Brushes and tools

A box workstation for painting: design process and bodging carpentry

This is an article about what I did, in the hope that some of it may be useful to you, but it's not an article meant to tell you what to do. It's meant as an encouragement for you to think logically about problem solving, and to think sensibly through a project to end up with something that serves your needs well, but has not cost you a fortune in money or time. The aim is to get the job done, and then get back to your painting and gaming. The project here is to build a box for paints and equipment, but most of its principles will be equally applicable to any other project in wood, such as gaming tables and scenery.

Throughout the article I'll use the format of picture first, followed ...

So you've decided you need to base your Fremen or your Harkonens or your modern US Marines - but need some ideas of what ...

 Since I started a Nurgle chaos army a little while back, I have come up with many ways of creating little Nurglesque details. ...

I found a way to create blood splatter effects using an empty Vallejo paint bottle. For this demostartion, I used GW's inks. ...

For those who are stuck for ways to paint their force/power weapons, here are a few examples I knocked up on PSP in a few minutes







...

Disclaimer: this is quite a specialized article and likely will only apply to a small percentage of readers - namely, those who work in a biology or chemistry laboratory. In fact, I only know a few other painters who have access to all these goodies. But I suspect many more of us work in places where handy and unique items, which can be repurposed towards our painting, are available. So the alternate title for this article is:



Now that we've established our moral basis, let's get to the useful part of the article. YOUR WORKPLACE MAY CONTAIN SMALL, SPECIALIZED ITEMS AND TOOLS WHICH COULD BE HANDY ON YOUR MINIATURE PAINTING TABLE AT HOME. Many of these items are quite valuable - small power tools and so forth. DO NOT TAKE THESE. Getting fired for actual theft will cut into your miniature buying budget and make people very unhappy with you. We want the cheap, disposable and consumable items that you can't get anywhere else, but which are thrown away every day at your job.

I work in a molecular biology laboratory. In a nutshell, we ...

This article covers how to make an adjustable painting rig to hold based figures while they are being painted. I doubt if ...

PAINT STORAGE
 



Well, if you're like me, you're a paint packrat. You have some secret blends
of your acrylic Vallejo Game Color or your nasty Citadel GW paints and you
would like to keep them to use for another miniature. Or perhaps you, like
me, just hate wasting that mixed paint. Granted, it doesn't cost that much,
but waste not, want not...So. How to store those paint mixes? How to get the
paint from those nasty Citadel hex-shaped bottles into something much more
manageable and useable, like those ultra-cool Vallejo dropper bottles? The
answer comes from science! Well, actually, it comes from some of the stuff
we scientists use in our daily work. That's right...plastics!
In this article, I'll show ...

by Harry Colquhoun, reprinted with permission of New Wave Games Inc.



 
How to Make
a Painting Rig
Have you ever been painting a
miniature only to find that your thumb has rubbed off all the paint on a
part of the mini? Or maybe, while trying to reach that small nook on the
miniature, your paint-covered hands have smeared a streak of black over
the part of the mini you just spent hours delicately blending? Or the very
worst - you are almost finished painting only to watch the ...