The Final Push – Lawnor approaches 100% painted

This months Monkeys With Fire community challenge was to paint a Printmyminis Walrus Man using only the provided Instar paints.  Three primary colours, black, white, and a metallic additive.  I’ve never done anything like this before.  Thankfully, Instar have some guides over here to give me a solid starting point.  The Linear Swatches are not 100% accurate, but they got me within a ballpark I could mostly tweak to what I wanted.  I spent more time procrastinating than actually painting this model.

While avoiding actually starting him I did the building, priming and airbrush basing on the next project.  I had a £50 OTT voucher expiring soon so I spent it to buy another Daemons of Khorne Start Collecting box ready for an upcoming Crusade with my firends.  None of us know how to play 40k yet.  There’s nothing really worth showing yet. I painted up this box once before as part of the OTT 40k Hobby Weekend and I’ll be trying to match that as best as I can.

I finished the last three models for Super Fantasy Brawl this week so thats one less big project to do.  However, I had a £50 OTT voucher expiring soon from last years Spring Cleaning Challenge so I picked up the Start Collecting Daemons of Khorne box to add to my force for a Crusade my friends and I are hoping to start soon.  Thats 15 more models added to the queue.  They are bulk paintable and I know I can get them done much quicker than SFB, as I already did this before as part of the OTT 40k Hobby Weekend.

This week is the start of Monkeys With Fire’s monthly challnge for June.  We each got given a Walrusman from Atlantis Minitaures 3D printing wing, Print My Minis, and a set of Instar Paints.  We are only allowed to use Magents, Blue, Yellow, Black, White, and Metal+.  We have to mix our own colours, following Instar’s helpful (if initially confusing) mixing charts.  This scares me but it should be good for me in the long run.

Two more models for Super Fantasy Brawl painted this week.  I didn’t think I was going to get the second done as I’ve fallen back in to Diablo 3.  I watch Critial Role while painting and I’ve hit the point where they’ve started using the music from Diablo 2 and it crept in to my brain.

I bought SFB because I thought I’d enjoy painting the models.  I didn’t really expect to play the game.  I am not enjoying the painting at all.  There’s been no consideration given to access for painting and limbs and bases etc keep making them unnecessarily hard to paint.  It’s bad design and its inconsiderate and it’s ruining it for me.  Prebuilds suggest these are aimed at people who don’t hobby yet, or at least people who want to play without having to hobbby first.  That makes them gateway pieces as non hobby people decide to try hobby with them.  These minis would give such a bad first experience because of the access issues.

Still, once the last 3 models are done, I’ll have finished SFB and only have home printed models left to paint in the house, still ignoring the Box of Undesireables.

I’ve finished my printing now.  I used up the last of the resin and am currently venting the house and curing all my waste out in this lovely sun, ready for disposal.  Here’s what I’ve printed in the last month or so:

Ritual Casting Engineered Curves
RC Augmented Beauty
Twin Goddess Knox the Goblin Alchemist
Raging heroes Slick Spy the Goblin Pusher
Raging heroes Yanz pratrix, Cleric
Raging heroes Maniac Khorred
Raging heroes Frenzy Khorred
Artisan Guild Xantaras The Eye Tyrant
Artisan Guild Hive Colossus
Artisan Guild Slathos the Soul Stealer
3dartdigital Amberal Thundercloud
3dartdigital Jacques Satyr
3dartdigital Al Aksar lich
Titan Forge Lord of Decay / great unclean one
TF Gorr the Barbarian
TF Bartender
TF Lords Female Bodyguard
TF Ninja 2
TF Yuko
TF ToA 1 Elf Mage
TF ToA 1 Human Paladin Female
TF ToA 1 Tiefling Warlock
TF ToA 1 Dwarf Priest
TF ToA 2 Gnome Male Mage
TF ToA 2 Human Female Rogue
TF ToA 3 Halfling Rogue
TF ToA 3 Elf Bard
TF ToA 3 Human Warrior
TF ToA 4 Elf Monk
TF ToA 4 Human Warlock
TF ToA 4 Tiefling Sorceror
TF ToA 5 Dwarf Barbarian Female
TF Stranger
Bite the Bullet Irya, Female Barbarian
PrintYourMonsters Skeleton T-Rex and rider
Ghamak Lord of Fantasy / Keeper of Secrets
Artisan Guild Ornithaax the Majestic Black Deagon
Razduun, Undead Lord Bust MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Druid Bust MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Ophilia MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Norse High School MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Voodoo Bree MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Korra Bust MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Night Elf Bust MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Lich MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
Ghamak Female Monk
Ghamak Wood Elf Pinup 1
Ghamak Chaos Sorceror
Ghamak Barbarian
Artisan Guild Amazon
KDM Face x1 MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
KDM Column x4 MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse
KDM Ore x2 MyMiniFactory/Thingiverse

