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Thanks to Ub3r_N3rd, I got to playing with water effects. I took overturned Reaper plastic 3" bases, dumped stuff in them and then poured water effects over it all. Top to bottom: gears and BBs; silica gel dessicant with BBs and ink; and broken bits of plastic icicle.

Not a miniature, but miniature related but still proud of it. I often run painting workshops to give new painters the basics, or share my paints with some who want to come in and work on their miniatures in groups, so I needed a paint caddy for Reaper Paints that would let 4 or 5 people share and have access to the same dropper bottles. So I designed and built this paint caddy out of foam core that will hold 360 dropper paint bottles and rotate on an attached lazy susan base. The bottles are held at about a 15 degree angle to help prevent leakage into the caps, and there is a central storage space for paint rags, larger bottles, basing materials, headgear, and the bottom of the storage space is removable for a hidden storage space for less used materials and refills. Works like a charm.

These two minis are for the February Resolutionary Challenge Bonus Challenge - Fingerpainting... From the RPChallenge thread: "Bonus Challenge: Fingerpainting! Am I completely mad? Maybe. To elaborate: paint one mini without using ANY brush, or application device, only hands. And you may not enlist the help of a smaller person to do the painting for you Hard Mode: Use your hands as your pallet as well." Since I am Mad, this seemed tailor-made for me, lol. Now, since Jack's ego can't resist an opportunity to show how terribly clever he is, Jack put some serious thought into this... First, fingerpainting is essentially crude dry-brushing, which precludes any sort of smoothly blended highlights and shadows. Thus Jack decided to go all-out in the opposite direction and try to do something with stark, well-delineated highlights and shadows. I picked these two minis, 03487: Dragonette and 14266: Selthak the Poisoner for the following two reasons: 1. I could reach every part of them with the tip of my little finger (Selthak is a three-piece figure - cloak, upper body and lower body)... 2. They both were almost entirely made of deeply engraved or sharply raised details, and thus were things I could paint reasonably well entirely by base-coating, washing and drybrushing... Selthak in particular seemed an easy one to do because I could sidestep any need for smooth transitions by creative use of lighting (moonlight for the back, firelight for the front) which would crank up the intensity of the highlights and shadows to the point where they were basically "blown out" and I wouldn't need to blend them at all. Coincidentally, this was my first serious attempt at OSL, if you can call anything involving fingerpainting "serious", lol. The basic process for the dragonette was base-coating with Clear Red, washing a ridiculous number of times with Green Liner, and then "drybrushing" with a mix of clear red and red liner, then again with clear red. and finally once more on the highest points with a mix of clear red and HD Pale Saffron - and I definitely should have gone another level or two higher since it didn't show up very well in the pics. For the assassin, he was base-coated black, then the back of his cloak and hood were "drybrushed" with Nightmare Black, followed by a mix of Ghost White with a tiny bit of Grey Liner, followed by a "controlled (ish)" wash with grey liner and some touch-ups to correct some screw-ups, and finally some of the highest highlights were picked out with straight GW. The front of his body was "drybrushed" with Muddy Brown, then with Marigold Yellow and then some highlights were picked out with HD Pale Saffron. It was at this point, after having painted them both, that I realized they were both forward-heavy as they extended out past the front of the bases I had them on, and had to add putty to their bases to extend them. The base of the assassin is Milliput and the dragonette's plastic base had part of a metal washer glued into the bottom before it was packed with greenstuff, and both rocks were sculpted over steel screw heads I glued on to add more weight. Full Disclosure: I rules-lawered this one a bit, as the fingerpainting challenge was just in reference to the painting... Side note - Just in case anyone was thinking these look too good to have been fingerpainted, they look like this because between the two of them there's about fourteen hours of work put into this challenge including drying and basing times... The Dragonette... Selthak...

