A New Lair (phase 1)

There has been tension in the Walker household, as the compact previous incarnation of the lair seen here:

...has started to outgrow it's limited confines and spread further into our living room (see previous post on new photo set up).  As useful as the "Painting Station of Doom" has been it just wasn't enough room to work properly, and the bench wasn't a comfortable seat.

So agreement has been reached and one of the spare bedrooms in our house will become the new lair!  It will still double as a guest bedroom as there will be a rather comfortable IKEA sofa bed (the same model as seen recently at Tentakel Games) staying, but the majority of the room will be turned over to the dark arts.

Like all diabolical schemes, it will be multi-phase and phase 1 has been achieved:

Some notes on the pictures:

1. A blind will be going up at the window, to save premature blindness
2. The ironing board is going...
3. In the bottom of the second picture, note the black and white furry demon, Hex, bane of anything small enough to bat off a table (and he tries to drink my brush washing water too...).  

So phase 1 is complete, including the TV in the corner, which means I can keep up to date with news and the football, or watch QI and Mock the Week while painting.  Mrs Walker is happier that all my stuff is out of the living room and we don't have to worry about the cats (oh yes, we have more than one) knocking things over.

Phase 2 is planned and a week away from commencement.  You may have noted the bizarre gothic style fire place.  To fit the ridiculously large mantelpiece (origin and construction unknown, no STC found, possibly xenos...I've still yet to work out how the damn thing is attached to the wall), a previous owner of the property used plaster board to extend the width of the chimney breast - and yes dear reader, those words in your head match the ones in mine when I discovered this.

The picture below helps show the extent of the insanity:

 

By process of knocking on the wall and seeing where the hollow sounds stop and the solid sounds begin, I've found the extension of the chimney breast begins at roughly the centre of the mantelpiece support column.  So Phase 2a will be somewhat destructive, removing the hollow bits, and stripping the wallpaper (the woodchip variety, scourge of DIY).  Phase 2b will then be the painting of the room using a lovely shade of white to maximise the light in the room.  Phase 2a and 2b are planned for next week which I'm taking off from work.

Picture courtesy of Ikea.co.uk

Phase 2c will involve adding this splendid piece of furniture in the corner and I'll probably be getting a new chair too. Hurrah!

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Festivaled-out...

The wife and I attended WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) again this year, saw some fantastic acts, particularly Ayarkhaan, AnDa Union (Music to paint miniatures by I reckon), Lau and Booker T Jones (legend!) and ate some fantastic food.  I'm now knackered and looking forward to a quiet weekend.  Unsurprisingly no painting got done (living out of a tent would make it difficult), but some of the costumes were good painting inspiration!

A little progress has been made on the Rackham miniature I started a while back - the face needs some work, but I'm very pleased with the leather around his midriff, and a really simple scheme too:

• Base coat:  Calthan Brown
• Shade:  Devlan Mud (surprised?)
• First highlight: Calthan Brown
• Second highlight: Snakebite Leather blended in

The buckles were outlined with a targeted wash of Devlan Mud and then highlighted with Chainmail. The blue was also something different, with a base coat of several thinned coats of Necron Abyss highlighted with a mix of Necron Abyss and increasing amounts of Hormagaunt Purple added in.

I'll be adding to him in and around my other projects - but he's such a delicate and interesting model that he really needs some dedicated time and effort spent on him.  So don't expect him finished any time soon!  I went for a grey undercoat for this model as I wanted to experiment with some different methods for different colours - I really think the leather work has benefited from a different approach.  I'll admit I get very stuck in my ways and tend not to experiment too much with colours - this is going to change from now on, so while I will go back to some colour schemes I know work, I will be branching out a bit more.

In other news, the article work is ongoing - the photography element really does slow things up from a painting perspective, but it does mean I'm concentrating that much harder on getting things to look right at very close up.  The Reaper miniatures from the last post will be undercoated tomorrow (hopefully), and should be started (and maybe completed?) this weekend.

The football season starts this Saturday, so I'll have something else to distract me!