Finally the move is over. Months of hard work have finally paid off, my family and I have settled in the new house. There's still a lot of work to be done, but at least we can shift to a lower gear again and take our time unpacking and installing everything since there aren't any real deadlines anymore.

I promised you updates on the new painting studio I am about to install well here it is: right

now I can't even start planning it! The room where I will be placing my painting desk, which we have dubbed the office room for now, is still filled with a huge load of boxes and bags as result of the move. So we need to clear that room first. After that is done a big cupboard which was in

our bedroom in our previous house will have to be reassembled there, to contain all kinds of non-painting related stuff. When that is done I can measure everything up and start thinking about the layout of the desks and other furniture.

The move was a huge effort but it was really worth it. The new house is beautiful and it's really

enjoyable to have more space: it's more than twice the size of our previous house. And the garden is about 10 times as big :) The picture you see here is some kind of rare Japanese tree which happens to be planted in the garden by the previous owners. I'm probably going to redesign the entire garden in the next one or two years, but this beautiful tree will stay in it.

Last week my new supply of W&N brushes arrived. I will keep them safely in the box for now. Today my copy of the new CoolMiniOrNot 2008 annual also arrived. It's really a great source of inspiration and I will probably write a bit more about the book here soon.

About a year ago I made the switch from Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes (which I was using for several years then) to Rosemary & Co Series 33. I was very pleased with the brush, even with shipping included they were less than 75% of the price of a W&N brush. The only thing that I had had to get used to was the shorter and thinner handle. Loyal readers of my blog might remember I positioned the Rosemary & Co brushes on number 6 in my top 10 of 2009. Shortly after writing that article I ordered some more Rosemary brushes.

I've been using them intensively over the past few months but for some reason I wasn't as happy with them this time. From the 3 brushes I ordered one of them had a point which was splitting all the time. The points of the other ones weren't as crisp either. One of my retired W&N brushes even had a better tip still! And picking up that brush again was such a difference: the slightly thicker and longer handle really makes a difference when handling it.

This made me decide to take W&N in consideration again. Okay they are expensive, but quality comes with a price. And since the brush is the most important tool for miniature painting I'm prepared to pay for the superior quality of a W&N Series 7 brush. I've ordered a batch of 4 #1 brushes (depending on how much I paint my brushes last about 6 months) from Ken Bromley Art Supplies today, since they are running a 50% deal this week. I've also thrown in a some brush cleaner and color wheel.

Lessons learned? For me: "never change a winning team" sounds very appropriate. I was completely happy with my W&N brushes in the past so why did I switch to another brand?

The lesson I have for you is don't save money on a brush. It's the most important tool on your desk and yes, you will paint better with a good brush. W&N Series 7 are probably the best brushes out there. If you do not want to pay the price be sure to check out Rosemary & Co, they're actually very good and far better than anything you will find in the average gaming or modelling store.

EDIT: okay some comments and I want to add one important thing for those who want to buy Rosemary or W&N brushes, which aren't cheap of course. If you know you won't take proper care of your brushes, this means washing them out after every painting session, storing them properly, handling them with care while painting, then don't waste your money on them. They wear out as fast as any other cheaper brush, it's only when they're in perfect shape that they perform as they should be.

Hi there! Some of you might have been thinking where I've been, well as you might have heard I'm about to move into my new house. There's still an insane amount of work to be done but the end is in sight and we hope to move in by the end of this month.

Needless to say there isn't any time left for miniature painting. In fact I've packed up most of my stuff already.

The good news is that in my new house I will have a dedicated painting room of almost 20 square meters. So there will be plenty of room for a big desk, display cabinets, a dedicated photo setup etc. I really want my new studio to be installed perfectly before I start painting there. But of course the rest of the house has a higher priority.

I have some hopes to start painting again somewhere in October, but this will more probably be November or December or event next year.

Anyway I will be updating this blog from time to time. I still have a bunch of reviews ready to be published. Another thing you can expect are some posts concerning the furnishing and installation of the new painting studio.

Thank you for coming back to my blog and enjoy the nice weather (if you have any).

-Gerrie

I decided to start painting the two figures which belong to the 'HelsVakt' race. I think they are perfectly suited for an alternative skintone, so I used a mix of medium skintone and dark grey. And like I thought those Red Box Games figures are a blast to paint!

A while ago I got some Red Box Games figures, and I remember being almost speechless when I opened the envelope and studied these small wonders one by one. These are some of the finest figures I have ever seen... I will not spend more time praising them now, you will get a full review of them soon.

In the meantime, here's a very early work in progress of all four figures I got, ready to be primed:

Regular readers of this blog will remember this post where I unpacked a Kabuki Models figure I ordered. I finally started working on it last week. The skin is done, I'm not entirely happy with it (I had a slightly different color in mind) but I will to to fix this with some glazes.

Pretty pleased about the end result, especially because I didn't put that much time in. I don't think I spent more than 10 hours on it. Ok, it's not the best paintjob in the world, but I painted it up just for fun.