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I always enjoy seeing photos from painting competitions and waiting is never fun. In my rush to post these pics, I managed to derp the slideshow on the main page.

For your viewing pleasure: Valten and the Squigs, and the Lhamaean. Valten took a bronze trophy and the Lhamaean took gold in her category.

Now I’m off to go Google for a fix.

As usual, my cats are a fantastic source of drama. The latest saga started out innocently enough. Kitten, being the sweet cat that he is, made friends with a local stray cat by chirping at him through the window, rolling on his back, and generally wiggling appealingly. The stray cat started to hang around by the window and they smiled at each other. “How cute, Kittten made a friend,” I thought, “perhaps I should encourage this.” I started setting out food for the stray, but it turns out that made kitten jealous, and you wouldn’t like him when he’s jealous. He has a major Scrappy Doo-complex and turns into a fuzzy wiener of death, launching himself at the poor bewildered stray whenever he got a chance, and fighting him through the window all the other times.

I should also mention that Nom also tried to fight the stray through the window. The stray sat and blinked through all the assaults, and Nom lost every one of his fights, often cowering in terror.

Now I feed the stray out of sight and tranquility has returned to my flock of cats.

My latest mini is the Ghostly Summons from Reaper Miniatures. It has a lot more pathos that the usual gaming sculpt – the glowing lady has been summoned to a higher plane, but her friends are headed for a fiery place.

I had a fun couple of weeks. The highlight was a trip to Colockum as a deputy/resident artist for the University of Washington’s entomology field trip. I spent a weekend traipsing around the beautiful eastern Washington terrain with the talented photographer, Will Peterman, in tow.

The neatest things we found were:

• A spider eating a beetle, while a fly laid eggs on it

• Parasitic wasps laying eggs on the inhabitants of a gall

• And the crowd-pleasing glowing scorpions

Bug lovers will enjoy his complete album here.

During the evenings of the expedition, I painted a blue orchid bee. I’m donating this little guy to help raise money for a UW entomology class that didn’t get sufficient funding. Once I know the details, I’ll post them here.

This is my latest mini is from Dark Sword – the newest member of Thief of Hearts series. She’s a cleric, so I gave her a fancy base with some “smite undead” action.

I have been having some difficulty with my hands lately. Nothing too bad, but they are clicky and stiff, and tend to be sore after a long day of painting. My prolonged daily computer use can’t be that good for them either. So as a preventative measure, I have acquired a pen and tablet mouse for home computing. It’s actually working out pretty well, except that my writing implements migrate around the house. Whenever I want to use the computer I need to have a mouse-hunt, which is actually pretty helpful for avoiding unnecessary procrastination.

Back in December, I mentioned that I had Darksword minis to show which hadn’t been released yet – I thought they were coming soon. Well here they are! Darksword is great at planning releases in advance. I knew this in general, but this was more so than I was expecting, which makes me a big tease.

The Peacock Thief of Hearts came from my concept sketches. Also, I have learned how to use the settings on my camera. Perhaps learned is a bit strong of a word – an informed person told me what settings to use. (Thanks Andy!) So here are my before and after pics of the Thief of Hearts along with a Turtle Mage and my latest bug on a rock.

I have an update on foreign shipping for my DVD. I found a way to get a good deal on DHL shipping, which is the fastest way to ship internationally for under $100. The cost to ship overseas is now $15, and your package should take about 3 business days to arrive, after I ship it.

The cats have returned to business as usual. Nom has recovered and resumed his favorite past-time with the Kitten, which is Greco-Roman wrestling. For cats, they certainly grunt a lot. The kitten keeps surprising me with his special skills. The latest is his ability to lock himself into things. He likes to lean against doors, which closes them, and he managed to shut himself up with my elder cat (who disapproves of him mightily). There was some chaos…

My latest mini is the High Elf by Darksword Miniatures. I have wanted to paint a this feminine color scheme for quite a while. It has been in the back of my mind for more than a year, waiting for a suitable mini.

Ordinarily, I like to paint silly things after mini-painting projects so that I don’t take painting too seriously – usually I end up painting squigs, but right now I’m all squigged out. Instead, I’ve been painting beetles on rocks, which I find tremendously satisfying. This is Polybothris sumptuosa gemma and he makes me very happy. 🙂