Royal Highland Show 2018! - WHP Warmup!

One of my favourite classes at the RHS is the Working Hunter Pony - nothing beats tiny ponies zooming around and flying over rustic fences! I always like the collecting ring for photography as its a smaller space than the actual jumping arena so you've a much better chance of capturing the action than when the ponies are miles away on the other side!

Royal Highland Show 2018! - M&M Championship

We never have any specific plans for anything, and as some classes linger on for far longer than the schedule would suggest, it's sometimes anyone's guess as to what's on when! At one point we stopped outside the main ring to watch the M&M championship, but we couldn't get very close for photos so moved on after a while.

As previously stated, I'm a sucker for a nice bay and what a nice one this is!

Royal Highland Show 2018! - M&M and Part-Bred Arabs

I'm a little late to the party this year, due in part to the fact that I came home from the show with 2644 images to sort out and a super nasty sunburn on my face which is still visible over a week later! Flickr was also an issue as it took the best part of a full week to upload everything.😖

As ever, all photos sans commentary can be found -here- and feel free to use any for colour/drawing reference. 

The RHS' official facebook page had -this- wee video which gives you a feel for what the whole show was like.

Welcome to the Mighty Nein!

 

As most of you will know, I'm a massive nerd when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi.

I live and breathe all things geeky, but until a couple of years ago I couldn't fully consider myself a 'nerd' as I'd never experienced the utter joy that is the definitive role-playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. I still haven't managed to actually play yet, though I plan to DM for my friends at some point once I've got a session planned out, but in the meantime, I get my fix from the incomparable Critical Role; a weekly stream where 'a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play D&D'

I've been watching them for a good few years now, and with well over 500 hours worth of incredibly compelling storylines and emotive performances from the cast, it wasn't difficult to get swept up in the adventures of the heroic band of colourful characters - Vox Machina, and now, with their latest campaign, the motley crew known as The Mighty Nein.

I don't normally like making figures of other people's characters as they know them far better than I ever could, but I loved the new group so much I couldn't resist! So far I only have two (one of which doesn't quite count) but I fully intend to recreate the whole group! (and no, it isn't a typo, there really aren't actually nine of them, there's a huge in-joke related to nein/nine so it was inevitable that they ended up with that as part of their name)

Rockcliffe Holiday May 2018 (IMG INT!)

It's that time once again!

(a few weeks late but never mind XD)

I recently retired my faithful camera companion, Nigel, as after a good ten years, old age had finally caught up with him and he was no longer able to function properly. His replacement, (also called Nigel, as I'm terribly unimaginative) is a Canon 750D and he's super duper shiny, so I may have got a little carried away when it came to pictures and video...

On that note, I'd really like to start doing some video tutorials and things on youtube, so if anyone has any suggestions for things they'd like to see, let me know! :)

Anyway, this was my first chance to try out my new shiny camera and as the weather was distinctly wonderful, you can expect rather a lot of images here. I typed nearly everything out whilst I was there, so apologies for the change in tense from time to time. XD

NaMoPaiMo prizes!

As everyone who took part in this year’s NaMoPaiMo knows, being lucky enough to win a prize wasn’t the point of the challenge, but a nice bonus and not something to be expected! However, I was told a couple of weeks ago by Jennifer that both myself AND Max would be getting something in the post, and it arrived last week. 

I didn’t sleep much the night before, after staying up until 6am to watch Critical Role (damn you timezones!) so I wasn’t quite with it when the parcel arrived, but once I’d woken up and realised what it was I couldn’t wait to investigate! 

 I’m utterly blown away, this is so incredibly generous and I just don’t have the words to thank you guys!  I got this absolutely beautiful Classic scale ‘Gigi’ resin by Mindy Berg, which I can’t wait to paint, though it might take a while to settle on a colour, but I’m already getting a very matronly broodmare feel to her, perhaps an old retired riding school pony or something? She’s currently the biggest resin I have now too! 

 Max didn’t come away empty handed either, and now has another resin to paint, this time a Maggie Jenner Bennet grumpy pony! I have to admit that out of all of Maggie’s minis this one wasn’t my initial favourite, based purely on the pose but oh how my opinion has changed! There’s so much personality in this little beastie (I love the neck wrinkles!!!) and I’ve got so many colour ideas! I’ve been buzzing all day! 

Rest assured guys, there’ll be a repeat of Max’s adventures in painting next year!

On another note, I've been very bad at updating this blog recently - extra annoying as I actually have lots to post about for a change! Hopefully I'll get some more interesting stuff up on here soon.

Christine does NaMoPaiMo!

Max has hogged the limelight for far too long so here's what *I* got up to this month!

My goal for NaMo this year was to paint some models to sell (which I utterly failed at sadly) and finally get round to painting the Maggie Bennet micro mini Shetland I'd had sitting naked on my shelf for the last few years. I'd never been able to settle on a colour so he'd been relegated to the 'procrastination station' until such time as inspiration struck. It kinda didn't, but I pushed myself to paint him anyway and I honestly couldn't be happier with how he (and his bonus friend!) turned out.