Round Two gets some paint!

All right... time for some paint on the Wild West Exodus bases.

A bit of gray/black primer, brushes on as usual.

Just like the last batch, I did the sky blue/black color combo.

A gradual lightening takes place...

Just like the first batch, I am working up to the shading and tinting process...

Getting there.  I am trying to add as much 'warm' highlight colors as possible, to make sure it's not too heavy towards the blue.

Nearly ready for the glazing.  I have been using the #6 filbert the whole time, by the way.

Done!

I placed a few layers of glazing on the bases.  I started with more of a blue/black glaze, but then shifted more towards a brownish yellow.  This will ensure that the rust and weathering will not be too dramatic.  This is supposed to look more like the interior of Serenity, so not quite as exposed to the elements.

That is, until you have a herd of cattle in your cargo bay!!!  Yikes.

Dealin' it at Convergence

So, life on the road, headed to Convergence on Wednesday morning.

Camp Douglass always signifies that you are beginning to get close.  Also, Black River Falls is not far away!

Black River Falls.  The Orange Moose, Perkins, and the Mouse.

Cathy in her Nightvale gear approaching the giant mouse.

Giant ugly mouse.

On arrival, it was time to haul up the stuff, nine bins at a time.  Five or six trips at least, through the hotel, up the elevator...

Halo Kitty!

Then the Great Puzzle begins.  Where the heck do you put everything?

Every design is labeled as "front row worthy" it seems, but something has to go in the back.

As it turns out, things in the back are not so horrible.  They are very close to us, which means people need to ask us to hold them up, and they don't feel so guilty about it, since it is right next to us. :-)

The game continues.  Cathy organizes them into sectors, like Dr. Who, Cuthulhu, Science, and Gaming.  This also made it easier for me, since I could gravitate towards sections where I thought I had a bit more knowledge, and could banter!

The leather folks next door.  Some very cool stuff in there!  I smelled leather all weekend long!

Another shot before lots of the dealers arrived.

Wage gets into the action!!

And Babo's Bag of Holding!!

Babo sold lots of Hoodies over the weekend.

Then there were these guys.  Cathy's shirt is in Gallifrey round text, and it's the poem from A Good Man Goes to War.  I have my Lucky Memoir '44 shirt!!

Plus, the signs that I made for my own referral, which turned out to be in just the right spot for all the customers to see!  Got very little price requests.  Yea!

A Wild time with Happy Seppuku moulds

This new set of bases using the Happy Seppuku moulds will be used for the Firefly inspired miniatures from Wild West Exodus.  You might recognize the unique shape of these round bases!

As usual, the sculpey is pressed into the moulds, and then placed on the ceramic tiles for baking.

I wanted to try out a few with more of the plastic deck plating texture as well.

Building up the base, this time sculpey on sculpey!

This one will be set up for some plastic sprue as conduit and pipes.

Having the lines set into the texture like this makes it very easy to cut out the various sections, allowing me to place them in whatever combination I need!

I am going to combine the textures from a few moulds here...

And then add a little bit of polystyrene tubing.

Sprues!!  The little brown pieces had been leaking from one of my exercise weights for a while.  I didn't realize it until they were all over the basement floor!  

So, I swept up a bunch of them and 'repurposed' them for basing!  They are all different sizes, which turned out to be very handy.

Eight bases, ready for paint!

I will show the painting of this set soon!!!

Parallelogram was next to me while I was creating these bases, and stuck his face in front of the camera...

A look back in time to see what life was like before minis!

OK folks, this is one of the best ways to describe what life was like before I ever painted miniatures.

Back in the day, I used to have my art in about 50-60 different shows a year.  Most of them were sci-fi conventions, similar to the one we are at right now, which is Convergence in Minnesota. 

I also had art in a Ren Faire, and at big art shows like Celtic Fest in Chicago.

The convention art shows work much differently.  I used to mail out my art to almost all the shows, especially since a number of them would be held on the same weekend!  Art show staffs are nice enough to hang mail in art, as it is called.

Wage is hard at work creating blog posts for you to look at as I gather the art for the art show...

Art sack.

And here we go.  The Artists control sheet.  Every art show does it, but each one does it differently!  That meant learning several dozen of this kind of form.

The process of hanging begins.  Since I was just bringing in anything that was at hand, the process was much simpler than it used to be.

Years ago, at the height of the art show business, I made color maps to show how to squeeze as much stuff as possible onto the panels.  However, you needed to know what kind of hanging system was used.

These types of panels can be less forgiving than the older style pegboards.

The clang of 'S' hooks bouncing down the panel, followed by choice words, are commonplace during set up time ;-)

My next door neighbor, good 'ole Sandra Santara!  She's been at it for at least as long as me.

Other artists were also hard at work getting their displays set up.

There has been such an explosion of 3D art in the last few years, they have resorted to hanging it on the panels.  The last time I was here in 2007, it was the opposite.  We were using the tables for 2D art!

Look!  Wage is at it again!  He works really hard.

Such is the demand for 3D space, Teresa came up with the idea of getting these nice plexiglass cases that are made to be hung from this style of panels.

They work nicely for miniatures!

The finished set up.  The Present and the Past side by side.

I mentioned mail in art previously.  I had the job of hanging and taking down mail in art at dozens of shows as a volunteer.  There were many times where I hung the art of Mark Roland.  

In fact, it was from him that I got the idea to create "panel maps", showing where to hang each piece so that they all fit.  Right down to the bid sheets (the little pieces of paper that you see hanging from the art).

Here's another portion of the art show.

I mentioned bid sheets?  Those are another art show curiosity.

Each piece in the art show gets a small sheet that has certain info, such as artist, title, medium, price, and so on.  A little like ebay in paper form.

The art buying public (hopefully) will write their names on these sheets and place bids.  A certain number of bids on a piece means that it will go to a voice auction on Saturday night.

It falls on art show managers like Charlie to get all that paperwork straightened out, and make sure that bid sheets match control sheets, etc.  All that is data entered, and thus the auction can be set up!

This takes a lot of hard work by volunteers, who get in the art show early in the morning, and don't leave until very late at night.  Nothing happens without them.  It is very similar to being a tournament organizer.  Looking at you, Marty and Alex. :-)

Kristine Mitzuk and Ruth Thomson ran a fun art show review late Thursday night.  Each artist in attendance got to stand in front of their panels and give some explanations on their art.

The two groups meandered around the room, running into each other now and then.

So, a big shout out to all the volunteers at Convergence, and to art show volunteers everywhere.  It is appreciated!