2026 so far

   

    Mostly higher quality images of what I've been posting on Instagram. My intention was NOT to do massive one-off posts a couple times a year but that may need to be what I work on in 2027. This year is flying by. Most of my time not doing stuff which pays the bills is devoted to Trellis right now. But hobbying and tabletop gaming are really feeding the soul, so I am doing my best to make time for them. 

Games

    At the end of last year I became a member at The Spire, a gaming club in midtown. It's a great little space a couple blocks from Penn Station, with a nice assortment of terrain and a solid membership. The members' interests skew generally towards more mainstream games, but there's a sizable minority whose tastes run closer to mine in terms of indie/dead games and kitbashing. 

    Last year the Spire hosted a Mordheim tournament; this year, I've been picking up occasional Flames of Orion (pictures of my combat unit here) and Necropolis games, which slap thematically and scratch the kitbashing itch, and have the essential quality of being able to be played very, very quickly. In that spirit, and because I am recognizing a certain tendency towards perfectionism in my hobbying that I want to fight, I threw together some dudes for Necropolis. Just a zenithal undercoat and an oil wash.

A quick and dirty gathering to learn Necropolis with. 

Photography

    At the Godling show I spent some time chatting with Eric Wier of the blog Between the Bolter and Me, the Dragged Into Turbolasers podcast, and the essential hobby weirdo publication 28. Eric is well known for miniature photography, and his Godling piece was shown a film projector (on slides he developed himself no less). He was very generous with his knowledge and suggested I look into mirrorless cameras. I ended up following through on that and bought a Fujifilm X-T2 secondhand from a friend.

    This turned out to be a great decision! I really love this camera; it performs well even in the crappy fluorescent lighting of the Spire and even butter under studio conditions, and includes some very cool, evocative film look modes that add a ton of character.

The kickoff event for The Sundered Ascendency, an Inquisimunda campaign at The Spire.

On of my buddy Jack's mechs during a Flames of Orion game.

    

An extremely non-heretical inquisitor in the same campaign from Adrie

Painting

    Most of my hobby time has been spent painting without any particular game in mind, either for hobby challenges or just to scratch the creative itch.

   This sculpt is from the very talented Sasha. Mostly acrylics with a some light oil washing. I was inspired by a setting I'm working on called Somnolence about a small Imperial ship getting absorbed into a space hulk. Our point of view into the madness of the hulk is a scholar who spends his last hours in a kind of dreamlike state wandering around and documenting everything he can. This piece, which I'm called the Somnolence Node, is a psyker who has been absorbed into the structure of the hulk, entering into a permanent trance that creates a small pocket of temporary safety that the scholar can rest in.

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.

    Y'all know I love a hobby challenge. This piece was my entry for Terran's Iron Maiden challenge. The body is from a Mechatrowego kit, and the mask is from a small statue of a priest I found at a junk shop. Oils over acrylic. 

    The Iron Maiden paint scheme was a result of a lot of trial and error; I wanted to refine what I'd learned and apply it to something that was more on the scale of a game piece, so broke out this excellent sculpt from Heroic Scale. I've had enough people ask about this paintjob that I might end up doing a tutorial on it when I have a little time. 

    After that last piece, I was so enamored of peryelene black that I wanted to keep playing with it, so I printed up this sculpt from Dust Punk Miniatures  and gave some blending and cloth texture a shot.

    Finally, my entry for Smashbash 2026, the theme of which was "teeth teeth teeth teeth". As with last year I did a small diorama, though this year I had enough time to paint it. 

    That's it for now. I'm working on a couple different hobby challenges (including running one!) and getting excited for Under the Dice fest in October. Be well.