From the Desk: Saturday Joys

I love Saturdays where I get to paint. It's such a stress relief after a week of work. Today was pretty good for painting as well. More about the specific progress below. Here though is something very much "from the desk".

When I paint, I sometimes end up using my hand as a quick palette. I honestly tried the wet palette a few times. I somewhat liked it, but one of the big drawbacks was the desk space it takes up and thus it just hasn't found its way back into my normal arsenal. So when I need a quick "wet palette", I improvise. I lick the side of my hand and use that. Not exactly a recommended practice, but it works. Why do I do this so much? Well, it's fast, convenient, and most importantly, it's now a habit. The behavior reinforcement that keeps this habit alive is days like today where I got a good amount of painting time in and can look at my hand as a sign of accomplishment. Sort of like a battle scar from a day well earned.

Switching gears... for any of you out there that haven't already tried Citadel's new Liquid Green Stuff product: I definitely recommend trying it out. It's pretty nice for minor gap filling. I've found that applying some with a hobby knife and then using a slightly moist (trashy) brush to smooth things out. I've only used it maybe three times now, but every time I've been happy with the results.

Last up is the progress on McBain. Here you can see him sort of hovering over his mostly-completed base. I haven't fully attached him to the base so that I can finish some last details on the lower half and tidy things up. The razor wire hasn't been glued on either, and will need some painting to properly tarnish its appearance. So far though, McBain has been really entertaining to paint. So much so that I've decided to try taking him from my normal tabletop standard to competition quality. He's going to end up being one of my KublaCon entries this year I think. To that end, I'll start doing RtC posts about the rest of the work on him. For now though, I'm just capturing a quick to-do list of work that needs to be done based on what I've already noticed. Sorry for the boring list that only makes sense to me, but I figured some folks might like to see what sort of things I tackle to go from tabletop to competition.

The McBain To-Do List:

• Battle damage on armor
• Left arm cleanup (underneath, join, blending)
• Bolts
• Gun (handle highlights, metal cleanup)
• Sword (glow, smoother metals)
• Fix cigar OSL
• Static grass
• Razor wire