Not Making Progress/Five Hundred Hexes

It's been a busy week. I can't quite put a finger on what has made it busy but it has been none the less. There was a haircut, some laser cutting and tidying up along the way. Now it's a daddy daughter weekend and I am more than a little giddy.

The laser cutting was mostly terrain hexes. I am saying that there are five hundred of them but that's only because I am confident that there are five hundred of them but I think it's closer to six. This perhaps explains why I haven't done as much painting as I expected.

So there is definitely some progress. I will probably have a few hours tomorrow and maybe four hours on Sunday. So there is a chance I will hit my target for the week. It's not a good chance, but it's a chance.

Start Of The Week - Acres Of Opportunity

At some point in my old life I would have described this picture as offering acres of opportunity. That point was probably also the point I believed in the power of positive thinking. I suppose I could describe last weeks number as an all time high. Which it is although it really took three weeks to get here.

I use the old GDub pots as paint handles. As seen here, they are all empty. I can't recall the last time I had this many empty handles. It wasn't even the last time I moved. It's at least six or seven years.

So where to now? I need to finish the riders as dismounted figures. By finish, I really mean start. My current plan also calls to finish off all the metal minis I get this year. Which I may have made harder due to a special offer.

This week I will finish off the riders and dismounts. I will resist the urge to start anything else. With a view to a new project next week. So I guess I am looking at 22 minis this week and maybe starting the process of putting some plastic together. The latter is not filling me with joy abounding.

A New OCD Itch To Scratch

Most things I do in life, and especially hobby life is about making my life easier. All the paint racks and shelves you see in the background of my pictures are designed and cut by me. Everything used to be on simple stacks of wood, like ai still have on the bench but once all the paints ended up in Vallejo bottles, this wasn't working. I kept getting cascade failures. I would nudge one bottle and I would suddenly find a dozen of them on the bench.

So I transferred the ink. Then I transferred the Contrast Paints to more Vallejo bottles. I transferred some more GW paint to bottles. Finally, I trimmed the bits from almost all of the loose plastic frames I have hanging around.  All in all I have a bit more space.

This has taken me weeks. I guess it still isn't finished. Well it's mostly finished. It isn't an excuse for not finishing my target for the week. I am actually doing quite well.

Almost Done For The Week

I now have some time to paint. It's looking like tomorrow (today) will be a bit of a wash. Mainly because I am going to Salute🙂. So I thought I would push things a bit. So expecting a big push on Sunday.

I appear to have acquired another mini in the queue which is from Crooked Dice. As he has a fur cloak so I figured he should be with the ulfhunder. He was bought to be a Viking cleric. He fits in with the history. As there isn't much to the history, I could paint him pink and give him a feather boa and it would be impossible to call it anachronistic.

Given the amount of time I have had this week, the progress is better than expected. Given I have been having a good time away from the bench, I am happy with the progress. I'm not sure that The New Cruelty feels the same way.

The End Of The Week (24)

So the end of the week is here. Pretty sure my daughter had given the The Rona. I feel like kack and I can't taste anything. Not sure about smell as I am so full of snot. But I have managed the target of the week and I have already started on the stuff for next week.

This now completes my first two units for Sludge, both line infantry. They are now stuck to bases which need some texture. I can't say this is my best work. Well I could but this would be an outrageous lie. It is however good enough for the purpose intended, An army that is rarely going to get played.

For some reason I am feeling the need for structure. I have the bingo, but feel the need for something with a bit more crunch. So I have a plan.

2/3         24 mixed Sludge jagers/shock troops, bodyguards, foot knights

9/3         18 sludge pike build Sludge cavalry.

16/3         6 ulfhunder 3 mounted viking 

23/3       18 sludge zouaves

30/3       12 modern ish

6/4     12 Sludge mounted

13/4       12 da/fantasy 

20/4       12 sci fi ish

27/4      12 Sludge mounted 

4/5        12 Stargrave 

11/5          ? battletech 

18/5      6 Sludge crossbow, 18 Sludge crossbow

27/5        to OPFOR or not to OPFOR?

Now for next week. I wanted some more bodyguards. Just for a visual shorthand, bodyguards are equipped with axes. Then I wanted a couple of officers and a unit of foot knights. I can't remember if this is four or six figures, I will have what I will have. Then there are two units which could be jagers or shock troopers.

Then I am planning another few weeks of Sludge after this although I may have a palate cleanse. My plan as to paint all the stuff I got in York at show this year. All of this is now primed and based aside from the stuff I wanted to prime white. mostly Vikings but some modernish stuff too.