Sooo. Here are some of my past daily drawings from January: January 1st. Just 'cause it was the first day. It was all in pen, so that was a little scary. The top right is a plant lamp I'd like to create one day. January 5th-8th. My Sylvari necromancer from Guild Wars 2. Pen and prismacolors. January 14th. Alan Rickman as Professor Snape. Pencil. January 18th. The first time I saw hawks in our area! Feathers are hard. Bird beaks are silly! After seeing them a few more times, I'm pretty sure it's a Cooper's - I just saw a juvenile. January 24th. Doodles! January 27th. Dita the Steampunk Witch, in honor of one of the first minis I ever got - from the PAX 2015 Bones Machine. I drew her on the 2016 PAX weekend! It also had a great quote on that page (there's one on every page): "You have a creative contribution to make. Your life, and mine, will be better if you do." - Michael Toms Make your contribution! January 29th. More video game stuff since I was still at PAX. Princess Zelda. That's January! Edited broken FB links for Imgur.

Here are a group of SDE girls that I got to paint for a client a little while back. I don't know that they need a while lot more introduction than that- so here they are. (I think Kisa's skin got a little bleached out in the photos, but I think these pics can show off what I did well enough).

My latest fix order arrived, and I was sick of painting gnolls. A very quick paint of some rats and rat swarms.

*awkwardly returns to the thread, clutching a link* Uhh. Did a thing. Hope you enjoy my art goals thread...? *rushes off to find lunch*

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.†- Andy Warhol 2015 was a really big year of emotional recovery for me. It's taken several years, but I truly felt that change last year. So with that progress in mind, I decided I wanted more. I've dedicated 2016 to learning about my favorite thing in the whole wide world - ART! I've got a lot to learn and a lot of time to get back. I'm going to make it worth my while to make time for art. I'll be using this thread as a goal marker if you would like to learn with me. These are my 2016 Goals: PAINTING I would like to have a dragon and a snowglobe done this year. I want to have a ReaperCon entry as well. Progress will be posted on the normal part of the forums. - Mini Painting - Speedy Swashbucklin' Sea Scamps, Pokemon themed ReaperCon/Spring Exchange - Non Mini Painting - Drink Coasters, SCULPTING Sculpt something! Whether it's terrain or a Parading Penguin Present Party, I want to start! - Sculpting completed - Pokemon themed Spring Exchange, wolf lying down and campfire - Sculpting in progress - Learning to sculpt thread! DRAWING I have a sketchbook that I'd like to fill up by the end of the year by drawing in it for a few minutes every day. I'd like to get better at drawing - I want to learn the fundamentals and develop my own unique blend of animated and realistic styles. I'll post my favorite drawings of the month here. The rest can be seen on my Facebook albums, which are set to public. You can add or follow me if you would like. Longest consecutive streak: 245 Days (May 1-December 31) 316/365 = 86%!! Jan: 23/31 74% Feb: 23/29 79% - I got a tooth pulled and lost a week. That could have been 100%! Mar: 15/31 48% - Lesson 1 completed! Apr: 9/30 30% - Ouch! I did a lot of lessons on those days, though. Lesson 2 completed! May: 31/31 100% - !!! Both challenges completed, and nearly finished Lesson 3. Jun: 30/30 100% - !!! I did it again! A lot of fast sketches this month. Jul: 31/31 100% - !!! 3 month streak! Cosplay and Overwatch sort of took over, though I did get some sculpting in! Aug: 31/31 100% - !!! 4 month streak! Sep: 30/30 100% - !!! 5 month streak! It was really close this month! Some days were just a few quick gesture sketches. Oct: 31/31 100% - !!! 6 month streak! Holy cow, I didn't think I was going to get so far! October has always been good to me though. Nov: 30/30 100% - !!! 7 month streak! Wow, November sucked. But it's done! Dec: 31/31 100% - !!! 8 month streak! Random Drawings: Ma'al Dragon Heads (printable ones here), ub3r's Velicia Torynn, Trading Cards: Ocean Sylvari, Pern Dragon, COSPLAY/SEWING Another art craft I've wanted to really get into! I'd like to finally complete one cosplay this year, whether that's something Morihalda would wear, ReaperCon Sophie, or something from a video game! - Harry Potter Hufflepuff dress: Done! - Harry Potter robes, movie style: Post 1, Done! - Arcanine Kigurumi in progress: Post 1, - Morihalda Silversage: Post 1, Presentable/Done-ish - Bewitching Nidalee: Post 1, Done! I hope you enjoy the journey with me!

