Start Now
It will soon be new years and I know what your thinking… You have a New Year’s Resolution
FUCK THAT
Start NOW!
For long-time readers, you know I almost never use vulgarity but at this time, it is necessary to shake off this ridiculous idea of ‘the right time’. There is no right time, is it the right time to start a business during covid? No. Is it the right time to start a cross-cultural international romance during covid? HELL NO! You do things because they are worth it.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt.
There is a nexus of things deep within your soul… I call it…
The Well of Broken Dreams
Here is how mine looks
I have a whole Role Playing Game ready to go… I just need… well things to be done outside of my control and to be frank… it cost money and time and well…
Now lives in that well of lost dreams.
I plan to change that, I AM changing that, It’s not the only thing I am changing though… but you know what I didn’t do?
Wait!
Wait for that perfect moment that perfect time when everything will line up just right. Because…
There is no right time, when is the right time to start a commission painter business the niche-est of niche? When is the right time to try and make a customised box product when people are starting to do foam boxes made in China? No, they got it down pat. When is the right time start a family?
There is no right time
Last week I talked about ‘Why I am so focused on Works in Progress’, my wife an I have been working on making 180 city tiles from dungeons and lazers city tile set… We made time to do, just like you have to make time for your project.
There is a 22 photo and one video story post behind this single picture. My wife gave it her all and we did something really fantastic together. It’s not the end… but we aren’t that far off.
180 tiles
Primed black
Pavement sprayed grey
Cobblestone sprayed brown while using cards to protect the grey
Cobblestone painted 5 different colours for each tile to give variation and colour
Cobblestone Drybrushed
Pavement Drybrushed
All of it, washed and then wiped down to remove the excess wash
All of it, washed AGAIN and then wiped down to remove the excess wash (Drybrushed some parts AGAIN!)
Place down tufts of grass and flowers in between the cracks and stones
Apply pigment powder
DO IT 180 times
Here is our entire box kit in all it's glory, there's still a woollies bag somewhere with more of these boxes!
Here are the lot of tiles fresh out of the box.
We start off by priming them with SMS Surfacer black, then Yokosuka grey then German dark brown.
We blue tack the tiles onto the glossy side of a Pepsi max box. This helps a lot to keep the tiles in place while priming and the glossy texture releases the blue tack easily when you go to remove them.
After black, we prime the pavements with grey
Using a piece of business card and/or ruler, we cordon off the curves and straight edges between the cobblestone and pavement and prime the cobblestone with brown to get those clean lines.
You can see the full process here with the unfinished prime jobs within each stage and this is how big the tiles get once you put them together. It takes up 3/4 of our dining table!
Next, using the colours in the dropper bottles we mix some variated tones to paint the cobblestones.
To create a more realistic cobble stone street, we randomly paint individual stones in each of the colours
Then we Drybrush over with Xandri dust, and the pavements were Drybrushed with Astronomicum grey
Now it's time to wash. Because we have a lot of tiles to wash, we are going to need more than a few bottles. We followed the below tutorial to create our own large batch and saved quite a fair bit of $$$
https://youtu.be/IokSYHu58V8
I called it the Swipe & Wipe technique
The process goes pretty fast with 2 people, brush on the wash
And using a wet wipe (no dry tissue ples!) wipe only the surface to get rid of the excess. PLEASE USE GLOVES!
now crush and mix together some earth toned pigments.
prep some foliage of choice
And ruin it all with mud and dirt effect and add some grass creeping through the pavement cracks.
Which do you think is best? 1, 2 or 3?
It looks a lot nicer as individual tiles and in photo. But as seen in the previous pictures, once all the tiles are assembled, I think the hard work that went into pain stackingly painting the tiles and prepping them has gone to waste, because the pigments cover up a fair bit of the definition....But what do you guys think? I think wiping away some pigment looks good, or should we not do any pigments at all?
My wife… took all those picture and wrote all of these captions
Why is that important? Because look at all of this. I am serious I am not being proud or vain (though I am pretty proud of my wife). All of this was done in the last two and half weeks…
Don’t
Wait
For
New Years
Time is the currency of life and waiting… waiting is just a bad investment.
til next time friends
Keep those brushes wet