I haven't done any Sludge cavalry yet and I have a pike unit to go. I have two line units for an opfor done already. I have plans for a unit of zouves and a unit of crossbows. The zouves may end up being some Scots Napoleonics or some actual ACW Zouaves. At some point I got six Napoleonic infantry from the cover of a magazine.  which will do for shock troopers or jagers. I also want a jager unit with crossbows. I want some knightly horse and some heavy and light cavalry. If I go all in then I might think about hussars. I also want a mounted commander and associated mounted bodyguard. This project might run and run. I need a chaplain and a sorcerer. Finally, for the stuff I have a plan for, I need to do some artillery. I have what I need for this, I just need to put it together. 

Then there is stuff I don't have a form plan for. Saints for one. I need to source a behemoth that fits my army. A fifty four millimetre knight with some work maybe? Needs some google-fu. The expansion for Sludge, Sludge Nations, also allows for a flamethrowers. Always fun, unless you are on the receiving end of course. Finally, well in the sense that I could give up here, I need some crawlers. A light and a heavy one at least. My next project is going to be This Quar's War. This is a game that is slightly better resourced and has the right sort of tanks. If I don't put tank commanders in them they will work.  Finally, ideas for which I don't have a plan for, yet, are a sacred icon and artificer with a repeating musket. What was the name of the character from Sharpe again?  

Moving on after that I need to be thinking about the future. I have a few plans for a fantasy army for Midgard. I have dome some unit trays for this as I think I may well get a game in. My next purchase is probably going to be This Quar's War. If only because it is a game that no one but me will play. This is going to be another situation where I will be buying both sides. This isn't such a big deal as armies don't stretch much beyond thirty minis. This is probably going to require less than one hundred figures to cover all possibilities I can think of.  This requires the next Quar box set to come out. 

After that, or maybe before, I am thinking about Halfings. They don't fit any real plan though. My gaming life goal, well one of them is to have a mini that I can use for each character class, race and gender. Where possible, there should be a choice. I mean a thief often looks like a ranger right? 

Just in terms of overall numbers, I am doing well. I have already manged to substantially paint more than I have in the in the last two years combined. If I can keep the pace up, which is a bit of an ask, this will be my first year where I painted a thousand figures. The New Cruelty is pleased regardless.

Start of the Week

I can feel a migraine coming. It feels like a big one. Sounds are making my ear drums hurt. I will be getting the precursors soon so time to stop.

It's full speed ahead for Sludge. So I primed what I needed and a few more after a bit of mini prep. Then I have given everything a really harsh wash. I use my own mix which is a bit darker than most of the others you can buy. 

The week ahead is a busy one. Twenty four minis may be ambitious. Especially with the migraines, which seem to be coming pretty thick and fast at the moment.

Time to find a dark room and an audiobook.

End Of The Week (31.5)

Here we are again. I got way more done than expected as I fixed my lighting issues quicker than expected. It also that I needed to throw myself into something. 

So I think I finished off most of the short arses from last week. In addition there is a pig from two weeks ago. There are a few more in the pipe some of which are newly purchased.

My plan for next week was to paint a unit for Sludge. Sludge being a game that captured the internet for a couple of weeks and one that has stayed with me. I fear it is going to go down the same hole as Titansgrave. 

Somehow I finished these figures this week. Not a whole unit though. Somewhere along the line I had mixed up the minis from two units. So next week I think I will finish the two units off with a few more besides. If things go well I might try and finish another smaller unit. I needed to knock up about six more minis on top of what I had.

Basing may be an issue. The units should be in groups of three on 40mm bases. I am not sure I like that. It means that they can never be used for anything else. Mind you, I am not sure what I could use them for anything else.

The above is my reminder for what paint I used. 

I even found some time to work on the rats. The Skaven Blood Bowl team is coming along. I was sure there were a few more. I found two more.

The weather was good the other day. The first day I considered priming minis. So that's what I did. Picking a figure, that totalled about seventy five more minis for the queue. I am fairly confident about getting them done. 

This also gave me a chance to crank the laser up and finish another box of shelves. 

Getting so much done feels like it should be a good thing. In reality I suspect bad things are coming. To deal with this I have been making myself busy. The last three years, if not the last ten have not been good for me. It's not been without it's moments, the high light being about five years ago, the trend has been very difficult to map. It is currently trending downward. 

So maybe next week will be a good one.

Midweekish Madness

I got tired of waiting for the bulbs to arrive. Having been told it would be Friday, they arrived the following day, whilst I was out. Given the new delivery date of Saturday I purchased another bulb as I happened to be in a shop. Today was a good day for painting.

