New (Temporary) Painting Table

I thought long and hard, whether to set up my painting table in a new part of the house, or whether I would wait for the leaking roof to be fixed, and then resume painting again. I finally decided that I couldn't wait any longer, so I measured up my old painting table, with the water damaged top. I took those measurements to my bedroom, and after moving some stuff around, I SQUEEZED the old painting table into its new (temporary) home.

It is not perfect, and it is a tight fit, but it works for now. At least I can get some much needed painting done. I will take photos of it when i put my paints, brushes and other tools back into place.

Water Damage

My hobby table has been damaged by a leaking roof. After a bad storm, the roof over my hobby room, let in a lot of (unwanted) rain. The rain poured all over my painting table, via a downlight. The vintage (1950s) wooden table was completely soaked, and table top is ruined. I really liked that table, I still remember when and where I purchased it from, back in 1997. All the papers, sticker sheets and labels on the table, were ruined (luckily my painting dairy was in a different area, and was not damaged). My paints, paintbrushes, tools and minis did get wet, but were salvaged (mostly). A few minis had their bases ruined, and some labels on my paint bottles are a little crinkled or torn, but this was minor damage.

Anyway, the roof is currently being looked at by our insurance company, and is still not repaired. It has been about 4 weeks now. The quote I received was AUD$8000 (about USD$8000) to replace the entire roof. Which at the moment I simply cannot afford. So I have packed everything up, and stored them a couple of large boxes/crates, and I am catching the leaking water in a bucket.

Here are some photos.

Here is the bucket catching all the leaking water.

Here is what my painting table did look like.

My new mini Tripod

I have been trying to take better photos of my minis, and an article I read recently about taking photos of miniatures, suggest a good quality tripod. This keeps your camera very steady, which is always a good thing. While I was in an office supply store a few days ago, I came across a mini tripod, which looked a lot better than my original mini tripod. It was on sale for AUD$16 and so I bought it. I havn't tried it out yet, but I thought I would show you a comparison of my my "before" and "after" tripods.

My Original Mini Tripod

New New Mini Tripod

My work area - this is where all the painting happens

Here is a photo of my painting area. The main shelf which holds all my paints is a CD stand, which is on its side, and I removed all the plastic CD shelves. It was purchased for $5 from an Opp-Shop.

Here you can see my nice industrial lamp. It is a heavy thing, but I absolutely love it. It has a "daylight" fluro tube in it, and produces lots of light. I aquired it from my work, when they were having an office clean-out. It is amasing what people will discard.

I like to keep my paints on their sides, for a couple of reasons. Firstly I can see exactly what colour is inside the bottle, and secondly I feel that the paint is easier to shake back together after it seperates.

Some cheap plastic drawers that I use to hold various bits-and-pieces, like dental picks, sand paper, pens, bottle caps etc.

This is the "holding area" for unfinished minis. I really need to get back to some of those minis, they have been there for too long.

Where I take my photographs

Here is the setup I use to take my photos. For those of you who are interested. Since taking this photo, I have two white lamps, which are now the same size and I have put the black lamp into retirement.

The minis are place ready to phtograph.

You can see that the minis are elevated on top of a box. This helps with taking photos at various angles, especially down low.

This is what the photo looks like. This will now be opened in Photoshop and cropped and trimed ready for uploading onto the internet.