And Then He Was Gone: Hospice and Passage

  Note: This post is a part of a series detailing my family's fight against dementia and elder abuse.

My grandfather entered Memory Care for Thanksgiving of 2019. The nurses and staff fed, cared for, and entertained him for the next five years. Through the Covid-19 Pandemic, lock-downs, countless flu shots and falls. Through holidays and summer visits, podiatrists, dentists and wound care, he thrived. And then, slower than expected, quicker than one could have guessed, he was gone.

The intervening time wasn’t stasis. He entered care being able to walk. But he started shuffling, and the doctor said this was dementia-related aphasia. Then he was using a walker. But after a fall or two, he switched to just a wheelchair. A frank conversation with a physical therapist made me realize he wasn’t going to gain back any more function. There was no more strength in him. The bed alarm was the last change. Nurses and techs were trying to keep him from falling without hampering his ability to move around, so they set a pad under him that would go off when he tried to get out of bed. And with that, the staff at the care home felt he had turned a corner. Once the home health nurses let us know they agreed, we had a discussion with his doctor and amongst ourselves. It was time for hospice.

Hospice was a mixed bag. My grandmother lasted only a week or two in a hospice center after a stroke, but this was different. Rather than moving him, he thankfully stayed in place at Memory Care. The familiar setting helped him as he slept more and slowed down. Hospice evaluation got a hospital bed so he could be more comfortable for longer, and they could add rails to keep him in place at night without restraints. The nurses were wonderful and came almost daily. Like all nurses, they were overworked. Shuttling between care homes, I could tell they had a lot on their plate. But they listened patiently as I asked about the bed alarm. Where was that damn thing, and did the techs hear it go off? Even the grief counselor was just the right touch, never pushy. They were all amazing as I tried to make sense of this new phase.

The hospice administrators were not my favorite. Every bad thing John Oliver said in his segment on Hospice was bouncing around in my head. We got multiple calls from providers asking us to pick them. A particularly scummy one called us to get information for a Veterans Day ceremony. They tacked an appeal to consider them at the end of the call. I discovered the certificate they handed out in my grandfather's personal effects and saw they had misspelled his name. There were a lot of complicated emotions around that time, but it felt like my grandfather was just another billing to them. I would honestly rather have chopped my own arms off than give any of those vultures money. I wish I could have billed the nurses directly. Or that we had a national healthcare scheme like a normal country.

I had planned a quick visit before any of this happened. Living remotely, I usually picked something between holidays so it was cheap. I moved up the trip as he had a few more falls and nurses were seeing signs that this time was different. Once he went into hospice, I moved my flights once more. At 1AM the morning of my flight, we got the call that he fell again and broke his hip. It was time. One more booking modification, my brother booked his, and I arrived as soon as I could.

As to why he fell again, no one could say exactly. Basically, dementia robbed him of the ability to remember that he could no longer safely transfer to the wheelchair on his own. A bed alarm was ordered, installed, and in use according to every person I talked to. He was as safe as we could make him, but he still fell. And that brought on his end. The call with the doctor from the airport was frank and informative. He was in pain. No surgery would help him heal and recover. He might never wake up from an operation. Again, it was time.

For those without hospice experience, pain is the one thing they handle incredibly well. Slow decline has no timeline (my biological mother languished in hospice for a year and a half), but a painful fracture has a procedure: make them comfortable. Blocks on opiates and pain management regimes are pulled back in favor of less pain. Nurses came in the middle of the night to start medication, mostly morphine and anti-anxiety meds so he wouldn't get restless and shift, causing more pain. The nurses were there daily to guide on-site caregivers and techs to reposition him when he tried to get up. And, not understanding where the pain was coming from, he did try to get up! It took 4 people to get him settled again. I’m glad I was there to see him, even though I couldn’t help. After the fracture, his pain required medication every four hours, then two, then hourly. We could tell his body was shutting down. He never got up after the first full night and slipped away in the early hours a few weeks after Thanksgiving.