So I made some progress. I even tried to stick with the plan. My primary target was to finish off the remaining minis from short arse week and even a pig I missed from the week before. It would definitely have benefitted from being stripped and started again but what the hell. There are two left and these just need details.

Then I wanted to make progress on the Blood Bowl Skaven. These are still a long way off but I think I am a lot closer to having a finished first layer. There is still some tidying up to do and they are a bit bobby.

Looking forward I need a plan for next week. I have been looking at This Quar's War all week. The bingo plan calls for a complete army. Being the latest shiny thing, they could fit the bill. In reality I had kind of promised myself that the army, and probably enough figures to do two forces, was going to be Sludge. So I finally put them in the queue. I had done a few test paint jobs and these made it into the job lot. Plus a bodyguard. As this is an army paint scheme, I anticipate this will take a week. They are not short arses but I guess the surface area is a little less than most of the stuff I have painted recently. Then I have the urge to paint the Viking minis, especially the horses.

After I finished this I had a massive migraine. I suspect this is going to put me off painting and pretty much everything else for a few days.

Starting Short Arse Week

I am trying to clean house, as far as minis are concerned. Blah, blah, lead mountain, blah blah. I'm not sure I am in a hurry. The snakemen are Grenadier. The company and the shop they were purchased from have been ancient history for more than thirty years. For some reason they nag me to be painted every time I find them. There are some Oathmark dwarves, Black Tree, a Copplestone halflings and the rest are random acquisitions.

It's a busy week but I remain hopeful that I will get to ten figures and maybe a few more.

End Of The Week (32.5)

I started the week with a plan. It was a good one too. But no plan survives contact with children. So currently watching the little one running around a trampoline park. At least at the time I am writing this. I am claiming thirty and a half minis for the week. The half and some of the whole numbers being animals.

There was a twitchy sphincter moment when I didn't think I was going to get close to finishing what I started. I got some time after the little one went to sleep and more or less caught up/+. I am now nicely North of one hundred painted minis. So on balnce, I am happy and The New, New Cruelty fins the situation acceptable.

So there were a few bits that needed finishing from last week. The five armed civilians, which I think are Scotia, have been hanging around since last week so it was nice to get them done. There was also a female crossbow woman from  Northstar's Frostgrave range, that needed a few spots of paint. Other than the pigs, all the animals were started and finished this week, whilst the pigs just required a few details. Don't ask where they came from as they were a random purchase on the market. The darker animal between the bugs is a bit of a mystery. I was assuming this was a domesticated dog but it has some prominent brows which could be nascent horns, making it a goat. The treasure pile was given to me by a friend, in the late nineties. It had been sat in a bits box for some time after being purchased from a bargain bin so its probably a late eighties GW mini.

The main focus of the week was the guys in suits. These should work for any modern game and some sci-fi stuff. They are a mix of Future Wars and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang from Copplestone.

As I have the laser cutter up and running, this has been used for a bit.  I might be playing Midgard: Heroic Battles so I thought I would get ahead with some bases, counters and measuring gauges. I have also finished the one hundred and thirty of so hex tiles for the next terrain hex project.

I have prepped a fair number of figures. Most of what I got in York is now bases on textured bases. I was planning on painting these but they are not primed. This should give me enough figures for an ulfhunder unit for  Midgard. What's above is about half of them.

Next week is all about the little guys.

How Not To Suffer From Hobby Inertia

As you can see in the picture there is a lot on my table. This demonstrates my current work in progress. There are a lot of separate projects. Somewhere deep in my brain there is some form of traditional idea that you should start a project, finish a project and then move on to the next one. It's some strange offshoot of the Protestant work ethic I thunk.

So this is my workflow. I like to have a few things going at the same time. If I paint a batch of ten minis I will usually opt to give myself some variety within the batch, a few sci-fi, some post apocalypse, a cowboy and top up the ten with some fantasy figures, as an example. Lots and lots of Copplestone magic. The variety keeps me interested and if It have ten random figures I can batch paint them with the same colours quickly and when I have done ten batches, none of the figures look the same.

Right now this is animal week. I have amassed a range of domesticated and wild animals and this is what is in the mix for the week. There are some that are already finished this week that didn't make it into the picture.

At the same time there are half a dozen or so near future/cyberpunk/sci-fi minis that I started last week. Tag onto the some Blood Bowl minis and this is the core of where I am at.

