April Recap

Due to some motivational problems, not a lot of hobby progress/activities to recap for the month of April.  Of course, there are the previous posts about Adepticon but real life stuff managed to crush my normal post convention hobby enthusiasm.  Over the past week I did try to get back in the saddle though and got Hammer for Guild Ball assembled.  Also did a quick trial run of Happy Seppuku's latest textured base stamps with very positive results, I should write something up about those someday.

Anyway, I also got my airbrush station setup and running in (albeit it is beyond cluttered right now - still trying to find a home for everything).  Ok, everything in my new man cave is beyond cluttered right now.  I've hit a very slow spot where I identify where I want something but something else is already there, so then I need to find that a new home or it just replaces the original homeless something as homeless.  Ugh.

Nonetheless, with the airbrush up and running, I decided to start working on my Masons Guild Ball team!  With the family gone for the weekend, I had the lofty goal of getting all my colors blocked in.  Everything, outside of hobby, taking much longer than I anticipated only left me with Sunday morning to actually tackle blocking in the colors and that was short circuited by the family getting home a few hours earlier than expected.

Lower your expectations for when these will be done...

I tried to do some zenithal highlighting on the priming but I think I was a little heavy handed with the subsequent layers.  Also, I think my "grey" was a little to white.  Not really a loss though since I haven't utilized this technique in the past and is still helping (just not as much as I wanted) to understand where my shadows and highlights will be.

I also worked on trying to locate some of my missing stuff, organize things and in general find things a proper home.  At the end of the night of doing this, I plopped done at my desk and proceed to try to zone out watching tv.  Not terribly interested in what I was watching, or anything else available, my eyes crossed paths with an unpainted model (of course) I unearthed and had not just tossed back into a box.  This model has to be from when I was a teenager, putting it at approximately 27 years old (that is just my ownership of it - you read that right, I have owned this model for at least 27 years I think).

As I sat staring at it, with the wings broken off (I didn't know about pinning back then), I started to notice and appreciate that despite it's age it is a very nice model.  The level of detail is much higher than I would have expected for most models of this vintage - although that may be nostalgia speaking.  Anyway, the next thing I knew I had a hobby knife in my hand scrapping away mold lines (yeah, apparently I didn't know, or care, about doing that back then either) and then pin vice for the wings.

Ral Partha, 2nd Edition AD&D

Despite having no game use for it and not particularly a fan of Pegasus, I am strangely excited to paint this model.  Perhaps it's guilt or just a need or desire to restore something so neglected or some kind of childhood flashback.  Given my skill level, I probably wont due it justice but I'm sure it will fight like hell for me in the afterlife if I get it painted up.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some more progress on the Masons team soon but then again May is looking pretty crazy already with real life stuff and I have that Pegasus above trying to distract me.