The last five years in Memory Care were the best we could give him. More importantly, they were what he needed to be safe and free of anxiety that so often characterizes dementia in a non-specialized environment. I certainly couldn’t have handled him, family issues, and a job to care for him. But he had the resources to provide that for himself, overseen by his grandchildren thanks to his sound financial planning. We could all be so lucky.

My brother and I cleared out his effects over the next week. We hung out in childhood haunts and visited friends and family. From the care home and a small storage unit, we divvied up his remaining belongings. Some went to Goodwill, and I shared a tender moment with the worker that took them from me and could tell I was bruised. Others went to family. And some were packaged up for the flights home top opposite sides of the country. My brother and I cried and reminisced, and it felt more restorative than anything in the previous five years. We took the time to savor his memory and his passing.

In his bedside drawer, I found the last piece of the puzzle: a noisy buzzer box with a red light. The pigtail was unplugged. The battery case was broken open, and the battery was inserted backwards. The bedside clip that held it in place was bent and broken. In some midnight hour, I would guess he got tired of the beeping of the bed alarm. Or was anxious not to alert the nurses. Or just wanted to get up on his own to assert his independence. Whatever the inscrutable reasons, he disabled it and placed it tidily into a drawer for me to find. A testament to his tenacity, to do things his way until the end.

Nolzur's Marvelous Minis - Palette Cleansers

I call these small projects Palette Cleansers because I paint them in between other big projects like whole army units or big figures and terrain. The Nolzur Minis by Wizkids are cheap, already assembled and primed. They can be frustrating with mold lines, but they are decent enough at 3 ft. These usually come in two sculpts per pack.  I picked one and surplused the other for trades or teaching others how to paint.

Golden Dragonborn Sorcerer

Classic Barbarian with Sword

Warmage with Spear

Mustard-colored Wizard with Staff

Bronze/Gold Dragonborn Cleric or Wizard with Staff and flowing Blue and White Cloak

Red Dragonborn Cleric with Green Mace

Purple Wizard with Green Fire and Staff

 

 

 Black Dragonborn with Spear and Shield

 

Reading Lilith's Brood after Black Lives Matter

DEF CON 31 had Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis series on it's reading list next to Snow Crash. This recommendation came after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests which brought antiracist and critical Black history topics to the forefront of public life. Cold War and genetic engineering fears appear throughout without feeling dated, and the three novels remain provocative as they are firmly steeped in the author's American upbringing in Black culture. The old and new contexts brought out the enduring richness of this landmark Black sci-fi author's work. 

Lilith, the series' namesake, takes the reader through her personal salvation at the hands of an alien species. Salvation comes at a price for humanity as a whole, and it brings to mind historical and societal dilemmas of colonizers and colonized, enslavers and enslaved, and generational consequences to descendants of these groups. The aliens are the Oankali, a multi-system species of natural genetic engineers. They are collectors of genetic difference, and they use the genes they collect to improve themselves as they move from star to star. The action is driven by the aliens who claim that humanity has lost the right to earth due to their fierce intelligence combined with hierarchical nature leading to nuclear war. The humans that remain are sterilized and ushered into a breeding program where the Oankali will mix a new species that overcomes this core conflict in human nature.

Elements of Black history are recalled throughout the novels. The Oankali remove tumors from Lilith in an episode that recalls the plight of Henrietta Lacks who provided the initial cells for the first immortalized cell lines called HeLa, and consent is further challenged as it is revealed that children are produced from cell lines of dead or aging humans in the name of saving the species. Children produced from unions and admixture of alien DNA is a central point of later novels. The revulsion in humans that parent admixed children recalls discussions in the African American community of what life must have been like for enslaved people that had children by their enslavers, and it explores generational implications of such couplings for both parents and children. These are obviously informed by the author's personal experience as well as historical accounts of abuse and discrimination against those of African descent in the Americas. Those looking for similar examples that will shock and horrify you should seek out recent popular literature such as Ibram X Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning and the journalistic 1619 Project.

