Happy New Year and Christmas loot!

It's been awhile since my last update so hopefully this large update will keep you all sweet and make up for the delay between posts.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and new year and Santa brought you all wonderful gifts and much food and beverages were consumed by you all.

In the spirit of new years resolutions, spring cleaning and all that guff I tidied up my work area ready for 2013 and also managed to nab some 'paint racks' whilst Christmas shopping:

My paint racks are in fact cutlery trays from Clas Olson, that fit my needs perfectly:
http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/Reda-Cutlery-Tray/Pr349666001

In the couple of days since taking these pictures it looks like my desk has been hit by some kind of explosive devise but generally that's a good indicator of progress.

Just before the Christmas frivolities began I managed to finish a couple of figures that have been sat half finished on my desk for awhile:

First up we have a pre-slotta citadel Dwarf farmer  that I can't seem to find catalogued anywhere. I tried to keep the colour scheme ruddy and earthy and went for a really dark skin-tone on his face which took forever as it was never quite right. The straw in his mouth is a tiny piece of off-cutting from a door mat dipped in varnish applied with tweezers and held steady until it set.

Next up we have one of the early Citadel Gnomes:

Again I went for a more ruddy red skin tone rather than a more pink human tone.

That's all for now on the Fantasy front, Next up we have a couple more of the Sci-fi mini's.
First up we have Gordal Luggub form the Rogue Trader Space Ork command Group, check out Orlygg's Slowburn Rogue Trader blog for some pics of the whole range:
http://warhammer40000roguetrader.blogspot.co.uk/

Next up we have an early necron from the Space Crusade boxset:

Lastly on the sci-fi front I finally painted up an ancient Ral Partha Battletech Centurian that was one of the first mini's that I ever owned.

He's currently serving as a battered much repaired combat robot rather than a huge hulking mech.

Now to the Christmas loot, my brother gave me a ton of his old mini's that he'd dug out of storage which is Fantastic and will keep me going long into the future, so mega cheers if you're reading this Owen!
I'm going to spread the pics over the next couple of updates as there's a ton and my blog may end up being a little pic heavy on the unpainted lead side of things and I'd like to keep it colourful and not bore you all with pics of unpainted lead.

Grenadier deep ones

TSR Sahuagin's, these came without any weapons so I'll be sorting out my own weapons.

More TSR mini's again, Thri kreen, looks like I'll be making an insect based war-band at some point in the future then.

 I also received from my sister a box of the GW Goblin Hobbit mini's which I think are awesome and could work in tons of settings, I'm internally debating whether to 'sci-fi' up half the box with guns etc and keep the rest 'Fantasy' or keep them as intended?

Also as part of the mega bundle from my brother was a whole Necromunda Cawdor gang and some Battletech Hero clix stuff that should come in handy for the Sci-fi stuff I'm putting together.

Next up on the painting table, hopefully with some better WIP shots and a Sunday update is the start of a fishman/aquatic Warband using the Christmas deep ones and Sahuagin and some other suitably fishy mini's I've dug out from the pile.

Also lastly a big welcome to my two new followers!!

A new desk and a Gnome

Sorry about the lack of updates recently it's been a busy week that included a final trip to St Ives (Cambridgeshire) and a mini pub crawl in Cambridge to some awesome pubs that also included our first celeb style spot, the true master of the Universe Professor Stephen Hawking no less. We were there to see the wife and mines best friends before they bugger off back to the north making going for a quick pint a 10 hour round trip. Good luck Phil & Jen we'll try and join you as quick as we can and Phil do the right thing and say those words that Jen can't wait to hear... FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!

Me and Ikea are on speaking terms again not friends yet but the healing process has started, they managed to deliver my new desk last week:

Here it is in all it's glory with new daylight bulb lamp and home made painting board. It's almost all there the only other thing I think it needs is a paint rack rather than the box on the left, if anyone can recommend me a UK supplier please let me know.

All my basing guff to hand in small drawers from (Staples)

All my reading materials and reference to hand and a temporary place for my scenery.

Under the desk are the to-do drawers (again Staples), which I am not permitted to add to until I've made a serious dent in what I have.

Here's the close up of the painting board, it's an old shelf with some paint pot sized holes drilled across the top for current 'in use' paints, and some nails for jamming WIP corks onto to keep them upright. I've also added a couple of nails that I can jam scrap paper on to hopefully keep the board paint and glue free.

The only other thing that my corner needs now is somewhere to display finished mini's, and with that in mind I have my eye on one of these from Ikea with the Inserts on the right, looks like it would work quite well for the displaying of mini's.

On the Painting table at the moment are a couple of old Trish Morrison Gnomes (marked in Red below) from the tragically extinct Gnome race.

I've only finished one of them at the moment, apparently an Illusionist/thief according to the advert from the 1985 Citadel Spring Journal. I wanted to go for a bright paint scheme on this guy as I've mostly been painting muted colours and lots and lots of brown which can be a little boring after awhile. I imagine this guy to be a little bit of a character in Gnome terms very flamboyant and a little eccentric.

Lastly but by no means leastly go and check out a friend and Cambridge drinking buddies Blog:
http://jennyandthemagicfeather.blogspot.co.uk/
I must warn you that there are no mini's featured anywhere on her blog, don't hold that against her though as she's still a crafting legend. If you're in need of some blog re-designing, some felt creations or other crafty type stuff give her a shout and with Christmas coming up you can't beat a hand made one-off for yourself or significant others

Here's a couple of pics of her creations and a link to more examples:

http://jennyandthemagicfeather.blogspot.co.uk/p/makes.html

SORTING OUT MY PHOTOS AND A COUPLE OF NEW PAINT JOBS

I saw somewhere that a black background on mini photographs would make them stand out more so decided to give this a shot. I'm still not 100% on the results but I think it's getting there, I can't quite capture how they look in reality (as always you can click on the image for a bigger view)

Unidentified fish guy, he's on a sold base and a little on the skinny side so I believe he might be Ral Partha, if anyone knows give me a shout. Tee base is just made up of DAS clay then highlighted up with various browns/yellows. I think he needs some drift wood or shells to make it a bit more exciting so I may have a shot with green-stuffing some sea-life

Not sure who put this out but again I think this might be a Ral Partha or Grenadier mini.

Old School Citadel Gnome from the time when Gnomes still existed in the Warhammer World, he's from the Adventurer Starter set according to the citadel collecting mini's site:

http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Again another old citadel mini, still needs his plastic shield adding but I'm holding off as I can't face doing free hand on the flat shields

 Early pre-slotta citadel Druid or Cleric (I think), my first attempt at painting none rotting human flesh, not 100% yet but I've got a ton of scantily clad barbarians to do so hopefully by the end I'll have learnt something.

 C-series citadel zombie really easy to paint as it's mostly just muscles but, I think he could do with some more variation in the reds but he'll do.

Lastly, here's some better shots of the Vilespawn that from Gribbly Miniatures (http://www.gribblyminiatures.co.uk/home.php)

I still haven't worked out how to get images to sit correctly on the page but hopefully all of the above is legible.

Some new painted Figures

Just finished off a few figures, a citadel gnome slotta fighter, a pre-slotta citadel gnome, a pre-slotta citadel Druid, and some kind of Early Goblin, I think possibly Marauder. I'm not too happy with the Druids flesh at the moment but I'm hoping that I'll get it on the next few humans that I do.

 I've also just received a few new Barbarians for my tribe along with some what I think are Foundry villagers and an old citadel begger