertical) spacing was also key here, as I wanted to maximize my usage of what's available. What's something cheap, yet relatively sturdy and straight, to help with that? Yard sticks. Yard sticks with holes drilled in them. And yard sticks have built in measuring for any spacing! And thus I decided to attach yard sticks to the wire shelves, and then paint racks to the yard sticks. All using zip ties.

The damndest thing is, it seems to work.

I now have paint racks with space for 502 pots of paint, all neatly organized and accessible. On the other side, where shelves live, I still have show boxes sorted by categories I'll look for. Along with that are things I can wheel around that come in handy when painting, gluing, whatever. Wheeling is a little more important now as I've moved my hobby space from my office desk (4 ft from the closet all of this stays stored away in) to the never eaten at dining table (2 rooms away).

For the 14x16 shelves, the 2 5-shelf units have been combined into 1 9-shelf unit and moved to a different closet to see if it's going to work for some more dedicated scenery storage (with wheels!). That was kind of a last minute decision, so we'll see if that sticks long term.

Permalink feng shui random renovation/remodelling

Johnny Rambo

03.27.2024

At some point in the last couple of years I picked up the complete Rambo boardgame + expansions during a really good sale. The game looks like it's fun for solo play and follows the plot of the first 3 Rambo movies close enough to be fun, yet no so close you just copy whatever's done in the movies. Of course, I got the games and promptly put them on the shelf, as is my way. One of the extras for a different game is an unneeded mini of Rambo. I also have this Rambo game, sitting on a shelf. I suddenly don't know why I'm even mentioning these 2 games, as neither are particularly relevant to the mini. But, once you start typing why not just go with it and see what happens - or delete it?

Little mini Johnny Rambo arrived and he wasn't quite as nice as the image shown for purchase. Arms and head has visible seam/gaps that I didn't bother to mess with before priming, and after priming I didn't think would be too obvious. I was wrong. Especially on the arms. Very, very wrong.

Damn the gaps, Johann Rambo would be painted! And painted he became. It's been a while since I played around with a camo pattern, and his britches reminded me it had been a while. Thus, Jojo got some camo pants. I went heavy on the skin wash to try and bring out the musculature on the body, and even lightened the tone on the pecs the way I see other people do... and I'm not quite there yet. A little too light on the pecs, I think.

A little static grass for the base and sealed everything up to be done. For something that was sitting on my desk primed for at least 2 months, roughly 2 hrs of paint-dry-paint-repeat was all that I spent on this one (yeah, sure, maybe it does show). I've been doing more plastic model building over the past month, without anything in the end phase enough to show here, so a quick many to show I'm still alive was a nice snack.

Wow, the lighting in the pics below really make a difference in showing the exact same skin tone...

Permalink gaming miniatures

Gordon and Flass

02.08.2024

After the Gotham police disaster of the last post, I didn't have high hopes for the companion box I primed at the same time: Lieutenant Gordon & Detective Flass (Year One). Still, once primed something has to happen. Onward!

While not sticking to the color scheme of the box, I went close enough to count, in my eyes. From the onset I wanted to make the varsity jacket standard yellow/black Batman colors. Normally I would have painted yellow arms and black torso, but this time I erred on the side of easier clean up of errant brush strokes. I even went so far as doing the skin last instead of first on both of these minis. Much like the previous batch of police, these 2 received tweaks to their bases. Flass even managed to get a completely different, bigger base more fitting his widened stance. Although I pinned and attached the bases to these two at the same time as the previous batch - these are straight! Probably because both feet are modelled to completely touch the ground.

Flass received my go-to of Citadel Drakenhoff Nightshade on top of white primer for the stonewashed denim look. This is the one technique I seem to get to work consistently. After the previous post, I needed some good consistency. The yellow and black on the jacket worked well, although the black lettering for Gotham High on the back could be better - both for how the paint bled in, and the print of the model could have used some cleaning up that I didn't see earlier.

I'm a little disappointed with the speed paint job on Gordon's clothes. Too much pooling in crevasses again. On the other hand, his hair and glasses feel spot on to me. I managed to paint the glasses frames and the skin behind the lenses without messing up everything else - such as smearing everything on the rest of the skin. While the pics don't really show it, each lens in the glasses have a dot of Mod Podge Dimensional Magic to really make it feel like there's some glass in there.

A 2-mini completion post. Better job than the last post, yet still not as good as I originally hoped. At least more things went right this time.

Next up is some scenery/post-apoc buildings. I'm not sure if I'll work through one with enough to post something interesting, or get bored and sidetracked with something else person-sized to paint.