If it helps at all, I have never read a post of yours and afterward thought "well that was a waste of my time." You're also not alone in overthinking posts. I've posted many a thing that I've later thought that I shouldn't have phrased it that way or I should have let something go or not shared it at all. But I post it anyway because I can't just live in the prison of my anxiety. At the end of the day, I am who I am and that means that sometimes I'm going to be super awkward and weird and overly aggressive and snarky and vulnerable and petty and contrary and an absolute mess - people are either going to like you or they're not, what's important is that you like yourself enough to let you be yourself. I have also been called out many times on not paying attention to conversations. This is often a product of my ADD, but a lot of times it's due to anxiety. I start thinking about how I'm going to respond or what I can contribute or sometimes I just get hung up on something funny to say and so I end up missing half of what's said. I also have trouble processing words when they're muffled by background noise like a loud A/C or passing traffic and a lot of times rather than make someone repeat something, I'm very prone to just nodding along and acting like I've heard and understood what they've told me. Unfortunately that often leads to them having asked me a question, so then I have to backtrack with a very intelligent sounding, "Wait, what?" So, yeah, I think your "incomprehensible" thoughts are more relatable than you think. Although I don't know what a comfort it is to find yourself relatable to me.

Following on the heels (or simply stepping on) the Dark Hold Goblins are the Psycho Faerie Folk. The first seen here intimidating the Locals: AND with some color: ...starting a new thread is almost as much fun as finishing an old one.

Some simple conversion and resculpt

Thank you! I'll wait to post February, since we've only a week left. Sculpting progress - I'm working on something special for the Spring Exchange! Surprises are really difficult for me, I may just 'splode from excitement haha. Ummm.... Other stuff I've done... Humm. It's so strange to post the final image of something and not see the hours and hours of the work (and the trash and the erasing...) before it.... These coasters were done over a series of several dates from November to early January - at the same ceramic shop where we met! I drew Wendy and Woodie from Don't Starve. My better half painted Woodie. I painted Wendy and the black lines on his. I wish I had painted more layers of purple! Our paint dates were the best thing ever, I hope we do it again soon. We want to make 2 more from their Shipwrecked expansion one day. Or maybe make 2 from Guild of Dungeoneering... Hmmm.... It's not from 2016, but the positive reaction I got from the Box of Goodwill about my art last summer had a huge impact on my desire to keep drawing and getting better. I didn't have any minis to donate, so I did some drawings instead. So thank you for being so incredibly nice and positive about it. I do not have scans of the girl or the 4th dragon, though. You may recognize the heads from a certain... 5-headed...entity... UH. They are HUGE. I think they are somehow bigger on screen than the coloring pages (I removed the colored cardstock background for those) I printed out for the BoG.

I found a bit of brush time, and put together a new Avenger. A couple more pics and rambling on my blog. And a bit of a pic with my Avengers thus far.

Doing the blending on the leaves & flowers takes a little time, but it is easy & enjoyable work. SO, my friend, since you like the color, I took some progress photos for you. ...coming along...slowly. This is an experimental color combo for all the Flower Folk you see in the background.

