Autumnal impressions

Not long ago I went to the "Europa-Park" the biggest funpark in germany because every year they have a nice halloween decoration. This time I was really lucky, because we had most of the time excellent weather which allowed me to shoot some nice Light/Shadow pictures (and some funny stuff too). Even the Eurosat, a big dome in which a rollercoaster is settled is decorated fitting to halloween.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween,
pumpkins scream in the dead of night

It was a funny day and after we returned home, the view from our kitchen granted me another (spooky) view:

If I only could paint somethink like that!

Some more picture heavy stuff after the break!

I received a "Liebster"-Award!

Woho great thing for me, I really did receive a "Liebster"-Award. Thanks to Mr. Lee from Mr. Lee's Painting Emporium for passing me this little golden man with his big golden trophy :)

Liebster Award

But what is this all about you may think now?
As far as my quick research revealed, it is a little "reward" given to favoured blogs with fewer than 200 followers. "Liebster" is a german pet name for boyfriend and could also mean beloved , darling and in the blogosphere I think it should be translated dearest or precious or "valuable to read".
This thing is going viral like hell and I really thought of mentioning or even passing it.

Color Scheme Designer

Hello dear readers,

since I don't have as much time for the hobby as suspected (again), I will try to deliver some useful tips and tricks or tools I have found (again again).

Color Scheme Designer 3

This time I will talk about the Color Scheme Designer, a small online tool which allows you to pick colors by tone, hue, opposites, tetrads, triads and so on and so on. It can even give you a hint how colorblind or people with a vision impairment would see the colors (which is not important for miniature painting I think). I came across this wonderful tool in my working life but it is damn useful in our hobby too. Especially if you follow the tips of some of the profi painters with color triads and warm / cold color contrasts.

I will not do a full review of this tool because it is really straight forward, easy to use and free(!) so everyone can make his/her own decision about the tool. I used it (as stated) in my working life and think it is one of the best free tools you can get your fingers on.


So long,
Paradox0n

Blog Babble - Viewers, Plans and Distractions

Unbelievable, my blog really hit the first 1000 Viewers! And yes, it's over 1000 views now, I took the trouble to substract the whole pingbots and the like out. *happy dance* For me this is a great thing as I just started this blog to get to know the techniques behind and as "pilot project" for my wife who wants also to start blogging now :-) Sure it would be even greater if there where some more followers and comments, but hey! I won't fall into the german "complaining on high level" thing and just be happy that I have 11 Followers and some people who comment here on a more regular base. Thanks for reading my stuff and following this blog!
Haste makes waste! More viewers and perhaps more followers will come. Especially since I'm listed in even more blogrolls now and sometimes appear on blog networking sites. BIG thanks to Colonel Shofer for his work of collecting all the different stuff from the blogosphere, House of Paincakes for the featuring in the weekly tops some times ago and aaaaall the other great (networking) sites out there.

Damn, these pills are going to make my posting somewhat different... Time to get to a dentist.

Thoughts about the future

So I just sat down and thought about the future of this blog a bit and will do some changes on it in the (near) future. The first thing you sure will have already noticed is that I changed the layout of the blog. This is because I blog and surf most of my time with my tablet:

Blog in old layout on Archos Tablet

Blog Babble - Pingbots

Anger Kitty is dangerous

Again a more personal ramble about something what pi**es me off at the moment: Ping/Spambots.
I think every blogger has this problem: You have an eye on your statistics and are happy that your views are going up. But then you are looking closer and realise that some views are not real viewers but ping- or spambots which are not filtered out by Google. If you have millions of views this is a mere trifle but if you have only a handful of views a day, it messes everything up.

For me this is pretty annoying because in working life I have to deal with these *** bots (but can beat the crap out of 'em) and now they are messing up my blogger statistics without being able to do something against them because only Google can filter them out. Feeling like a hamster in his wheel is what angers me the most. You have to wait until somebody else fixes this problem. Or am I unaware of a solution to this problem?

How do you deal with the problem of pingbots? Is there a good solution without hosting everything yourself? Perhaps another statistics tool for blogger?

Questions above questions... Perhaps some of you know the answer.

An angry but helpless,
Paradox0n

Blog Babble - Motivation?!

Its (blogging) weekend and I just started to write at my two new HowTo series when I realised that sometimes while writing I think: Why I am doing this sh**?! I'm running the blog now for about two months, wrote about twenty real articles and will try a short resume of the last weeks. If you now think: "Oh noes, no babble about personal stuff!" I'm completely fine with it, skip the post, but it's something I have to do :-)

Review: Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop

So I got my new (and first) airbrush system and with the set also arrived a dvd called "Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop". I ordered this dvd because I thought some advice on how to work with an airbrush could not be bad. Therefore I thought of doing a small review on my first thoughts about this dvd from the view of an absolute beginner in airbrushing who only watched Youtube tutorials.

Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop

Airbrush finally arrived

Finally my airbrush set arrived yesterday so I set up my workspace (which you can see here) with my new equipment and started some basic experiments. But after the first minutes I noticed that the trigger and the needle are sluggish. So I disassembled the whole pistol and cleaned and checked everything. After that everything seems to be working fine.

Thanks to the great bunch of tutorials for airbrushing! One of the series I relally like is the beginner seriers from Chung:



My first victims will be some of the miniatures of the very old game Starquest (in english its Space Crusade). I hope I can show you some of the achievements in the near future.


Perhaps I will make a post about my setup when I know what I'm doing ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Youtube-Channels you should know

Since I am waiting and waiting for my airbrush and am not motivated to paint at the moment I thought of listing some of the great Youtube-Channels I found and watch on a regular base.

Airbrush Miniature Painting

AwesomePaintJob - Les has a great way of doing things with his airbrush
Buypainted - Also one great airbrush artist, if not one of the best at the moment

General Miniature Painting

Girlpainting - Alexandra has some great tutorials of her style to paint miniatures
MrWatchingpaintdry - Great step by step tutorials including choice for colors

Terrainmaking

Terranscapes - Really great stuff for terrain makers

 The list is far from complete and I think I will add some more in the future.

Hope you enjoy it
Paradox0n

Peeking on my working table

Alright, spring is in full progress. The weather is typical for april: 5 minutes sun, 10 minutes rain and in the morning there was a snow and ice warning in the radio... Really, I'm not joking.

What could be more obvious than taking time to dust off my workbench and make place for my new projects. Since I also want to buy an airbrush and compressor I really needed to shift some things on my table and boards around me. Et voilà: 

This is were the magic happens...

Welcome aboard!

Paradox0ns Wargamin Blog opens its doors!

After some time of thinking and fighting with myself if I should really open up my own blog, I couldn't resist to do so. Many great painters and crafters inspire me every day and even if i'm far from beeing as good as them, I still want to try to give some of this enthusiasm and joy back to the community. And if I can give some helpful hints and tips I am more than happy to do so.

So I welcome you on my blog and hope I can fill it with live in the future. I also hope that my english is not too bad since I am not a native speaker ;)

Enjoy painting and crafting wherever you are and "Happy Painting" as the guys from Massive Voodoo always say.