My Hobby and Blog in January 2016

New brushes in their own containers!

For the month of January, I worked on the 10 Chaos Archers from Battle Masters box set and 2 Pathfinder miniatures--Alain and Oriana--from Reaper. The latter are gifts for my nephew and niece and are not part of my collection. Comparing these figures to the Chaos Archers there is quite a dramatic size difference. This is not just due to them being made from different companies, but appears to be a general trend of miniatures at the 25-28 mm scale getting larger. I am not so worried about the size discrepancy since normally there is a range of different heights between people. As I worked on these miniatures, I went out and expanded the tools and materials I used.

As painting is something I planned to be doing for many decades, I might as well get some quality brushes. My older brushes have served me well, completing 60 miniatures. Most of them don't have a fine tip anymore! The old brushes have been retired from detailed work and I am currently using Royal & Langnickel ZEN (round 0, spotter 3/0 and 10/0, and liner 20/0 and 10/0) for the Reaper miniatures. They are much better than my old brushes (I don't know what company made them), and only time will tell on how long they will last. Since many people have recommended the Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes, I have indulged and purchase both Round (1) and Miniature Brushes (1, 0, 00, 000) for future use.

Wet palette made from various items

Besides getting better paintbrushes, I learned about wet palettes. This is a wonderful addition to my hobby tool kit, preventing paint from drying up immensely compared to putting paint on a regular plastic palette. A homemade wet palette can be cheaply made with parchment paper, foam sponge, paper towel, water, and a plastic container,

Finally, I added Happy Seppuku Texture Stamps into my repertoire of hobby tools. I had bought some of these textured stamps earlier, but I used them for the first time this month on the Reaper Miniatures. I really like their application and decided to purchase more texture stamps for a greater variety of base designs and possibly future terrain/scenery projects.