The speculative framework dispenses with some broader cultural discussions without feeling dismissive. The Earth has been colonized, for good or for ill, and the humans have deeply limited choices. Yet this is not a colonial narrative that lauds benevolent overseers for saving benighted natives. Humans never give up on Lilith's original plan to "Run, Hide, and Fight," and the human characters do not romanticize their plight as something fortunate. The concession the humans extract from the Oankali by creating a non-admixed human colony on Mars is explicitly called out for what it is: a glorified reservation. The damage is done to Earth, so it is incumbent for the humans to decide what to do next. The aliens, to their credit, recognize that they make mistakes and commit serial offenses even as they desperately try to integrate humans into their galactic lifecycle in a uniquely alien and much deeper way than historical colonizers have ever admitted or attempted.

After a summer of protests and lockdown reading lists, Butler's adventure on and above a remade Earth shows how deeply human power dynamics of oppressor and oppressed are. While alien pheromones strip consent and poison unions, the books never answer whether Lilith was right when she started the admixture of humans and Oankali. No one ever lets her forget her role as "the Judas goat." This is not a tale of liberation through force or thought.  It is an exploration of consequence and implication when the immovable alien force overtakes a wounded people and runs up against an immovable will to be human. Even as the third book comes to a close, the admixed inhabitants of Lo establish their humanity through perseverance rather than force. Withdrawal of consent, even temporarily, becomes radical when coercion is structural, biological. These have echoes in strikes, riots and protests that rocked the US and the world. We might not have total control of our selves, our emissions, and the external implications of our purchases and relationships. But even a temporary withdrawal of consent can give us power to change the deeper structure of our evolving society.

Catan’s Legacy: The Passing of Klaus Teuber

Some board game designers are mathematicians and churn out balanced experiences with finely tuned mechanics. Some are computer scientists whose games are too complicated to contemplate. Klaus Teuber was a dental technician who launched a revolution. He passed this week at 70 from a sudden and severe illness (https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168256131/catan-board-game-klaus-teuber-dies). Allow me to add to the chorus of retrospectives to eulogize and celebrate him.

Klaus entered my life through college neighbors and date nights. Indirect competition was a welcome relief from Monopoly, though its roll-for-resources turns are eerily similar. My copy of Catan still bills itself as “The Settlers of Catan,” with a decidedly colonial illustration on the front. This perspective was all too common in the interregnum between Avalon Hill’s heyday and the very golden age it kicked off, and the switch was a bellwether of larger industry growth and acceptance. It introduced so many people to the hallmarks of the Golden Age to come: A deck of cards replaces the dice to even out the odds of each number showing up, gold salves player frustration over wasted turns, and endless spin-offs for every player-count, taste, and budget allow players to craft their favorite version. Catan was my first truly modern game.

My dad was an old-school war gamer. Hex and chit classics littered the top shelves of our closets. His old lead soldiers mixed in with my Lego (gulp). We played Risk and Hero Quest with him as a child, Warhammer for summers home from college, and Star Realms as his health declined. We played Catan together. We played everything together. Before I knew it, he was gone. He would be turning 70 this May.

Catan shaped my gaming life. I played it again for the first time with my kid in Klaus’ honor. No expansions or house rules. It took ten minutes before someone said, “I’ve got wood for sheep,” and the dice hated me all night, just like old times. Its clunky charm was amplified by memories of games past. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the evening.

Klaus won’t be the first titan to leave us.  Remember that his most famous creation didn’t become truly great without moving forward. And it never would have woven itself into the fabric of our lives without being worth countless sessions with those we love most. Let’s play one in his honor and keep moving forward.

The Longest Goodbye: Dementia’s Impact on Caregivers

 Note: This post is a part of a series detailing my family's fight with dementia and elder abuse.

Your loved one is finally safe. Whether they are with you at home, or they’re in a skilled memory care facility built to handle their needs, you have handled the most traumatic portions of their care, and you have a roadmap to ensure they are cared for until you have to say goodbye forever. Along the way, it is incredibly likely that you have neglected your own needs while seeing to those of your partner, parent, or trusting friend. This is an account of the curve balls dementia threw at us, and what I did to ensure dementia didn’t rob me of the pride and confidence I should have after handling such heartbreaking circumstances. And it’s a log of all the ways I get to say goodbye one last time.

