Murphy's Law Mondays

Usually Mondays are Miniature Mondays. However, this Monday is a Murphy's Law Monday. My phone crashed this morning and has to be restored later. I lost a good amount of my work-in-progress Speed Paint Challenge photos for this post-- boo! I'll be posting finished pictures later today, though I do have these photos from 1 hour in:

This weekend we had some furry new friends follow us home from a morning walk. Sunday, my day for painting, was hijacked by these two cute (and destructive) surprise guests:

Since the weather's been so bad and we can't let them inside, we ran to Lowe's to buy a tarp and made a temporary rain fort with bungee cords and ground anchors. Each time I sat down to paint, I'd heard thumping or banging and would have to break up a tug o war with a shoe or digging or rolling in the mud... the list goes on! 

Shoe! Yum! (Notice the abandoned tennis ball sitting right next to the black pup)

Since these two stray buddies didn't have collars, I'm doing everything I can to try & find their owners while keeping them safe & dry in the meantime. Another storm's blowing in today and I hope their fort holds up! Our backyard is now an undeniable mud pit. Yikes! More miniature Speed Paint Challenge pictures to come this evening... 

[updated] a crazy storm blew in and it was all we could do to keep the pups safe & dry. The lil black pup chewed through our internet cables and air conditioning unit. Rough 48 hours. On Tuesday before dawn we're taking them to get scanned for microchips. I'm dipping into my miniature savings money to have them examined so we can find a rescue who will take them. Speaking of miniatures: here are front & back final shots of our Speed Paint Challenge dwarf, inspired in part by our friend's quirky character from our D&D Halloween-themed adventure! He took about 2.5 hours and I had a fun time painting his funky purple beard. I think I'll name him "Murphy".

Dreaming of Desks

Two nights ago I had a dream where I took the time to prepare a proper painting space. I even had a "consultant" come in (cue @MonkeySloth) who told me what pieces of furniture to buy and how to arrange them. (I later told him about it and he sent me a picture of his own active workspace-- I'm not alone in my creative mess!) Yesterday I started to re-evaluate my painting set-up and wondered if I could make it better. 

Lately, I've been gravitating toward a table surrounded by windows since I prefer to paint in natural light. While I often paint at night after work under a lamp, I enjoy painting on the weekends for long periods of time in the middle of the day. I've also accumulated enough mini stuff and loose paints where I've taken over the dining table. Now, it's not much of a table-- it's an unfinished pine 3x4' IKEA desk I bought for $70 four years ago that matches the previous Chair of Shame. Still, I shouldn't make a habit of spending every meal sitting on the floor at the coffee table. 

In another room I have this this cute shelf/desk combo (see below) which was a gift from my MIL-- a four-drawer unit with wings that prop up on either sides and I can park my chair under one side or the other. However, I've found that my immediate painting set-up has outgrown the side panel. I think I need to move it away from the only tiny window in the room and consider some wall shelving. 

Here's a wall in our sparse second bedroom occupied only by an outdoor bench with laundry-yet-to-be-folded, a dress form wearing a Florentine flag, and a framed picture of a young Bob Dylan. It's embarrassing:

Now just think, with the proper lighting, a good portion of this wall could be dedicated to painting & storage. There's only one problem: I can't have my back to the door.

It sounds ridiculous, but I just can't compromise when it comes to having my back to the door. I absolutely can't stand it. It gives me the creeps and I'm always glancing over my shoulder at every little noise. I'm an easily startled person and there's nothing more detrimental to my in-the-zone focus than having the dog suddenly bump into my chair-- I scream bloody murder and my mini goes flying through the air in slow motion. (Trust me, it's happened. Twice.) So really, it's less of a quirky preference and more of a conscious decision to spare the sanity of myself and everyone else on the block. 

That being said, I'll need to get creative and maybe incorporate a little basic Feng Shui. While I'm not going to hang crystals from my ceiling, buy a small waterfall, or park large live plants next to my desk (besides, the cat would just pee in them), I want to find solutions for:

1. Unpainted mini storage 
2. Safe display area for completed minis
3. Organization of supplies (paint, brushes, etc)

This weekend I plan on wandering around my local home improvement store and doing my research on cost-effective ways to improve my current set-up. I'll share my findings with you on Monday!

Halloween Town

Happy Miniature Monday! Today marks the start of another speed paint challenge. This time, it's Dain Deepaxe (Reaper Bones #77074) suggested by @EpicBlueMouse. I'll catalog my process here on my blog and post on Twitter with the rest of the participants one week from now. It's always fun to see the different results we've all come up with! All able & willing participants are welcome to enter-- all you need is this mini, 7 paints, and 4 hours-or-less.

I gave him a fun background in this picture because I have some interesting ideas for his paint color scheme, inspired by our most recent Pumpkin-Ale & Halloween-Themed Game Night. This past weekend, we played D&D 5th edition for the first time. I bought the Player's Handbook while traveling last week and came home only to scour through the pages to build a character for Saturday's game. Our group brought it. We had 5 players total-- one on Skype, which was surprisingly reliable throughout the game. We met at 4pm to build characters and get settled, since we had to recalibrate our brains after playing 4th edition for so long. By 6pm, we had all more-or-less figured our characters out. We jumped into the two-part Halloween-themed story our DM had created and recorded audio throughout the whole thing. Absolutely hilarious! I may post the audio file to my blog when we get closer to Halloween and hopefully find time to meet & play through the 2nd part of the story.

One of our friends created a dwarf character named "Throzen Stoneheart" who went by "Stockwood" and vehemently believed he was a fairy. To give you a bit of a visual image, Stockwood was described as wearing a turtle shell bikini, a tutu, and had giant dragonfly wings glued to a turtle shell strapped to his back. While most people assumed he was in costume, the bearded Stockwood firmly believed he was destined to be King of the Fairies, which made for some absolutely hilarious dialogue. After this next Speed Paint Challenge mini had been decided, I knew I had to incorporate Stockwood's spirit into the paint choices. I'm not exactly sure how I'll incorporate my inspiration, but I have a week to figure it out!

Other than Saturday's Game Night, I slept in after spending a solid week on the road. While Sunday was supposed to be my first true day off from work in two weeks, I ended up needing to work a half day anyway in order to meet some crunch timelines. After dinner, I sat down to paint and chose a mini that had been sitting on the shelf for about two years. I've taken the liberty to rename him "Alucard" (Hint: for those who haven't seen/played Hellsing or Castlevania, try reading it backwards). 

Gabriel Darkblood - Reaper #02985

http://demarcs.deviantart.com

Since I'm on the "Hey, it's October!" Halloween kick, I want to paint him in a unique way, inspired by Castlevania's Alucard. I did some searching and found a few interesting images, and finally settled on one from demarcs' Deviant Art site. As I find inspiration in this image, I'll start painting in the middle of the miniature rather than starting with face, eyes, and hair like I usually do. It's a challenge, and I haven't made it very far, but I'm lining & mapping out different shapes and getting an idea for which sections will have the silver & gold trim. The inside of his cloak will be fun to paint. Maybe I'll even try my hand at painting some freehand patterns... maybe.