I've been trying to avoid posting too much, mostly because I'll start posting things and then realise that they're either boring, incomprehensible, or needlessly negative. Like this post. I think it falls into the incomprehensible category. Or if it didn't, maybe it does now? I tend to either think too much or too little when I talk; either I'm focused (probably over-focused) or I'm thinking about something else entirely while trying to talk to people. "Casual" conversations don't generally happen... I try, but there are few people I can relax around enough to have a truly casual chat. I have to feel like the other person understands if my attention suddenly gets caught by some random side thing and I stare off into space for a while so I can think about it for a bit. Otherwise, I force myself to stay focused on the conversation, which either works too well and I overthink things like crazy, or it fails and I get distracted by another thought but feel like I need to continue talking and end up saying things without thinking about them nearly enough. ... um... yeah. I feel like this is a random weird tangent that I should delete but I also think it illustrates the kind of thing I tend to do while talking with people, and why I tend to delete a lot of posts before actually hitting "Post". So I guess I'll leave it this time. Even though I'm pretty sure it falls into the incomprehensible category.

You look like a Muppet. If there was green in there anywhere, I'd look like ALL the Muppets, lol... (I washed the green liner off my fingers the day before I took the pics - I've put about fourteen hours of work into the two minis in the past eight days, counting drying times, pinning, basing, etc... Got about another hour left to go to finish painting one of the bases.) Wait... Was that a comment about my giant cartoon hands? lol In other news, I got a call from the temp agency today - there's a place that's going to start hiring for the season in a couple of weeks... The place that let me go at the end of the last season... As much as I hated it, I'll probably end up going back unless I can find something better...

Because Jack does nothing in a reasonable fashion when he can possibly go ridiculously overboard on it... My fingerpainting WIP... (I haven't quite painted ALL my fingers yet, lol)

when it is an option, always go with Stoic

Help! I've fallen into a 'Spend the tax return on eBay' vortex and I can't get out!

Extra +1 to canuckotter and Guindyloo. Both things y'all said were worded pretty well. I enjoy reading everyone's stories, even if there's no "point." It makes me more comfortable about my rambling too. Which I do a lot of.... *rambles* It's just... uncomfortable. It's already weird enough to make myself post something on Facebook, especially when I don't think it's very good, and then someone actually likes it. I grew up covering a lot of my art, even at school, because I didn't want trouble from anyone. So posting in 2 public places seems very pushy to me, even though I don't think of that at all when I see others do the same. Weirdly, I don't get stomach knots from posting paintings, minis, or sculpture, unless it's from excitement. Probably because I don't have any... previous associations with those art types. I dunno. I'll consider it. Maybe post not drawings first or something. Sorry if that got weird. *rambles more...*

Zombie zombie zombie; I made it out of Ray...

Welp, fingerpaintin' finished, pictures tooken, just need to post them. When I wake up. Time for bed.

So I didn't exactly sleep in yesterday, but I plan on doing so today and to make sure I do I figure I'll stay up late browsing the forums here tonight. Now why is it that when I don't have time to read the randomness thread you guys write hundreds of posts in the blink of an eye. Yet when I have the time nobody posts in this thread for over 2 hours!?! 2 hours!!! Please don't make me browse kickstarter. I can't afford that.

For those that have followed along with my "All Bones About It" blog, where I'm chronicling my effort to paint all the Bones 1 Kickstarter figures I purchased, I was happy today to have reached the 200th figure out of the 266 that I am painting from Bones 1. It feels good to hit another milestone on this adventure! It seems all down hill from here, with only 66 figures left to go. With some real determination I think I can get it done by the end of the year. Currently I'm working on the Dark Elves set, and this past week I completed Liela, Dark Elf Wizard, from that set. I did a quick table-top paint job on her, and I'm generally pleased with it except I feel her face came out rather flat, and her expression rather dull. I don't think I was thinking in terms of the added difficulty of doing a pure black face when I did hers. I'll be more prepared next time. :) ​As always C & C welcome.

You look like a Muppet.