I’ll start with self-doubt because it hits the hardest and earliest. There was suspicion that something wasn’t right five years before he entered memory care. The doubt made me questioning who my grandfather was after my grandmother died. When he let transients destroy his house and fought their eviction, was it him under all the erratic behavior, or was he actually sick? This cut me, as a caregiver, to my core. How could I have been a good grandson when I let this happen? Was I too busy with my own life to see the signs? But the objective truth was that my brother and I did what we could as soon as we could, and our efforts were neither insufficient nor did they overstep boundaries.

When I look back, the diagnosis and financial control that finally got him the totality of services he needed was not some decisive lightning stroke but instead a culmination of almost twenty years of care and guidance. It started when Trust papers were drawn up by my grandfather before I’d even left home. It continued through evictions and wellness checks that didn’t go our way, and it is still running as my brother and I navigate his life in memory care amid his declining health and our own personal challenges.

I fought doubt by remembering that just being there for him was more than most people could handle. The anxious calls from neighbors and extended family were helpful, but we were the ones that had to file eviction paperwork and wait for the constable to arrive. We had to deal with lawyers and detectives, doctors and nurses, to make sure all his needs were taken care of. And he would not be where he is today without our help. The reward from this exercise was a quiet affirmation in your own memory of how you helped when they needed it most. Something that would outlast their forgetfulness.

The second challenge is exhaustion. You can only do so much for your loved-one. It is OK to pause your attention for a moment, an afternoon, a weekend, to ensure you are not overwhelmed. Dementia has no cure. It is a progressive disease. Abusers may attempt to weaponize your absence, dementia may drive your loved one to fall apart as soon as you step away, and every call from the staff at the home will put your heart back into your throat. The fight is long, and your loved one will not fare better if you end up at the end of your rope. Take some time for sleep, food, and general decompression after dealing with dementia issues for an extended period of time. Reading about dementia can be helpful, but put down the research and pick up a fun fiction book once in a while. Write poetry, sing in the car, or find affirmations to recite when you get down. We’re in a journal and set milestones on your path to help you measure how much you have contributed to improving their quality of life. Taking stock in a quiet time, even if you have to use ear plugs to make it, will keep you supplied with enough spoons for the bigger challenges.

 While I don’t have experience living with a loved one with dementia in my own home, memory care has presented its own unique set of challenges to my self-image as a caregiver. Separation made me feel neglectful for placing them in 24hr care. Worse, Covid hit less than a year after entering care, and they were in quarantine for much longer than anyone thought. I felt like I had to say goodbye without the assurance that I would ever see him again.  This idea that only inattentive people send relatives to care homes could not have been further from the truth. Getting them into care cause an immediate jump in their stability. Better still, it was a huge weight off the shoulders of our family. My grandfather was admitted to memory care over the Thanksgiving holiday, and he was acclimated and forgetting his abusers by Christmas. Animosity towards family members took longer to ebb, but the staff played a huge role in redirecting his attention.

In general, rely on the staff and their assessment of the needs of your loved one. You might visit or call periodically, but they’re there every day, all day. And there are plenty of opportunities to see to the needs of your charge. Each facility is different, but you may need to arrange hair cuts, outside doctor visits, and prescription refills. You may be able to pick up your loved one for lunch. Trust the judgement of the staff, and take the time they give you to regain the energy you need to work for yourself. Despite the tragic accounts you hear on the news of abusive caregivers, most care facilities are not bad places. Trust the research you did before admission. Trust the doctors and nurses on staff, and trust your own instincts when talking or visiting. While your care and attentiveness are just as vital now as before, being on guard every moment is not helpful. Relying on other providers to be there in the case of a fall, a bout of dementia-caused depression or confusion, or an afternoon meal means you get to choose to help without becoming resentful.

I have a family and career that means I cannot devote all my time to handling the needs of my grandfather.  Even if I did have the time, it is not healthy to spend it all in their service. If you are not able to find or afford a care home, be sure to spread out your obligations to your loved one through adult day care, other family members, or even their old friends and family of similar age. It takes a village to handle the needs of your loved one. Don’t close yourself off to help out of stigma or a sense of martyrdom.

