Thistle & Shrub Studios

Central Illinois Painters

Adepticon 2010 Wrap Up

General BaggyAdepticon 2010 has finished and it was yet another great year. Mind you I am just now starting to feel human again and unfortunately have to return to work tomorrow.

The con started on Wednesday for me as Thistle and myself headed to Hank’s to load his full size van and the rented trailer up with prize support and registration materials. After getting Hank’s vehicle loaded a trip to Thistle’s to load up books for the swag bags. A very long day for myself since I packed up 2 boys for their grandmother’s care and then finally found a bed around 2:30 AM on Friday at the Westin. I appreciated the unloading of the trailers on Thursday but would have much rather gone to sleep at 12:30 AM.

Just some of what was loaded in Hank's vehicle. Well Thursday saw to set up of the halls. We tried a new technique with the felt this year, which had me laying down all morning. That technique, just unroll a bolt of felt and tape off the tables. We attempted to tape up the edges, but after taping all of the felt up under the tables at least 2 times (some as many as 4 times) and it kept on falling, it was decided the extra 6 feet of felt length would just get taped and the long edges would just hang. I did have a great meal at Bippity Boppity Boos (yes, I don’t remember the real name of the restaurant) followed by talking and drinking until about 3 AM with Toby and Colin.

Friday rolled around early for me to do very little except wander the halls and talk with vendors. A great way to start the actual convention. I was able to even play a little bit on Friday. I played a demo of “Check Your 6” which is a pretty good flight WW II flight game. Simple enough for quick gaming but has enough of what planes can do to make it tactically challenging. I also played a bit of the landing on Omaha Beach with the Flames of War system. I did actually get a decent amount of sleep that night which was good.

The assault on Omaha BeachThis year I helped judge appearance for the 40K Team tournament on Saturday. It was fun to actually get to see a lot of the armies up close and hearing some of their themes. The other fun highlight of the day was was sister driving up and us going out for dinner at Omega. It was great hanging out with her and showing her my hobby; though me getting into and out of her car must have looked like a clown car, hope you had fun sibling.

Sunday was the chaos of appearance judging 220 players in the 40K championships. The first impressive feat was that with the six judges we had we were able to judge 215 armies before the first round started (part of that was benefited by the extra 30 minutes it took to get half of the tournament going). It was a lot of fun to see armies up close yet again including the Scallywaggin’ pirates, Dave Taylor’s and Brian Carlson’s armies. The Scallywaggin' Captain

Once the tournament was over the joy of clean up of the 40K hall began. This year things went much smoother than last year. The only issue I had was the desire by a want for a steak at Harry Carry’s and the 9 PM’ish start of the poker tournament. I think next year we need a better plan for clean up, but for all those that helped a big thank you. I was very happy that the fantasy, specialist and combat patrol halls were cleaned up and all I had to worry about was the main hall. The other big improvement this year was that we payed the hotel to clean up the tables and floor.

All of my pictures are up in the main Thistle & Shrub gallery. Thistle did throw down a challenge for me: to start and enter my Ork Warboss in next years rogue daemon contest. My own challenge, to have at least two entries for the rogue daemon contest. Time to begin the remembering on how to paint well without shortcutting to table top quality.

Yet another great year and great growth for Adepticon, time to start on projects for 2011.

March 31st, 2010 Posted by shrub34 | News, Tournament Recaps | no comments

Sophia Ilima

Palette at the end of the day I spent a day taking a model from blister to an decent finish in one day, which is very unusual for me. The thumbnail is just the palette at the end of the day.

Continue reading Sophia Ilima »»

February 23rd, 2010 Posted by shrub34 | Gallery | no comments

Miniature Live Tweet

Besides doing laundry and watching the Winter X Games, I have decided to assemble and paint a model from scratch today.

Better yet, I plan to tweet about as I work. Follow me live @shrub34.

1/31/2010 20:00: All done with the live tweet. Proper post for gallery latter.

January 31st, 2010 Posted by shrub34 | News | no comments

Talk like a Pirate Day

Arrr! Ahoy voy! and Yea vast!

Okay, that is about all I can handle of that that. What I really wanted to do was link over to Gnome Stew and their very good article on piracy. Enjoy.

In other news Central Illinois Blood Bowl continues, with the Chaos Cup just finishing and the Premier Tournament of Champions currently going on. Also the Clinton F1 Racing League just finished its 7th race of the inaugural season as it continues driving through Italy.

September 19th, 2009 Posted by shrub34 | News | no comments

Miniature Mentor

I just found out about and purchased painting tutorials by Miniature Mentor with Golden Demon winner Laurent Esposito Mas.

The videos are just amazing and well worth the money if your looking to raise your painting to the next level. The video is very well focused and zoomed into the actual painting. If you’ve ever been in a painting class and wished you could get a good look at the technique used, these videos are for you.

Not only does the company have painting videos, but they also have sculpting videos for those looking to improve their conversions or to bring an idea of their own to light.

June 21st, 2009 Posted by shrub34 | News, Tutorials | no comments

last.fm

I finally joined part of the Web 2.0/Social website kick. I won’t do Facebook or MySpace, due to personal information concerns, but music is always good for painting so I have joined last.fm.

I have added my personal recently played list to the right hand side of the site. Overall, I’m happy with the service, it’s very much like our local 97.9 BOB FM radio, but I get to pick the artists and no ads.

So what will you see and hear on my radio? Nerdcore, folk-rock, and 80’s alternative.

Enjoy!

May 25th, 2009 Posted by shrub34 | News | no comments

Tony Ork Boom Boom Huck Tour Starts Rolling In

Long time no post, I know, I know. Studio is still closed for commissions but I have new model done.

Team Girl Trukk The first of a about 6 Ork Trukks for my Extreme Ork army that I started this year, hope to finish in 2010 sometime.

Continue reading Tony Ork Boom Boom Huck Tour Starts Rolling In »»

May 14th, 2009 Posted by shrub34 | Gallery | no comments

3 Harlequins

Death Jester Shadow Seer Troupe Master A set of 3 harlequin models done up for a commission.

Continue reading 3 Harlequins »»

February 24th, 2008 Posted by shrub34 | Gallery | no comments

Site is back

Sorry about the extended downtime. There were some issues when the site was migrated.

I’m working on getting the order of the migrated site corrected still, but all of our content is up and working.

Update: Post order is now working correctly. Thistle & Shrub Studios apologizes for the down time.

February 22nd, 2008 Posted by shrub34 | News | no comments

Site Migration Feb 16, 2008

Our hosting provider is migrating Thistle & Shrub Studios on Feb. 16, 2008

Part of this migration is a change in the DNS system which may take a couple of days to propagate across the internet.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause for you.

February 11th, 2008 Posted by shrub34 | News | no comments