pae

Hey Primeval--good to see you painting again. If it's been a while, it takes some time for the rust to work its way out.

Yeah, definitely paint eyes, and don't use a toothpick to do them. You just need a brush with a very fine point, and enough bristles to hold the paint and keep it wet. Using unthinned paint will give you lumpy results quickly, and that's the last thing you want with eyes.

Those are awesome first and second minis. Keep at it, and have fun.

Another bonus of using a wet palette for the lazy (like me). No need to clean the palette. Just toss the sheet of parchment and put down a new one.

I don't think I've ever run out of a colour of any paint. Then again, I don't paint as much as some people do.

Most recently, I taught classes on blending and NMM at GenghisCon. I've also taught skintones, glazing, and some basic basing in the past. Maybe even some other things. I've been at it a while.

I have bits of wire (and corresponding drill bits) of quite a few sizes. I think the smallest I've used is somewhere around a 28 gauge.

Does this mean I need to be a fast writer if I want to take notes? Got you down for the Friday 2PM slot...go easy on me. Good luck trying to write as fast as John talks.

That's just about perfect for me as a solo driver. My wife is the only person who I'm ok with being in a car with for more than oh, about 15 minutes. Driving long distance I'd much rather do solo than with anyone else. My longest single-day solo drive was from Helena Montana to Colorado Springs. That's something like 850 miles.

re assembling before or after painting. It depends. If I don't think I can get to part of the figure if it's put together, I'll assemble later (on a piece by piece basis). If I think I'll be breaking stuff off while painting it, I'll assemble later. Otherwise, the whole thing goes together at the beginning. As for pinning, if I can get a drill bit small enough, it gets pinned. Some things are really difficult due to depth, but even a tiny divot with give the glue more surface area to stick to.

Reaper brush-on sealer can be cleaned (and thinned) with water.

I don't know that the folks from Hangar18 will be attending ReaperCon, but they may be providing some support.

My blending technique involves a little bit of wet blending, as well as quite a bit of palette mixing. Our climate is too dry for a whole lot of wet blending work.

In addition to Wren's suggestion of using brush-on sealer, you could use some brush-on gloss varnish. Or, you can take some milluput and thin it with water, and then brush that on (use a really old, crappy brush for this).

I love the Scale75 paints. They might be thicker than what you are used to, but they thin very well. I've been using the NMM set for a while now, and they do very nicely. A couple of examples of the results I've gotten from them: Steel and Gold: Azure Steel: Keep in mind that I've been painting NMM for close to 10 years now, and have been teaching it at various conventions for several years.