The cynic in me wants to be melancholic about how we treat people with dementia. At worst, I am confronted with a feeling that we are warehousing our loved ones. At prohibitive cost, we may be draining generational wealth to, at-best, ensure a minimal quality of life or stave off a progressive disease in a single person. The broader existential questions raised by dementia healthcare and similar chronic and debilitating conditions should never overshadow the real care you provide for your loved one day after day. You are moving mountains. You are providing loving care. And they can feel your love even if they can no longer express it in words.

Having a loved one with dementia means that you get to say the longest goodbye. They may have lost the ability to express their feelings in the same way, but they can feel your calm and care every time you visit with them for just a bit longer.

This is not a comprehensive log of all struggles you may face by any means. But I hope these personal accounts can help you overcome what dementia throws at you. And I hope it can give you the strength to withstand those challenges to see a better day when we know more and can do more to help the ones we love.

Selling Lego - Memories and Moving On

In May of 2019, I embarked on an emotional journey that would end with me saying goodbye to most of my Lego bricks.  

Moving across the country with a 26ft U-Haul afforded a lot of wiggle roomwhen deciding what to move, and I wasn't ready to part with my most sentimental items. I wasn't prepared for the emotional flood when a friend suggested I part ways with my childhood Lego block collection. They were milestones of my childhood: I could recall which ones I got when, and the time I spent assembling castles or space ships seemed like bastions of stability in the midst of family turmoil. I was an especially fastidious child, and I made sure I had all the instructions, and I even have a scrapbook of letters I sent to Lego of America looking to reclaim a few pieces that had gone missing. I was obsessed.

I discovered a Bricks and Minifigs in our local mall, and my ears perked up when they said they bought old sets. After 12 long years of waiting, I realized my son just wasn't into them, and Marie Kondo'ing the lot seemed more and more attractive than keeping them. The rules were the collection had to be unpolluted by inferior MegaBlocks and K'NEX. They also couldn't have damaged bricks that had fallen to teeth, sun, and other damage.  They would pay a premium for complete sets and would also buy in bulk. So I had my work cut out for me:

In the end, I organized by color to make the assembly and culling easier, and then I assembled all the sets I could muster.  Countless yard sale acquisitions and thrift store hauls meant I was swimming in Tyco and Megablox as well as a fair amount of discarded Happy Meal toys. Fifty liters of Lego dwindled to a few hard-to-categorize pieces as we pawed and pushed. I made one last ditch effort to see if my son showed enough interest to keep them, but alas.  He was more interested in the sale and conversion to cash and other fun activities. As we assembled and found pieces had gone missing. In almost all cases, an hour in the bins at the resale store lead me to the right pieces. We were whole again!

The culling and assembly took us the better part of a month.  As much as it cleared space, it also helped me process the loss. I used my saved copies or hunted up online versions of the instructions for each set. I resolved early on to keep a few of the most sentimental ones instead of trying to save everything. One of my earliest memories was of Lunar Lander 6881 which I won at a raffle during a two-night stay in Child Haven after my brother and I were taken from my mom by NV-DCFS. I kept my coolest acquisitions, the big ship from the Ice Planet set (I never got the base), and the medium Imperial Navy ship for which I still had the sails.  And I made an effort to return the classic Blacktron ship to my brother after replacing the most missing pieces of any in my collection. I felt whole, even as I was loading the completed sets into the car for the last time.

 

The sale was quick, cash was in hand (I don't even remember the number now, but it was over $200), and we were back on the road. Several weeks later, I visited the store again to find my own sets back on the shelves ready to start their second life. The big sets will probably sit on a shelf until I have grandkids (if I even remember to pull them out). But I kept a set of my favorite minifigs just for show. They reside on my wall in a shadowbox.  They deserve the rest. 

Tools for Painting Miniatures

I post a lot about painting, but choosing and collecting the tools behind the craft can be just as interesting.  Here is a run-down of the tools that make my miniatures look less dull. For those looking for help building miniatures, I'll do a separate post about assembly tools and decals.