Last year I also printed off Ritual Casting’s Mortaya, weilding two lightsabers.  She sits in a box on a shelf, intimidating me.  Thats everything left on my list of To Paint’s that’s currently in the house.  KD:M 1.6 has been delayed until October, Aeon Tresspass: Oddysey has been put off until 2022, and I’ve a 6 man Guild Ball team at a friends house I can’t currently get to.

Quick analysis on the last bottle of resin.  It was 1 Litre of Anycubic Soy resin and it was a few months out of date.  It was supposed to be violet.  The liquid came out pink.  The first prints were pink.  Middle prints were violet and late prints were pastel blue.  I thought I’d shaken it properly, but perhaps not?  Perhaps this is a consequence of the stuff being out of date and being exposed to air?  Perhaps this is just what happens as we reuse whats left in the vat for future prints?

Chitubox tells us how much resin our prints will take up and how much that’s worth, based on paremeters we give it.  I had resin density set to 1.1 (Not sure thats right?) and apparently I printed 632ml worth of models with maybe 10ml left in the vat (A partial print came out before it ran dry).  This begs the question, was Chitubox that far off, or did I really lose that much to residue, drips, and to the air?  Just how much goes airborne?  Next time I get a bottle (No time soon) I’ll have to watch this closer to see what I get out.  Non-soy resin feels like it went further, but perhaps thats just because I was printing smaller stuff?  A full bed of 32mm minis takes about 25ml of resin, but one bust uses 2-4 times that much.

Mays community challenge from MWF, Nadia the Great Hunter seemed to take a lote more time and effort to paint that it looks like she should.  I’ve been painting around two 54mm models a week recently and it feels like I was working on her alone for over a week.  I can’t do feathers properly.  I usually rely on my airbrish to make wings look great and ignore individual feathers.  For Nadia, I followed the Privateer Press guide from the book Exigence.  It hasn’t worke dout the best, but I can see what its trying to do and looks fine from arms length.  If I have a few more boirds to paint, one after the other, I think I could get this to work better and then start to experiment.

The base was found on Thingiverse and 3d printed.

If anyone ever wants to make a model that looks fine, but is riddled in design choices that make it unnecessarily hard to paint, Mariusz is a masterclass in this.  See that armour?  Its near impossible to paint all the bone without getting some on the metal, and its near impossible to paint the metal without getting some on the bone.  Due to his shape and the fact that he comes preassembled there are soooo many places it is hard or impossible to get a brush with any degree of control even though all these places can be seen easily.  The back of his tabbard remains unpainted because of this.  I also found a few places where I could get my brush in, but then mid-stroke or on the pull out my brush would bump in to a hand and get knocked against another part leaving a streak of paint where I didn’t want it.

You couldn’t make a model this deceptively awkward to paint if you really tried.

The community challenge model from Monkeys With Fire this month was supposed to have us do something outside of our comfort zone, ideally NMM.  Asset Drop shipped me a NMM gold triad from Reaper a while back and a test piece to try it on.  I’ve goven that a go and I’m not confident with the results.  nadia does not have simple armour either.  Its got hundreds of surfaces, each with their own reflections.  I fear I’d mess it up and hate every second of trying so I won’t be doing that.

