Milky art and blog

Im not dead, things have just been very hectic and unfortunet for me this year, losing my job, house, pets and almost my car and life, however things are slowly looking up for me and im starting to come back around and working on gundams and other art. So think of this as a bit of an update.

I currently have a resin kit im finally tackling after so many years of rockman zero i will finally build, and i have gotten some new and more warhammer fantasy and 40k kits (i got a bit into it over the past year mostly painting and collecting not so much playing yet) so i get to have fun putting these together.

This blog is going to have a bit of miniatures, tutorials and gundams as well as other things I may be working on, expect more in the upcoming year

For now happy thanksgiving and happy holidays to all.

So last year I did not make alot of my resolutions that I wanted to hit which is a shame. So this year I think I will cut down a bit on my resolutions this year.

Its almost the end of the year and with it getting busy at this time of the year, I figure I might as well see what resolutions i had set last year and If i had managed to meet them for gunpla and art.

Completed!

Get a Perfect grade Gundam

This was a surprise as I didnt expect to get one for a decent price as PG kits are still just as rare and almost as expensive as they were a few years ago. Luckily for me at ushicon 11 this year, I managed to snag not 1 but 2 PG kits. Not only that one of them the PG zaku II had actually been out of production for quite a long time and only recently got another production run. Well 2 PG down, 14 more to go. Now if only I could get the expansion sets of the zaku for a decent price, the light up beam hawk would be amazing to have.

Buy a new airbrush

It had been about 2 years since I had a good airbrush to use and I was wanting to get me a brand new one. Luckily I managed to get me a brand new neo Iwata airbrush for a good price, not only that, I also got my air compressor fixed to adjust the psi, though it is still limited. Now I can get to tackling all my kits to airbrush.

Customize paint a kit

This one did tie in with the airbrush, and I managed to fully customize my HG zeong that I got during ushicon t his year. It was quite an experience instead of just painting a kit its original color, also made things look quite great and once im fully done itll probably look even better. Just need to find some bearguy heads to help put the finished look together.

Get a resin kit

So this tied in to late last year start of this year, I wanted to get me a resin kit, and I did get one right after xmas so I guess it counts. I got me a Rockman zero resin kit that I am quite eager to start on him, however due to the way resin is, it scares me quite alot too. Not sure what will happen but Ill eventually get this taken care of.

Surprise goals

I had a couple of surprises this year that I did not expect nor were they goals I had planned but I feel i should mention them here.

My first display case

On top of that, I also finally got a display case for myself for displaying my kits, instead of just my bookcases. While initially it was a pain in the butt to put together since I had no one else to help, It was still worth it in the end. Now I just need to get several more to display all of my current kits.

Started collecting necrons

I always wanted to get into warhammer, but due to multiple issues with well the community and of course the pricing always made it hard for me to justify getting myself anything. Well for my Bday I decided to get me some necrons thanks to a few surprises as well as more paints. I will be building each and customizing the paints of them So i cant wait.

Missed Goals

So i missed a few goals this year that I wanted to get but thats ok!

Sometimes you just want to get something done quick, or maybe you need to get something done as efficiently as possible for a contest or display. Sometimes you need to rush while still maintaining that high quality finish you love. A simple way to remedy this is to paint parts on the sprue.

But wait you might ask, wont I need to clean up the parts after painting when I cut them out? To that I say that is a great question and you are not wrong. I only recommend doing a Primer coat only for this kind of method, and of a similar color of the material to help it along. You can then touch up primer with a small hand brush before Putting together or painting.

You can see the transition from grey to black with the primer while still on the sprue saving valuable primer

Now while spraying on the sprue can save time, there are other advantages to spraying on the sprue as well as disadvantages than doing one at a time. Pros -Fast coating of parts to prep for painting -Saves valuable primer to go farther -Primes harder to reach places than if parts were put together -Dries within 20 minutes in a flat even surface ready to cut and put together -consistent primer color across all parts -A easy spot to use a clip to hold the parts in the air leaving no part unpainted. Cons -Clean up required after cutting parts out of the sprue -excessive handling of parts when putting together can get rid of some primer requiring another coat of paint -Any plastic glue used to put parts together melts the paint and does not have as strong a bond -if primer is not coming out well you will have to redo the entire sprue after removing the primer There are alot of cons and pros to using this method, while not the best, it can lead up to quick results. However, there is another painting method that can do multiple parts at the same time and is more effective than this, and more efficient, but that will be another article.
What do you guys think? Think painting on the sprues is the way to go or do you paint each part separately? Let me know below.

Something I have recently gotten into are little miniatures that can be used for old table top games like dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, and most famously warhammer and warhammer 40k. These small 2-3 inch little figures are packing details comparable to master grades but on a much smaller scale. While I can never justify or will every justify their price (some basic miniatures for 1 single unit cost as much as a HG or MG in some cases, yet only be about as big as a foot from said kit range.) They do help in learning skills to bring over to your kits, specifically MG and PG with how much detail is packed into those.

In this article I'm going to go over some basic skills you learn from miniature as well as how they transition over to gunpla and painting. Here are 6 reasons why miniatures help with gunpla and why you should give it a try.

1. Removing seam and mold lines.

In most if not all miniatures you will see some small mold lines (small lines of plastic) on the kit that are out of place and all in the same spot all over the model. This is something that will always happen on molds when a kit is made as part of the forming process. These lines are simple to remove and fix with just a knife gently scraping in the same direction of the line. A little scrape and some light sanding will fix these up.

The mold lines from the kit as it was created. Notice the lines up and down the armor as well as the excess plastic sprue

While not as prominent on gunpla kits you will still see these from time to time, most notably on the hands, fingers, and poly caps. You can use the same method above to fix, though more sanding may be required. If the kit is a meki plated kit however, you will need to repaint to fix this. While newer kits are better at hiding seam lines from molding, you still get seam lines when putting multiple parts together that require glue and work to fix.

Older gundam  kits have noticeable seam lines like this that can be removed from glue and sanding.

2. Thinning your paint!

This is perhaps the most important thing you can learn from this is layering and thinning your paint. Since these things are small, it helps to have your paint as thin as possible so as to not obscure details. It is OK if the first layer of paint does not cover the bottom most layer with how thin it is. Let it dry then go over again with a second layer to fully cover the spot as thin as possible. With miniature paints, its typically 2 parts paint 1 part water, to make it nearly milky, kind of like if you were airbrushing. Not so watery the paint runs but not so thick that it covers everything.

This skill helps a lot when your doing airbrushing. Even regular hand painting when you get to those super detailed kits. It teaches you when your doing too much paint and till little. Its better to have multiple thin layers with more work than 1 thick layer with no details.

There are at least 3 different colors on the bottom plate with nearly 10 layers of thin paint.

The ball ver ka is a simple kit until you look at all the detail packed on the inside which requires paint.

My current miniatures stand with most of my miniatures paints and airbrush paints.