Brushes

Brushes are the vehicle for all your artistic endeavor with miniatures.  They can also be really expensive! Most guides focus on what to do (and not do) with your brushes, so let me focus on how to buy them.

For starting painters, don't worry about having all the right brushes, and especially don't buy the expensive ones! Take your starter kit brushes, maybe a bigger one for dry brushing, and learn on them. Learn to draw the brush away from the point instead of stubbing it into corners. Learn to load up the brush less than halfway. Above all, wash it thoroughly and prevent paint from drying in the ferrule. You will screw it up eventually, and your beloved companion will split, and then you can bury them. Keep a few of these starter brushes around for applying washes. Here's a picture of some of my first brushes that have bent and split over time due to abuse. Time to retire them from detail work.

Time for retirement, old friends

Keep your old crappy watercolor brushes for applying shades and washes

You will hit your stride with the next set of brushes. Having graduated from the $10 twelve-pack of watercolor brushes, the world splits into synthetic and sable. Synthetic are just that: plastic bristles.  And they wear over time mush faster than natural hair. Citadel just released their latest STC set, but The Army Painter brush set is probably the best value for your money. It comes with enough variety that you can learn what brushes are your favorite (and some editions come with a free sable brush, neat!).  If you already have strong opinions or lack options at your local store, you may be able to find quality synthetics like this Princeton Velvetouch Round 2 for a reasonable price at art stores that aren't expressly for nerds. Expect to pay about $6-8 per brush. And don't stress about getting the tiniest of brushes for the detail. The important part of detail work is holding a point and not how big the brush is! Even with better synthetics, you will gradually see bent tips as you use the brush.  This is how synthetics wear, and it is totally normal. If you treat them right, your first synthetic should last a squad or 10 figures. You will know your brush skills are maturing when a fresh brush lasts a whole army.

My standard kit

Curling bristles are normal, and they can get into tight corners!

 

Standard drybrush kit

Finally we come to the joyous pinnacle of your painting kit, the sable hair brushes. Yes, these brushes are made with actual animal hair.  And they are superior in almost every way to synthetics, but their price also puts them out of reach for most people.  They hold their shape better when loaded up with paint, and their hairs hold more paint so you can cover more area without going back to the palette. You probably only need one sable brush to start.  Grow your collection slowly, and they will last you forever. A note that the Kolinsky Sable is endangered in Siberia and import is difficult at best. So you're probably not getting real Kolinsky sable for under $25 a brush. Here again, Army Painter wins for having the right brushes for hobbyists. I inherited my Regiment brush, and it is still going strong after a decade of use by my father. By the time you're ready for your next sable brush, you will have enough experience to know if you want to go all-in on the Winsor & Newtons.

A few notes on storage: Try to keep the plastic tip covers for all your brushes.  It's the easiest way to protect them from accidental damage in transit.  If you find your collection growing and cannot bear to part with your new friends, make or buy a brush case in hard plastic (if you don't need to travel and know they will always be sitting up) or fabric like the one pictured below.  I threw it together from duck cloth in about an hour on a sewing machine with basic measurements. Your local art supply or fabric store has something similar for sale.

Citadel Colours App

Available for both iOS and Android, The Citadel Colour app helps me create and remember my color schemes.  I can create projects, track my color inventory, and keep a shopping list of paints for the next time I hit the local game store.  It comes loaded with a diverse palette, but it only offers the Citadel range from Games Workshop. If you use dropper bottles from Vallejo or the new Two Thin Coats range from Duncan Rhodes, you're out of luck. It also doesn't have cloud storage, so switching phones means transferring your inventory, projects, and history as well (my scheme images come from doing CYA in case I lose my phone). Notwithstanding, it has worked to keep me organized.  I would love to know if there were some non-GW options available out there to cover the various paint brands I might use.