Sympathies, Mori. My company announced a similar-sized cut last week, but the details have not been announced. I'm now in the position of just wanting to know. Good luck! Hmm...just had a door to door salesman come by. (I didn't even think they did that anymore) He wanted to give me some kind of air purifier thing for free. COOL! Except that I would have had to invite him in, and listen to him explain how wonderful it is and how it worked for an hour. If I need to listen to somebody talk for an hour, it ain't free. I've got other things I could be doing with that hour. Besides, I've got an Electronics Engineering degree, and 20+ years experience working in the field, if I can't figure it out on my own, I obviously don't need it. End result: no free pure air for me. ETA---I hope you stay safe, Guindyloo.

Still ok here. My area is under a tornado watch for the next 4 hours. I'm seeing a lot of wind gusts and a lot of lightning so I don't know if my power is going to hold up. I've lost track of how many tornadoes have touched down in the area. Everything had been West and North of me, I know there's been at least one fatality at a trailer park. (Is there science behind why tornadoes hit trailer parks?) There are apparently also people missing there and tons of damage. The mother of my godchildren texted to let me know that they're ok, but a tornado touched down on their street. She said there was "some damage" but she didn't expand on that. The news has talked about her area being really damaged in some places, but they haven't shown footage. Scary stuff.

Here's my entry for this years huge reaper minis competition. We've already gotten to use him in our campaign with my little one (the mouslings mostly fought him from the inside after they got swallowed). I decided to go with a strong light and dark composition for him- I honestly think he matches the Iron Kingdoms dragons pretty well. If he had a head plate over his eyes, he'd fit right in with everblight warbeasts (except that he's a whole lot bigger).

For my birthday everyone needs to paint a green-and-white skeleton or lich, and freehand the design on the face... It was in mostly grammatically correct English and complete sentences and contained no emojis, memes or lolcats, which means it's more comprehensible than about 99% of the things posted on the internet. 1. Whoohoo! Chick fight! Somebody get the kiddie pool full of Jello and I'll start selling tickets! 2. More than one piece of me in there, lol. Fortunately they were pieces I didn't really need (I have eight more fingers.). Yay, you're officially a person now! Why am I procrastinating on posting the fingerpainting thread, when I spent nearly fourteen hours working on them for the sole purpose of showing them off so everyone could be suitable impressed and tell me how cool I am? Oh, right - it involves actual work, that's why...

Phlegmatic is entirely more fun though. Stoic's a decent word and all, but "phlegmatic" combines my love of insane English spelling with my love of ludicrous Medieval non-science and throws in just a touch of "ew" just for fun. What's not to love? And yes, as much as my life would have been worlds easier (and at times, much more tolerable) without those occasional forays off the rails, I do think overall my life has been much more interesting this way. I've gone down some rabbit holes that I otherwise wouldn't have, and found some wonderful friends as a result. (Also: THIS PAD THAI IS SO GOOD NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM. Sorry. Not trying to rub it in, just... SO GOOD.) Like, say, October 20th, 2016? (Or possibly even the night before!) Quick, go check out this link, it should help you escape eBay before you spend your whole tax return!

Medical Humorism was based on a medieval theory that diseases were a result of the four humors being out of balance. So a sanguine person had too much blood, a phlegmatic person too much phlegm (apparently not much related to what we now cough up when ill), a choleric person too much yellow bile, and a melancholic person too much black bile. Stoicism is Greek and a part of an entirely different belief system. Not that they didn't overlap. If you're looking for consistency in Medieval parascience, you're a bit early. Edit: Humorism seems to originally have been Greek as well. So ignore that part.

You two crack me up. I hope to meet many of y'all at RCon one day. As for my art thread... I'm creating it right now. It's quite a rambling post, are you surprised? Maybe my title should have been the Vibrant Rambler. If I say "ramble" too much, "rabble rabble rabble!" comes to mind. Right, the art thread. I'm using the first post as a "2016 Goals" post to keep me grounded. Because then when I post my work, I feel like I'm showing accountability for completing my goals, instead of awkwardly posting... stuff...