Permalink Batman Miniature Game gaming miniatures Knight Models

Gotham Police Trio

02.02.2024

After years of accumulating minis for the Batman Miniature Game, I finally grabbed a pack (or two, but that could just be a teaser for later) and started with a trio of Gotham Police. I had high hopes, but also a little trepidation before starting out because as far as I know I've never made anything from Knight Models.

Instead of going step by step with what I was doing or tried, a simple comparison of the pics below with the Knight Models site shows that I didn't get anywhere near the quality I might have hoped, but it was a good learning experience.

Resin Minis - I miss metal minis, and for whatever reason I'm still having problems with these printed minis. They required simple assembly - arms and heads. I've yet to find how to get resin pieces to fit flush. Arm gaps are pretty bad at the shoulders.

Wrong Speed Paints - The blue(s) I picked for the uniforms and vests are too dark, and the pooling in the wrinkles is way too deep. I usually do this at least partially intentionally as I like the looks, but not this time. It really covered up the details this time. Especially on the badges - the badges don't look good.

Pinned the Minis - This part went awry lots of ways. The minis were printed with the bottom to fit in slotta bases, and the included slotted bases had a brick texture. A brick texture with a big gap in the middle for the mini to fit in. I liked the brick bases, and it was going to take some finagling to fill in the gaps after fitting in the mini, so I decided to just fill in the gap completely and then pin the mini to the base. Great idea! Problem 1: While I'm pretty good at gilling in these gaps with putty/plastic, I'm not so good with leveling and smoothing things out. There wasn't a gap, but you could tell it used to be something. Problem 2: This was my first time pinning resin, and evidently I don't know how to make the pins straight. Each one of these minis ended up crooked. And crooked in a way I couldn't straighten up. Problem 3: I tried painting these with a pin in 1 foot/leg before attaching them to the bases. They wiggled and spun enough that I feel blaming at least half of the resulting paint job on that is valid. This was my biggest lesson learned - when it comes type to apply painted brush to mini, that mini has to be stable in my big elderly man-hands.

As much as I complain above, it wasn't all bad. Granted, I can't find a silver lining to write as an example, but they're not total crap. Maybe the silver lining is my skills have generally improved over the years to where I recognize all the things that went wrong here instead of thinking that painted = done and good job. Jerry asked me the other day if I paint things to play games or for the process. While I paint things so that they may be played in games, I don't really expect them to be played. So truthfully, it's the process. I paint something, and after it's sealed and had pictures taken and posted here, it goes in a box or on a shelf and is quickly forgotten as I move on to the next thing. But I do enjoy that process, even when things go wrong.

Next up will be Lt Gordon (or I might promote him to grey headed Commish) and a baseball bat wielding lackey. Honest, that's next. They're even 70% painted already.

Permalink Batman Miniature Game gaming miniatures Knight Models

WIP Friends are now just Friends

01.07.2024

Thanks to annual company shutdown enforced PTO, I found myself both with some open time and in the right mood to finish up the Water Tower and Hulkbuster from last week's post. And by finish up, I reached the point where I could only see things going downhill if I kept trying things.

The water tower was not supposed to be completely rusted. I started with a light Vallejo rust wash in spots on the top. The wash really showed brush strokes too much. For some reason, I thought of applying the wash to the entire thing, and that didn't make anything better. For a cover up, I had some Rustoleum hammered copper spray paint. That's not a color that any water tower has ever been seen, you might say. But, if the metallic sheen is toned down to a matte finish - more rust! Hopefully evenly coated, non-brush stroke showing rust. And it does look that way! At least to me, it does. Add in some dark rust/orange/brown more-rusted spots and you've got a water tower you wouldn't want to drink any water out of. The legs got a silver base coat and then a mix of random Nuln Oil and Rust washes, and some Typhus Corrosion spotted on the base as well as a cou0le of random spots on the tower itself. There were more parts included in the kit for the tower - a ladder, some cross wire supports for the legs, but I left them off for potential better miniature game play-ability.

Hulkbuster is one I just gave up on. I was using Army Painter metallics on top of a black base coat, and I just could not get even coverage brushed on. Sometimes it was going on too thick (like nail polish) and smearing around. Other times, too thin and just not covering anything. There's still black primer showing in spots, but hopefully that'll look like dark recesses and not unpainted parts. I think using the metallics with a matching base color would work better for me. Alternately, I could follow the video that used a metallic silver base and then contrast paints on top.

With the start of a new year, I have a couple of hobby goals I'm working on for the year. One of which is to work on more scenery (like the water tower) along with my randomly primed minis. Maybe not with every batch, but I'd like to find a good rhythm to work them in as I've got a closet full of buildings and vehicles sitting unmade.

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