  

Storage for Paint

I paint at both my house and my SO's, so this 48-bottle nail polish organizer is perfect for carrying almost my entire collection of paint pots or droppers when I'm being indecisive.  The important part of storage is being able to see the shade without having to look at the label.  Having a clear storage system that can corral a large collection while keeping them visible is ideal. Injection-molded two-sided plastic carrying cases for nail polish go by many brand names on Amazon, and they'll all run you about twenty-five bucks. I haven't found a better mobile solution than this, but I would also suggest similar nail polish storage for a workbench installation.  Both tiered shelves and wall-mount nail polish racks are going to be way more affordable, and see-through, than any miniature-specific laser cut racks you might find at your local game store.

Painting Handle

Whether you buy the Citadel handle or print your own, These little contraptions keep your mitts off the details until they are sufficiently primed sealed.  This is doubly important with Contrast Paints as it can almost be rubbed off like chalk when applied in thin coats and handled with your bare hands. You can even temporarily glue a base to a larger miniature like a vehicle so it can be mounted on the painting handle. Get one.  It's worth it.

 

The Wet Palette

I have used ceramic tiles and even tried Citadel's Palette Paper, but I will never go back now that I've started using a wet palette. The idea is simple: parchment floated atop a spongey pad allows water to pass from the wet pad, through the parchment, and into the paint. The paint doesn't bleed down into the pad, and instead stays hydrated as it dries from the top down. This flow retains water in your paint longer so it remains workable. But it also keeps your blends around longer without drying out, and it speeds up the "always thin your paints" advice that was key to so many of us making the leap from gloopy to gorgeous. Simply put, a wet palette will make getting paint onto models easier. Even if you have your doubts, you should give it a shot. And I'm going to show you how to do that as cheaply as possible. 

This is one area where I have not graduated to a professional solution because I'm so satisfied with how my DIY palette is working. The key is getting a truly air tight container like this now-discontinued Snapware. All it needs is a shallow depth into which you can lay something absorbent (like paper towels) and top that with a layer of parchment. The shallow depth allows you to have a low angle of attack with your brush.  You want this when rolling your brush or mixing paint around. The one I bought is deep, but the two-well insert can be removed with one well used as a wet palette and another used to hold the wiping cloth. The deep well is handy for transporting the paint itself.

On sale, it was cheapest of my options

All layers visible (palette, folded paper towel pad, and parchment)

All soaked up; you can see the water beading on the surface

If you don't want to DIY it, there is a $10 wet palette on Amazon right now that couldn't be any worse than what you're painting on. The Army Painter palette is possibly the most widely known.  It comes with a pad, sheets of their "special paper" that looks and feels like parchment, and brush storage.

Note: Since first publishing this, I obtained the Red Grass Games palette and have been loving it. Whatever you choose, get to it! It will change how you paint forever.

Photos

Susan Sontag once wrote, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” And the pandemic has only heightened the importance of good pictures to show your friends why you can't come out hiking on a Sunday morning.

My main photo rig is a photo tent lined with white polyester and a selection of backdrops that drape down the back in a long curve to remove seams from the finished picture.  In the past, I have built photo tents out of PVC and cotton, or vellum pasted to a rough frame of furring strips.  What really matters is the next part: I point as much direct light as possible at the walls of the tent in the hopes that it will diffuse through and evenly light my miniature from all possible angles.

For the camera, I will use a smartphone camera in a pinch, but I prefer a DLSR with a macro lens.  This combo gives ultra-detailed shots for individual minis. Remove the macro for group shots, and make sure you are lining everyone up in your depth of field. There are packs of lenses available for smartphones too.  They work, and they are a whole lot cheaper than a new DSLR just so you can take pretty pictures of your knick knacks, but you do you!

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

Oddments

Stop struggling with a yellow overhead light.  Get a portable or installable full-spectrum lamp or bulb like an Ott Light or LED strip.  If you haven't received your baby book update since Middle School, your grandmother's scrapbooking light is probably up for grabs! They are cheaper now than ever before, so buy one of your own rather than stealing hers. I combine the LED strip pictured below with a Costco-bought Ott Lite that even has wireless charging built in.

Applying technical paints like snow and muck is 10x easier with a sculpting tool.  These also work with green stuff, so get a big pack of them and find just the right tool for those nooks and crannies. Moving around muck is also a good use for those small brushes you can no longer use but cannot bear to throw away.

