Author: Laura Highcove

Lost Childhood

Laura Highcove

So I lived in Richmond, VA for most of my formative years, though I actually lived south of Richmond in Chesterfield County. Chesterfield County had a working farm called the Chesterfield Berry Farm, and most every year my mom would take me and my brother and sister to go pick strawberries on said farm.

Even when I moved away to Blacksburg, many years I went back around Mother’s Day to spend time with family and to go to this berry farm. I will share some of the wonderful pictures of the Berry Farm that I have.

While the picture says 2005, this is pretty typical of each year, notice the beautiful rows of strawberry plants, all big and healthy. Nice rows lined with straw. Huge strawberries just waiting to be picked, and plenty of them to fill our containers.

But this year when we went, apparently the farm had been passed on to the two sons and…well they don’t seem to have the same care as their parents.

I didn’t take more pictures because I was rather disgusted with the whole thing. Unlike past years, the wagon dropped us off, there was no one to direct which rows to go pick in to spread out the pickers, so everyone was just in the same area that had probably been picked over in past days as well. Weeds were abundant and huge, the plants themselves seemed to be struggling to even grow. The straw was old and rotting. There were beetles in almost all of the strawberries that had managed to ripen. And strawberries that hadn’t been good enough had been left to rot on the plants.

It did make me realize that there was probably a lot of work gone into the fields in past years to make them as beautiful as they were, but I can’t believe that the owners thought it was okay to send customers out into fields that they obviously didn’t care about. I would have much rather be told they were not opening fields for pickers this year than to have seen the fields in that state.

Gryffin Update

Laura Highcove

So I have been doing a lot of work on the warhammer gryffin. Besides the modeling work to put it together, and turn Karl Franz into a high elf with a high elf spear, and Will shaving off the “karl Franz” from the breast plate piece I wanted to use, there was some actual painting.

First thing I did was spray paint it black. I prefer black. Dunno why. White spray paint and I don’t really get along. Then I painted the top of the wings the foundation blue, and the bottom of the wings foundation light gray. (Yeah, I could look up their actual names, but blech.)

And then the blue got a blue wash, and the gray got a black wash. Crazy innovative rite?

Then I put white on the underside of the wings, leaving the dark recesses, but my white and I have never really gotten along (it’s something about that color, I swear) so a lot of places ended up grayer than I wanted. It was horrible and tedious. (The picture below only the chest has the white done, the wings are still only gray with a black wash.)

Then I used pictures of red-tailed hawks as inspiration, and painted on scorched brown (I use that brown a lot, so I remember it’s name!) patterns to the underside of the wings. Also stupid tedious.

But then! After I had painted on the brown, I didn’t like the look of the white, since it was so uneven and streaky looking, so I threw another black wash over the underside of the winds. For a bit I panicked, thinking I had ruined everything, but I went back and outlined the feathers in white, and started making white detail pulled from the outside of the feather toward the inside in uneven strokes, and it’s actually starting to look really good. Just more tedium. So below you can see the brown patterning, and on the right wing (your left) the first five primaries have the new white detail.

Update

Laura Highcove

I got away from posting everyday, which I really want to do. But I think I just have to do it in the evening instead of the morning, since I have more time in the evening. Anyway, I still haven’t missed any days of running which is pretty awesome. Nick is getting taller, but is still gangly. I’ve started framing Tori again. And I’m setting aside time each evening to work on my stories. All in all, pretty cool.

Tamineil

Laura Highcove

Tami is a new character that is actually my 5th Edition character, taken from one of my stories. She is the fighter class. She uses a bow and two daggers that are sheathed in the small of her back. This mini doesn’t really have the daggers, but it does at least have one blade, and it’s in the correct position, so it works for me.

The color of the fabric is actually a mix of hawk turquoise and the different shades of green. I wanted a green-teal color and I think it really came out great. Man did I get lucky with those eyes.

Babies outside

Laura Highcove

So we’ve been trying to get the broodmares outside for over a week now, except for the forecast of cold. It has finally got up to a reasonable temperature, so the broodmares and babies are now in the field behind the outdoor arena. I will miss having Nick inside so I can see him whenever, but I’m sure he’ll be much happier out there, and will grow up big and strong!

Cold

Laura Highcove

So March was really warm, unseasonably so. It was nice for my beginnings of exercising, but then one day it rained and I realized that running in the rain would suck because I would be wet all day. I then remembered that we have an all-weather-facility at Advantage Ranch, meaning I can run inside! Well when April hit, the weather decided to make up for not being cold in March and I decided that I could also run inside when it’s too cold to comfortably run outside. I mean it’s exercising, but I don’t have to be miserable to make it effective.

However, inside does not have the same hill effect that running up and down the driveway does, so I decided I might as well go right to running two minutes and walking one, which I did today. Not sure if I could do that going up the driveway yet, but I can work toward it.

Also, yesterday, I found a pair of jeans in my dresser that have been there for months. I had bought a bunch of jeans at one point, and grabbed a different cut. Though it was the same size as the pants I had tried on, I could not get this pair of pants on and I put it in my dresser since I couldn’t wear it. (I keep all my wearing clothes in the closet.) Well it seems with my running and eating healthier, I now fit into those jeans, and they make my butt look good!! Which is convenient because the other jeans I have that make my butt look good are getting so big it was a bit inconvenient to wear them. :p

Griffy!

Laura Highcove

So by the name of my site, you might be able to tell that I like gryffins. Today at the store Blake gave me the new Warhammer: Karl Franz on Deathclaw. I don’t play Warhammer, I just paint the miniatures I like (you’ll see a lot of my high elves in later posts) so I wasn’t really keeping up with the new models coming out. This one was a complete surprise as a belated birthday present. As of now I’ve just cut it out and pieced it together with painter’s tape. It is quite the impressive figure. I’m going to have to do some modding to it to make the rider a high elf (since that’s my favorite army) and make the gryffin’s armour look a little more high elfy.

I’m planning on the body being painted like a black leopard, with blue overtones. Not sure on what bird I’ll model the head and wings, or I might just wing it. Haha. Get it?

Tela and Tessa: My first painted miniatures

Laura Highcove

So I play D&D at a local game store called Fun n Games. There is fun there, and also games. We use miniatures since the introduction of the D&D mini line, which is around when I became aware of the fact that there were other miniature games out in the world.

So I picked out a mini from the reaper catalog, and did my best painting it. At the time I was super happy with how it turned out.

The above mini was actually used for a character in the Tower Campaign, I was currently playing in. A level 3 Warden in 4th Edition named Tela. I had trouble with her shield arm falling off multiple times despite being pinned (my first attempt, suggested by the owner of the store who is quite the modeler and painter). I ended up keeping it on with a glob of green stuff that was never painted after the fact. It’s pretty messy looking in general, but is still proudly my first ever mini.

And this mini opened up my chronic desire to be artistic on top of other people’s work. I have done it in the past by coloring in photoshop, pictures that were drawn by other people. So the natural progression, of course, is to paint figures modeled by other people.

The second miniature I got was for one of my story characters. She is a weaponmaster and…well I just kinda liked the mini.

And you might go…wtp? That mini actually looks like…good compared to the first one. Well in between the first and the second miniature, I purchased the book: How to Paint Citadel Miniatures. It has a lot of good tutorials for beginning painters and I super enjoyed it. And I’ve always been rather artistic in general, so as soon as I got a little technique I was able to improve quite hard.