Everything you draw is beautiful whether it's perfect or not. I will fight you if you say otherwise. As one who sees and likes your art on facebook, I would very happily see it again here, especially since that would mean that I would get to see it larger since I only ever use facebook on my phone. I know where you're coming from though. I used to write poetry in high school and in my early 20's. I was severely depressed and it was a good outlet for me, but I was extremely embarrassed and guarded about it. (Still a little embarrassed about it tbh) I didn't want anyone else to read it or know that I was writing it. I was pouring my heart and soul out onto paper and it was too scary to think of someone rejecting something so personal. I feel the same way now with painting sometimes. Painting is therapy and a little piece of me goes into every mini that I paint, so it can be hard to share that. But it's also what I appreciate most about all of you sharing your art with everyone here. It's immensely meaningful to me. Like I don't think that I can properly express how much Jack's gift of Little Guindyloo Who meant to me, knowing the kind of time and care and piece of him that he put into that and to have specifically done that for me. That's also what I think is so beautiful about the mini exchanges. So I'd love to see you post your art all over the place, but I also understand why it's hard for you.

Almost going home now. Tired, I wish I had more energy at the end of the day. I would love to paint, build and do some other stuff. But I will probably walk the dog, eat dinner and sit on the couch, watching the TV shows my girls want to see, and wonder why I won't get up to do something else..

Didn't really feel like posting or arting yesterday... stomach was still all knotted up from the meeting. I did my daily drawing anyways, though. Going to distract myself today by getting a lot more progress on my art book - it's something I started a few years ago before I got serious about really getting back to art, and now that I'm definitely not paying for an art class anytime soon, it's time to get back to it! It's going to be separated into 2 main parts - one for inspiration (text and visual) and one set up as a learning curriculum. I've got several artist's pages saved for both, lots of outlined body proportions and concept art from each of their unique styles. I'd love to support my favorite artists one day with a print from each. I'd have the best inspiration wall.

On it! And coincidentally, I just saw this episode last night.

I'm here! I'm helping! This is helping right? I forgot to make coffee this morning, so I stopped at DD. Drank it all on the way into work. I usually don't drink much coffee in the car. But it's raining, so traffic was moving at a snail's pace. I've got a tech training this morning for Excel 2016. Gets me out of the office at least...

Ub3r's been busy, apparently.

I kinda know how you feel. I'm going to have Schrodinger Reapercon plans until a couple months before, at the latest. The good news is that Mr. Boot has actually brought it up a couple of times and asked if I'm going again this year, so he's cool with it. I told him I'm not planning on it, but hoping I can, if that makes sense! Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

The diseases are from all the smurfing they do. Why is there only 1 female smurf, and does anyone remember how it came to be so? Smurfs are brought by storks, according to the TV show. Smurfette was originally created by Gargamel as bait to catch real smurfs, but she underwent a face heel turn and joined them instead, which always made me wonder why in hell, if Smurfette is a real smurf, he did not simply create more, since he's so hot to get his hands on Smurfs for some reason. I particularly enjoyed the Twisted Toyfare Theatre fumetti in which we find out why: he eats one, and it sends him on an acid trip not to be believed....