My challenge will be to paint the bird by hand.  I hate feathers and usually rely on my airbrish to make wings look good.  Not today.

The printing goes ever on.  I’m down to around half a litre to burn off before I pack up long term.  I lost over a day to random MyMiniFactory and Thingiverse searches this week.  Got a few busts lined up and a few more minis.  Then Its a few more terrain pieces for Kingdom Death.  If anyone can recommend any fun or interesting to paint free STLs please share a link.  I’ve found recently that Resin is like a tube of toothpase.  The first 90% vanishes instantly, but that final 10% seems to just keep going on and on, at least when you’re trying to drain it to swap it out.

I really do need to do a stock take on what I’ve printed.  I’m on the final bottle of aged resin now and then I’ll stop.  I’m just burning up old stock before it expires.

The Monkeys With Fire community challenge for the month is RN eStudio’s Nadia The Great Hunter 54mm miniature.  Mine has arrived and has been cleaned up and primed.  I need to finish my current mini before I start on her.  MWF is stepping up the challenges this month.  We are supposed to do something out of our comfort zone.  Ideally NMM on her.  I really lack experience and confidence with NMM.  It breaks my brain.  I’ve an Asset Drop guide and tutorial tile to practice on before I try on the model, but I fear this lady has too many different section, each with their own reflections and I’ll go mad even thinking about it. Plus there’s two shades of gold on the same armour!

I do hate painting feathers usually though and I often rely on the airbrush to make them look better than I can by brush.  I plan on breaking that habbit here, even if I don’t do the NMM.

Printing continues in an attempt to use up all my resin before it goes off.  I’ve the last of my current bottle in the printer now and I don’t know if it’ll do another print.  Then its on to the soy stuff that I didn’t look at the date in time and is a few months passed already.  My FEP died for the first time so I had to learn how to replace that this week  Seem’s to have gone OK as I’ve had a successful print since snd no leaks.  I’m gonna have to take a day to build and prime all this stuff at some point so I can work out for sure what I’ve got and if its printed OK.  Pretty sure I’ve caught all the failures that matter.

I’m running low on things I really want to print, so if you have links to cool presupported STLs (I’m not comfortable doing my own supports yet on complicated things) please share them below.  I’m also tempted to pick up the Felicia and perhaps Molly STLs from Ritual Casting so if anyone has a discount code for more than 10% I’d love to hear from you. I already have Mortaya (sith version) and some of the welcome bundle busts printed and ready to go.  Red lightsaber glow scares me so guides for that are also appreciated.

I’ve had the 3d printer running for a couple of weeks now and I think I have 19 successfully printed models along with a few fails.  I won’t really know for sure if there are any more faults until I assemble and perhaps prime.  I’ve a little more of the good resin to go and then I can test the stuff thats a few months out of date.

I have only painted one model this week.  Kilgore from Super Fantasy Brawl.  I’ve made a good start on the other Greenskin from the box too.  This whole set came pre-assembled, which was a PITA here.  While I can see all of the base I had great difficulty getting a brush to all of it, especially with any degree of control.  I hate this sort of thing.  Grrrr.

The reason I’ve not got much painted is I spent a couple of days dismantling, cleaning up and disposing of my shed.  The shed seems to predate kit sheds.  it looked entirely home designed and built.  It even had a house door as its door.  it was so old the roof was corrugated asbestos/concrete mix.  I’ve yet to dispose of this.  Anyone know if there’s people you can call to just take the stuff away?  I don’t drive so I can’t get it to the correct tip.

This was a fun job.  It had an asbestos roof.  The roof was covered in ancient ivy and its thick roots.  It had electrical cabling I was only mostly sure weren’t connected to anything and I had to hose it down because of the asbestos.  The structural supports inside had rotted away.  The inside was one big cobweb and I’m afraid of spiders.  I even saw a false widow, but it didn’t appear until the last of it was down and I was just tidying up.  They’re kinda big!