Friends... I am so inconsistent with the blogging

Hi it's been a while, which is whatever! I don't feel bad about it because this is a hobby and I'm not trying to grow a following because this is a hobby! I've been pretty burnt out and have just been kind of conserving my energy, pursuing other things that interest me. That being said, I can talk about hobby things a bit.

I've been house sitting for a bit over a week. Usually when I house sit, the break from normal routine puts me in a different mindset and lends itself to creativity, or at least the pursuit of some interest that I hadn't really delved into before. Two years ago it's what made me write the first rulesets I've attempted, those being Pigs28 and Dogwalk28 which lead to friendships with other noncombat tabletop enthusiasts (I still hold that Dogwalk was only beaten to being one of the first after Applepicking because Tara is a lot more driven than me). I'm not sure what I did house sitting here last year, I think I mostly played survival Minecraft on the Mario themed world on my nintendo switch.

So, this year I wanted to set myself up for some success. I gathered some hobby things, I brought my sketchbook, a swedish fiddle book, dice and a deck of playing cards as well as tarot cards. I brought unpainted minis and three colors of paint plus black and white and an acrylic medium. Hoping for inspiration. I took the week off work (just because I had a week to use, so why not?). Did inspiration strike? In some ways yes, I painted a mini for the first time in a while at least (that mini being gifted to me by the wonderful creator of THRENODYSSEY). Spent a lot of time thinking in between walking the dog and feeding the horses and chickens. And I played a lot of solitaire tarot games. I played a lot of swedish fiddle songs using my dad's old violin too, which is a much nicer instrument than my own I might add. If you've never listened to any, I highly recommend taking the time to. Näckenspolska is one of my favorites to play (I know that video is on nyckelharp, but that's the right version of the song at least!)

The Fool's Journey

I thought I might try to make a game utilizing tarot cards, but there already quite a few out there which are very very good. I was content with playing the ones I did play (click those links dammit). Actually, that's not entirely true. I wrote up a quick little system to write ditties using tarot cards because I had both music and cards on my mind. It kind of works, but probably could use some fine tuning.

I do feel a bit renewed from this, though it wasn't overall fruitful in making new pieces, what I did make and the ideas that being here inspired I hope will stick with me for a bit and act as inspiration going forward.

NECRO DOPE a model gifted to me by the wonderful SUPERCLAYMATION

I hope wherever you are you can pursue your interests with joy, and stay warm through the remainder of winter! Take care of yourselves.

sculpting tiny guys

It had been some time since I had last put pencil to paper when I opened my sketchbook and drew these four critters. The first came about easily, and I found myself pleased. With some hesitation I set about on a second, it's always a risk drawing the same sort of thing twice. Fortunately it took came about quite well. I'd done it twice and there was half a page left, and before long in total there were four fellas smiling at me.

This was shortly after I'd finished my DOPES (that's for another post, hopefully soon. Ideally, it would have been sooner) and I still had a bit of motivation from that to keep making little guys. Starting at the start I gave it a go with sculpey firm. The trick with sculpey firm is to knead it with a TINY amount of Vaseline. It softens the clay as well as making it a bit stickier. If you bloc your forms in and leave it alone for a bit, the clay will slightly firm up and you can come back to add details a bit more easily. It does still require a gentle hand. These are very small figures, after all.

I switched to beesputty after the second one. The mediums are very similar but very different. I think I used the 4x firmness. I've since been finding the 3x firm more to my favor. Anyway

The tools were finicky so I added the pointy bits after baking with a bit of greenstuff (not my favorite). There's a little more work I aught to do on these, but I'm happy with them.

I call them Skamps. They're very primitive creatures, but they are able to forge some of the strongest metals from essentially junk ore that they harvest from surface rocks with their picks. It is not known their methods and they are especially violent so it is impossible to learn from them. They have been known to tolerate the presence of a Mischievous Man. 

Orcs orcs orcs

 The orc lust is upon me. no NOT  like THAT! I just think they're neat. Anyway, About mid to late October I started sculpting orc faces because orctober. . I did this with beesputty polymer clay on a bottlecap. The method is pretty simple, smoosh a ball of clay roughly head sized onto the cap, poke out where the eyes are gonna be, add a little clay for the snout and nose, refine, refine, refine. takes very little time to do this and it goes quicker once you get the forumla down. Something I like about old orc drawins is the big face wrinkles they have primarily on their upper lip and around their eyes. Just adding a little bit of those and some smile lines around the eyes went a long way to getting that orcy feel. 

here's a lil bit of what the process looks like. I took a video but it didn't wanna upload so whatever. 

that's basically it! 

always learning, on that Grindset

Miniature sculpting is still pretty new to me, I've only been messing around in the 28mm ish scale for about... two years or so  And not in an overly consistent and dedicated kind of way. it turns out the more I do it and the less stress I put on myself to do it right, the more fun and motivated I am. crazy right??? 

