Sat Oct 28 08:08:47 EDT 2017 Slept from midnight to seven. Woke briefly around four. High of forty-six and partly sunny today. Goals: - Go web stuff Not much. - Laundry Done. - Prime miniatures Done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43WBYCcrsyc WARHAMMER - How to Paint Citadel Miniatures (DVDRip) I should have watched this before I assembled and primed all the miniatures. - Buy a small flush cutter, like the Hakko CHP-170 or Xuron 170-ii. - Plastic glue gives a stronger bond than super glue. It's also slightly less quick setting and more rubbery, giving time to make fine adjustments to bonds (e.g., aligning arms with guns, etc.). - Is there any advantage of the "mold line remover tool" over the back edge of a hobby knife? - Use Emory boards to polish away cut marks. - Rubber gloves are handy when spray priming. - A square or flat "painting stick" acts as a handle for painting one or more miniatures. Use double-sided tape to affix minis to the stick. - Use a pallet to minimize dipping directly in paint jars, and to wipe excess paint from the brush. - Citadel "base paints" have a high concentration of pigment for covering the primer opaquely. - Add _a little_ water when working with base paints to help flow. - Don't forget that we can choose to _not_ paint some areas with the primary base color (but don't worry about being too neat/fiddly). - Paint the eyes last. - Citadel "shade" paints are used as washes to flow into recessed/shadow areas. - We probably don't need to use as much shade as we might initially think. A little goes a long way. - Allow the shade at least thirty minutes to dry before painting over it. - A light-hued wash over a white base coat "glows" enough that further highlights may be unnecessary. - Citadel "dry compound" is made for dry-brushing raised areas/highlights. - Remember to dry-brush before doing any final spot/detail work. - Citadel "layer" paints are for highlight areas, to be painted over base areas. - Don't paint layer paint into recessed areas. Use a light, conservative hand and don't overload the brush with paint. - A second layer of lighter-hued is where the effect really shines. - With layer paints, don't cover the entire under-area. Paint smaller and smaller raised regions. - Glazes are translucent. They're inks that alter/intensify the original hue over which they wash. - Control glazes carefully. Don't overload the brush. Two thin layers are better than one messy, thick one. - Glazes can be used to tone-down highlights. - Citadel "texture paint" has actual grit. Use it on bases. Let it dry for an hour. I guess layer paints and dry-brushed highlights are an either/or thing? Probably, one or the other technique looks better for certain areas. Layered highlight are certainly more time-consuming. I'm not entirely convinced layering provides much of an advantage over dry-brushing in most circumstances, considering the time involved. Tidied up apartment a little. Twenty-minute walk in the late afternoon. It turned into a cold, gray day. Lots of leaves on the ground, smelling pleasantly damp and earthy. A quarter of the trees have lost all their leaves, while another quarter are still mostly green. Saw a crow. My home workstation will be five years old in a month. The i7-3770K with 32G RAM has served me well. The only upgrade I've made is moving from spinning disk to SSD. I don't feel any urgent performance need to upgrade, although I wouldn't mind a more energy-efficient CPU. Lunch: coffee, carrots, spinach, chicken pot pie Dinner: pizza