Paint cups wit ribbed bottoms can be hell on your bristles, so go easy, Bob Ross. The wide bottom on the Citadel pot can help keep it from spilling pink paint onto the carpet of your room.  Do that too much and your partner/landlord might get stabby.

Even if you aren't painting regularly on a tile anymore, a ceramic well palette can help mix larger batches of Contrast or Washes. Cover the palette with saran wrap and it will retain water like a wet palette. 

Militarum Tempestus Start Collecting: Reliquary Squad and Taurox

I bought a Tempestus Scions Start Collecting box from Games Workshop, part of their Adeptus Militarum line, with the intention of painting them in memoriam for my father who passed in 2017. After four years and some tribulation, I completely painted the entire box.

The initial plan for the Scions was a true-to-life Reliquary Guard: I wanted to display them with my father's urn, but it seemed like a little much after ruminating on it for a while. I took several runs at the squad, but my painting was very inconsistent as well. Did I know enought to do them justice? After a move to Washington and the start of the pandemic, I had no more excuses.  I worked a color at a time and taught myself highlighting, wet blending, and how to use a wet palette. I also started managing my paints and color schemes with the Citadel Colour app. I seriously skilled up on these minis. I finished the squad in March of 2020. Or so I thought.

After the highlights and before 'ard Coat for the lenses, I needed to seal the minis with matte spray. So on April 1, 2020, I lined them up and hit them with Testors Dullcote. Except something was wrong. It wasn't Dullcote; it was white primer in that tiny can. Some had it worse than others, but all were at least speckled with the brightest of white dots where perfect highlights had shown through only moments earlier. In my desperation, I tried washing them. I tried brushing the primer away with a toothbrush.  I almost tossed them in the trash can. But I couldn't, after buying them in mourning, throw them away in despair. So they sat, dusty white, for the rest of 2020.

It took a year to pull myself together and get the courage to face them again.  Normally, I paint one color at a time from base to highlights. But I knew that looking at the dusty white splotches would demotivate me. So I first blocked in all the colors and eradicated the evidence of my carelessness. Laying down base colors first allowed me to get most borders clean and crisp and clean up any mistakes almost immediately.  If I happened to stray, I did not need to redo the base, layer, and highlights. This worked so well that I would try it again on the Taurox with great success. Another delight was that, in spite of the minis bearing two complete paint jobs, the detail remains crisp on most surfaces. Praise the Lord of Layers, Duncan Rhodes! To remember the mishap in as good a spirit as possible, I added snow to all the bases. They were reborn after almost going in the trash, and I could not have been happier.

As the first vehicle under my brush since my Techmarine army, the Taurox taught me about the mechanics of painting vehicles. It is a ghastly beast of an impractical APC with serious OSHA concerns (laser cannons with a fire line that shoots across the side doors, 4 tracks instead of wheels, brilliant!). I applied all I learned on the squad to their new ride.  I painted and repainted until I could get that perfect pop from highlighting the deep blue-green tones into a brilliant and sharp white corner.  There are no painting handles for these big boys unless you glue one on, so I also learned to be careful with the corners lest you rub off all your hard work flipping the tank every which way in your hands. And I learned to block in the major color on vehicles including the first layer.  Building up the true and main color of the hull before the rest of the base coats allows you to get those most-prevalent colors out of the way fast, and without too much muss or fuss over stray paint. My understanding of how light plays across a geometric surface also improved. I am finally looking forward to painting my Knights and any vehicles I need for my Adeptus Mechanicus force that is taking shape.

Yes, painting miniatures can sometimes be relaxing, but mistakes like mine bring up the possibility for therapy in the creative process of building and painting these miniatures. I took a terrible time in my life and turned out a touchstone for future me. And I have tangible evidence of my stubbornness in the face of things going awry. I would rather not have had it happen, but I'm glad the salvage operation netted a good-looking squad as well as some soul-searching in high-definition.

And so, without further ado, and with the minis safely primed SEALED this time, here are my repainted Tempestus Scions in all their glory.

Taurox Prime

 

Squad Detail

Citadel Colours Palette