 I sculpted a set of around eight guys about two months ago to get made in metal (I'll do a post about that maybe some other time after they're produced). It took me about a week to make them and I had a blast doing it. uh, so now im working on some other stuff.  I want to make armor. I think armor is cool, always have.  I know it's an unpopular opinion but I wiuld say armor is Bad Ass. 

So, that is where that's at.

easy peasy strange terrain

as I was rotting my brain on instagram the other day I saw a story by my friend Ben (@apocrypha_now) of a museum piece I didn't recognise and I asked WHO IS THE ARTIST??? Well, he told me that it was picasso and I felt like a fool and failure of my art history knowledge because duh of course it was picasso. but, I found the piece to be very inspiring and he said he'd race me to do something similar as terrain and I guess I decided to try it out.

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961. Painted Iron

Papaercraft has always appealed to me and playing with people's sense of immersion is always an interesting thing as well. Instead of trying to capture realism for the little tiny guy dice rolly playtime, we could make strange papercraft standees. It's all make believe so let's get creative! Yippee! So, these are little miniature immersion breaking paper terrain pieces inspired by PP himself.

the unsuspecting ???

The process for these is fairly simple, cut out some shapes of cardstock, cardboard, glue those pieces together. Done. Some recommendations I would make would be to pretty decently cover your base cardboard in pva, mod podge before adhering anything else. Adding pva to cardboard and paper causes it to warp pretty substantially. So, layer it on, let it dry, let it warp. When it's fully dry, you can flatten it out pretty easy and then adhere things to it. I'm not saying it won't warp anytime in the future, but it's just a little easier to keep it flat if you seal it at the start of the process. uhhh of course you can kind of unwarp things after gluing them together too, it's just not as easy ok? I hope this makes sense please let this make sense I need you to understand what I'm saying please please please

cover it in glue

this one too

see how it's warping?

after drying you can bend and cut and place it. I will say, long pieces like this don't work great for the process

you're gonna want some of THESE

adhere them wherever just make sure they're flush with the bottom

glue glue glue (this kind of didn't work it's too long it still warped)

tada! it's something

smaller examples

i guess it's part of a house idk

I hope that made any sense. from my experiments I will also add... Cardboard to cardboard is much better. Smaller base size is better for not warping. You should probably put a few layers of mod podge or pva over the whole thing when it's dried to further seal and rigidify it. The rest is in your hands to figure out... Good luck...

Now, whether or not these pieces last forever, who knows. Depends on how well you maintain them. it's a lot cheaper and better for the world than buying more plastic crap I think! Have fun with it or don't, but you've read this far and that's good enough for me!

-twabbis

starti post and introdution

Plain and simple... Hello! I am twabbis I am an artist. I'm sure most of you found this from instragram, in which case you already do know me or have some understanding of who I am. If you somehow foudn this in a different way, wow congrats. welcome to my blog. So, this is gonna be a miniatures hobby blog. I'm not sure in what capacity it will be interesting but I'll try to post when I finish a project. I always like seeing an entire process laid out from start to finish so I will attempt to do that here to the best of my ability. Uhhh... I guess I'll talk about what I enjoy about this hobby then I'll probably cut it short. I don't want to overshare or make myself too available as a person to internet randos but I will share this little piece of my soul with you. Be nice with it. The miniature hobby community, specifically the 28 community is the one that I like. I don't really care about playing games (all that much) and I'm pretty antisocial. What draws me to this commuinity is that everyone is a little freak! Very DIY ethos and "good enough" attitude which I find a bit liberating. I've been sculpting larger scale clay figures for uh, quite some time. This smaller scale and less stress given to perfectionism approach is just very freeing. Also, people are very supportive! It's a very "let you freak flag fly" type situation and then you get people who tell you that your freak flag looks pretty cool. Freaks. One thing I do kind of dislike is that I am staring at my phone all the time to see what everyone's up to and also to see if people are commenting on my posts. Brain rot. So, maybe blogging will help me slow down on the old instagram and speed up on the ol having a blogstagram. I don't really know what else to say right now. I hope this was endearing and you want to read more. Many people have been asking for me to make a blog... So... I hope they aren;t disappointed... ... ... If there are any typoes they are intentional.

bye -twabbis (all lowercase)