New Tool: Paint Mixer

Inspired by Luke at Geek Gaming (Youtube link), I thought about my ancient collection of paints. Some of them I've never opened since I got them maybe seven years ago. I'm sure that some of them were many years old before I even acquired them.

One of the problems with these paints is that they require considerable mixing to bring them back to life. This means lots and lots of shaking, and that's hobby time being wasted.

So Luke had bought this vortex mixer, and he was showing how well it worked. I had a few bucks left over so I figured it would be a good idea to get one from Amazon. And here it is:

As it turns out, it's the exact same one as Luke bought. I tried it out and it mixed a paint that had separated into pigment and medium in big splotches. It took a little while but the paint did mix. But doing so saved me about 50% of time and a whole lot of arm shaking. I just press the paint down on the centre and the mixer does the work.

Apparently, there is a danger to using the shaker to long because the vibrations aren't good for you. But I reckon that if I take breaks between mixing spurts, I should be OK.

Fencing, Again (Part 2)

 Continuing my project from last time, I completed all of the brush between the fence. I then spray primed it grey followed by a brown wash everywhere. This is what the fences looked like at this stage:

I loosely painted a warm grey and then semi-dry brushed white over top. Not really dry but more of a sloppy waving of the brush over the very top surfaces. I followed this up with a black ink wash. As a final step, I painted the base brown and used the same colour to give the brush a little tint so that they would stand out a bit from the rails.

I'm really happy with how I managed to age the wood and get the appearance of grain. The extra time spent carving up the sticks paid off so that they just don't too manufactured.

Because enclosures should have gates so that farmers can enter their fields, I made a couple:

That's 6 feet of fences. I really should have doubled this project but I can make more.