For an IKRPG campaign (that I'm finally starting next weekend -- yay!) I have a few "Farrow" minis (from Hordes/Minions) who are basically boarmen, and fit a nice niche as creatures that COULD be intelligent, or COULD just be very monstrous, and, what's more, there's considerable variety in terms of what sizes the things come in. I've got a boxed set of "Rorsh & Brine" that consists of a relatively civilized-looking smaller Farrow (Rorsh) with a flintlock, and a huge savage warbeast Farrow (Brine) who's all about "ME SMASH!" I used some Instant Mold to make a crude temporary mold of one of Brine's spiky shoulder pauldrons (included in the set as a separate pieces that nicely hide the attaching points of the arms). I used a bit of putty to give Gnort a loincloth and to add on a shoulder-guard to make Gnort a little less "nekkid." (Not that I'd imagine the Farrow would mind that much, but none of the Warmachine/IKRPG depictions of Farrows has them running about in the buff, so I figure this'd make it fit in a little better and look a little less like "Look! The cheapskate GM is using PROXIES! (gasp!)") Oh, and the base was a very carefully textured bit of putty that ... uh ... got totally obliterated when I tried putting just a little bit of flocking on it here and there. Blargh! In the background are two Mage Knight "wereboar" minis. (I've actually found quite a few old Mage Knight minis are surprisingly usable for Warmachine/IKRPG -- especially some of the clunkier "steam golem" type models.) The original wereboars were bipedal but with hoof-hands. I had a baggy of spare parts left over from someone's "Ogre Kingdoms" box set from Warhammer Fantasy, and the wrists were just the right size that I could chop off the hooves, do some pinning, and add on weapon hands from the ogres. Their shoulder guards are optional belly guards from the same bitz collection. Since Mage Knight minis are already painted, the only "painting" there was basically just to try to get the transplanted hands to blend in, plus a little bit of detail work (and now that I've taken a close-up picture, I can see a lot MORE areas that could use touch-up).

I wanted to have an Illithid for gaming and got me D'Khul. To create a "fishy" look on his skin, I painted it in pale violet metallics, shaded blueish and highlighted towards silver, then applied matt varnish. I was quite happy with the result and got a bit carried away when also doing the staff in metallics and the hood and hem with violet-green iridescent pigments. The photo is not so brilliant, one will have to imagine it shimmering under different light directions. What do you think of the basic idea? Should illithids look like that or should they rather come with a dark-and-simple scheme?

ub3r, come baaaaaackkk!!! There's enabling to be done and I appear to just not be up to the task! (Pad thai is now done. Time for adulting. See y'all on the flip side!)

You know in some time zones it's already an hour later... Walks up to Commander, I got the right to be treated like those in another timezone.. Finds out that there are also timezones where it is an hour earlier... Hobbying is the best way to feel good again after such events. Show off some of your work ?

Sleep happened and our resident spider of cuteness has not been around much. *releases plump buzzies as a call beacon*

It's the curse of competence... If you work fast and do it well, people will always come to you first to get things done, or send you to finish things that other people have started. For me personally, I always get stuck with managers at my various jobs assuming that because I tend to be competent at the basic tasks they set me I'm competent at everything, and often get stuck doing things that aren't my job, that I haven't been trained for, and sometimes that are even far above my pay grade...

I had a visit by the 'Paint Brush Faerie' today, she dropped off 2 W&N Series 7 Miniature size 2, and a size 1. Wasn't aware of the difference between 'Miniature' and 'Regular' when I ordered them, but for $30, I'm not going to complain.... Comparison shot to show the differences: The size 2 Miniature at the top, My size 0 'Regular' in the middle, The size 1 Miniature at the bottom. George Edit---> I held the size 2 next to my ear and 'flipped' the hairs, and I really could hear the 'Snap'.... Thought that was folk lore.... I learned...

Thinking of staff cuts... I started at Blackberry on a Monday... That Friday, it was announced that they were laying off a third of the staff. I actually lasted 9 months before they axed most of my team. But I lucked into a really great place afterwards, so... yay! I hope things continue to be OK there Guindy! No trips to Oz, OK?

I painted her! I love her so much!! I've never bought her for one reason or another, but when she came in my secret sophie package, I knew I had to paint her right then. I totally, unashamedly copied Anne's color scheme because it was perfect. C&c always welcome, whatcha think?!

I have found this guide very helpful when painting gems. Its meant for 2d artists, but it translates well enough. Unfortunately, I do not remember where it came from other than 'the internet'.