Songs from the wood...

Here's something fun!  Very nice wood pieces from Markshire Studios:

http://markshirestudios.com/

As you can see, there's a wide variety of very special wood types to choose from.

I have to figure out some special things to do with these... that preserves all the wonderful textures and wood grains!

There are probably a few minis that I can just use as a base...

Perhaps I can also combine some of the tree bark and mica bases with these.  I had even thought of having a sculpted tree growing out from one of these.

To get an idea of scale and size, I put a 28mm figure in the image.

So, off to find some fun things to do with these fantastic wood pieces!

Seeing spots

I was working on a few camo patterns for late war German vehicles.  One of them was the mottled, spotty pattern.

I had loads of fun with them!

Secret Weapon washes have been very handy for shading and tinting these.

And for some comparisons next to the regular gray early war scheme.

More fun to be had!

A preview of some of the upcoming patterns...

Sallies and Skinks, oh my!

The Salamander units were another fun set of figures to paint.  As always, I loved to create a lot of color variety in my Lizardman army!

Plus, it was handy to distinguish one Salamander from another, since they had multiple wounds.  And had a tendency to munch on Skink handlers.  Especially if you were me.

I loved making the movement trays as well!

The regular movement trays for standard ranked units could only allow some fiddling around the perimeter.   Here, I could go wild!

Ready to light somebody on fire!

Gathered around a Lizardman Totem

And on green!  I thought this would be fun as well.

Oh yeah, and my scratch sculpted swarms!

I think I made about a dozen of those for one of our special scenarios.

Let's add some Skinks with blowpipes!

Pointy pointy darty darty...

And that makes five!

Finally, the last of the Castellax!

A little different set of markings this time, just for fun.

Some glowy stuff...

From above.

A peek at the Five!

More ladies

From the Wild West Exodus Wayward Eight set, we have a certain companion.

Here she is:

http://www.wildwestexodus.com/sierra-icarus-mercenary/

I am still getting used to painting the "regular" Wild West miniatures at this point.  Up until now, I had painted the equivalent of 6 or 7 vehicles. :-)

I have a set of regular Lawmen under way, and I am hoping to get those in playable condition so that we can get to some battle reports for you!

Another tank division takes shape...

So, when you have a bunch of colors sitting out there on the palette, and you know you don;t need them for what's right in front of you, you either let it dry out or grab something else!

With the partially restored work area, I had the Panzers sitting nearby.  That meant I could use up all the leftover colors for a good purpose!  Tiny tanks for Memoir '44!

While I enjoyed the desert paint scheme, I was looking forward to the standard early war gray since I knew the weathering would really show up nicely.

I had mixed greenish gray, blue/gray, even some pink in the gray, just to create that variety in shade to force some extra shape onto something so small.

It was pretty much everything I put into the Shades of Gray video. :-)

Ooh, and I just had to try these out on a backdrop with some green!

With the Foxy Desert Panzers...

One unit of late war camo pattern Panzers are on the way, so that will make for some fun group shots!

Ready for action!

Order from chaos?

I was fortunate enough this weekend to get a little assist in attempting to reinvigorate a work area that has been brutalized by way too much work, and far too many disasters.

This is about as organized as the paint jars have been over the last 8 months or so.

So, a certain purveyor of laser cut wood said they would come to the rescue!  And so, we have some nifty products from Burn In Designs.

Here's the full range:

http://www.burnindesigns.net/

Right away, I figured that I could get just about all my jars of paint into these.  I don't have all that many.  Shockingly few, in fact!  Here are some Secret Weapon washes finding a home...

Since I have ended up with a majority of the dropper style bottles now... we have this set up!

It's a "snap" to put together...yup, I went there.

Ready for paint!

Filling up fast, and emptying out the food containers at last.

Armed and dangerous!

It's amazing what this did already, and there are many more products that can solve a host of other organizing issues.  The jars of paint really stay in these very well, so it also means viability of transport too!

Ah yes, back home again.  Typical look of the workstation.  Since every day has become an exercise in madness, I have taken to the "pull and toss" method.  That is, pull a jar of paint out of the box and toss it aside so that I can get back to painting more quickly.

This leads to multiple jars of the same color piled up around me, to the point where I am actually resting my arms on the rolling jars as I paint.  Lots of them simply end up on the floor.

Yikes!  What happened?!

Those of you who have watched me paint via the blog, in person or have seen some of the videos know that I will use old jars of paint to hold miniatures that have been based or parts of figures.

Many times, I have knocked over those jars onto the palette.  Those days are now gone!  Now they will all be held in place.  Yay!

Looks just a wee bit different, doesn't it?  

So, a shout out to Burn In Designs!!!  Thanks so much!