During the end of the month I got a few cool things done, including a fun visit to manchester to visit my buddy. Outside of that I worked on one really huge commission (literally) and some other little bits that I'll make a post about later this week. 

This commissions was insane! I have never painted something this big but I truly hope more people want this kind of work done.
​I will be up front by mentioning that there was some "issues" with this commission, which was niether the clients or my own mistakes. Basically this is a 3d printed model, and 3d designed. I'm sure it works well in principle but this model lacks the fine tuned and tested feel of most 3d stuff. I highly doubt that the designer did multiple test passes (being that it's so large, I probably wouldn't either) so the model took many hours to assemble. The predicted work time for assembly was about two hours, the final number was nearer to six. This includes lots of pinning, sanding and readjusting and as such the model is "functional" but hardly the absolute best way to display a controller. 

The model is about 35cm tall and it is a bulky and fairly hefty print. The printer also failed to fully clean the model out, which means it began to leak resin during multiple stages of the paint job, this meant stripping the paint, patiently heating the model so that it expelled the resin and then re priming and painting. Finally, the feet and base where just simply not designed to fit together. I tried so many different ways but there was simply no way to get the feet to fit on the base, it just wasn't happening so in the end I sawed off one of the eggs and did a bunch of re-shaping, then finally re-inserted it. Every time I got the feet to fit there would be a 2cm gap between the legs and hips, and the tail was very specifically alligned too, so it was a "three things don't fit, all at once" issue. Very infuriating. It looks alright in the final thing, you can barely notice but I'm honestly shocked at how bad the fit was, it was a real fustration and added hours of troubleshooting, cleaning and assembly to an otherwise fairly simple order. There simply was no way to "glue that bit and come back later", sadly the way it's made means the feet, tail and legs kind of all need to be glues together at the exact same time, which is a terrible way of designing a model. I managed to make it work but I'd be lying if I said I didn't ruin a jacket this week with super glue and epoxy...grrrrrr!

I think for commissions like this in the future I will begin to re-introduce the "quote difference fee" like I used to with big orders. Often I told clients that since I couldn't see the actual commission in front of me that sometimes the quote is 15% too high or low, so I would adjust accordingly. Most of the time it actually ended up saving them money as I would finish faster than expected. The issue with the gaps in the legs, mis-matched feet to base ratio and the excessive "filling" this model required I simply couldn't stay within the time frame no matter how hard I tried. Regardless I finished on target and in time. I used a basic paint scheme to stay within the clients budget and the overall budget / quote increase wasn't that bad for the client, and we will work out a month delay payment plan or something. That's what commissions are all about, working with real people and having real conversations. 

May has been fun and fairly quiet. I've been working on projects in other aspects of life but I did manage to get a little painting done. Sadly due to my terible internet connection I'm having a real hard time uploading stuff but I'll try to continue with these bigger photo updates when possible. 

The big news in may is painting related but a different type of painting. I recently enterred a canvas piece inspired by the lord of the rings into a local gallery (a few streets from my house) and even though the exhibition ends today...the piece sold on friday! I'm overjoyed. I love painting miniatures but as it is such a niche and I kind of "know" that I'm able to paint in other ways, It's just nice to have the artistic validation and confirmation. I'm so chuffed and I will be painting more canvas soon! If anyone wants a canvas commission I'd love to talk about it. 

I've been looking for somewhere to run a painting class for beginners and I've been looking for somewhere to host it. The gallery has offered to put me up for a bit and I am excited to say I'm working on the lesson plans including which types of miniatures to bring along and what we will learn. It's such a cool idea and I'm really looking forward to this. 

This is the W.I.P poster, I need a better photograph and I've blanked out the QR code for the landing page. I will be finalising this in the next few weeks. The tabletop gaming hobby is really on the rise but this does mean that a lot more people are finding their "steam" again and are painting for themselves. Covid kind of "killed" this business a bit, I barely get any work any more, so I have decided that this could be a cool pivot and I can use the skills I've developed over the years, plus I can endulge in sharing my "stress free" painting style that I try to encorperate into all of my work. 

I recently finished the 40K ruins I had on the board, they were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed using the thick and contrast heavy green stuff world paints to get the little details to pop. 

I've been finding a little time here and there to paint the Dungeons and Lasers models. I was pretty excited to paint this Hobo with a backpack (or trader) and the lady washing her clothes in the river. Sadly I find the custom bases a little limiting and I wanted a clean beach so I carved off the fish on her base as I doubt she'd be stopping to do some serious clenaing in the middle of a washing session.