Over the years I have learned to love the dropper bottle. Most of my paint is in dropper bottles, even the G Dub stuff. Whilst so much better that the standard pots, every now and again I end up putting too much paint on the palette. Some part of me, sculpted by my parents and grandparents does not like waste. So if I end up finding an excuse to use it. So the number of projects expands. And expands. 

There are times when I get part way through what I have started and I get bored. Having painted a hundred Star Wars Legion minis I got bored. The BattleTech stuff has been there even longer. So rather than putting the work in progress stuff to a place that it out of site, and therefor out of mind, it stays on the bench. There are a few details (mainly) that need finishing and so when I find I have some spare paint, I can leap into action. That almost made me laugh.

I am certain that I will meet and exceed my target for the month this week,

The First Day OF The New, New Cruelty

I started out with the idea to do bingo to keep me motivated for the year. It works for other people, so why not give it a try. So I woke up and got on with it. I was looking at a good way to kick start the year. I have had a tin filled with work in process minis stuck on old GW paint pots which have sat there for at least two years. Some of them have taken a little bit of a bashing and they were all covered in fluff. 

For the last month or so they have been the background project. To the uninitiated this is something on the bench that isn't my primary project but is  something I started to paint with my usual gusto that has gotten lost with the appearance of the new shiny. Generally they only get touched when I have some spare paint on the palette.

So as per the rules of bingo, I have finished the backlog, painted ten minis and have achieved a bonus by painting ten more. As the rules call for figures completed in 2025, with the emphasis on finished, I am claiming three boxes. I can claim 106 items so if I keep up this pace I will hit my target by early February. Ah got to love the hubris of a New Years resolution.

Just to annoy myself I have lost a Wookie. Not a full sized one obviously. There should be four and I can only find three. There is more Star Wars Legion stuff coming. I think tomorrow I will finish a good chunk of these done.

D&D Why I Love To Hate It

Setting aside Airfix figures, my first real gaming passion was role playing. I got started with Tunnels and Trolls. I have a lot of love for that game but I recognise that it isn't really the best game on the market and that over time it has become even less like the first choice. Great for solo play but then so was Fighting Fantasy. Even then there were better games.

I moved on to Basic D&D and quite liked it. It was a better game. I played a few games of AD&D and then kind of forgot about it until 3e. I didn't really want to play D&D even then. We had been playing Harn, which is a system I really love. Harn was a series of experiences that I loved and even made me cry. Then Butch brow beat the DM into converting the characters into 3e. I cried again when I figured out that my somewhat flawed but courageous holy warrior would have to become a paladin. I mean a paladin. It's just not me. Lawful Good, well it's just crazy.

So this became the norm for a few years. Roleplaying was just not as fun anymore. Three big books later and I was really done. Then 3.5e came along and then a load more money went out the door. It didn't really improve the game, it just changed it. Too much detail in the rules lead do what I called "real life lag" as the rules lawyers got into it with the DM. Most of which was Butch trying to get his own way. It very quickly ceased to be fun.

4e came along and somebody else tried to talk me into it. This justs seemed to take some of the ideas of magic, tapping abilities and the like. I never ran the game as I just could not wrap myself around the ideas. I got persuaded to play a Warlord. This meant that most of the time it was better for me to give another character an extra action than do something myself. This is just not worth playing.

I cannot comment on 5e as I never played it. I was bored before I even started. This would have been the fourth set of books in ten years or so. D&D just seems to be so wrapped up in itself. In fairness this is not the worst abuse of the fan base, I am looking at you GW. That said, most contemporary RPGs require a significantly lower cash outlay to get into the game.

Modern D&D has a number of backgrounds but they are just absurd. It moved away from sort of the classic high fantasy races to those that were created just to make the races look different. As a figure painter I like to have figures for the characters and it is only comparatively recently that this was actually possible. They seem to tinker for the sake of tinkering. This allows them to charge the players even more money.

Probably it's just me. D&D has the same number of players as Columbia has people (that's 50 million). I see the game being played by a particular type of player. They are less about the story and more about the ability to kill  every mother f{}%ker in the room. It makes the game less for for the few of us who love the story. 

Yet this is the game people want to play. Even now there are far better games to play.

Plodding Along

I would say its a shame that I haven't had much time to paint of late but I have to say that is mostly not true. Things have been pretty good of late. Aside from work at least. There is some fun stuff and I have done more gaming in the last couple of months than I have done in the last couple of year and I am having a lot of fun being a parent.

All if that said, this is work in progress, but that's progress right?

Still I found some time today. Whilst I am feeling the urge to move towards Stargrave or Sludge, I still have a load of the little fold on the work bench. Many of my recent painting goals have revolved around humanoid races. For the Viking game I have done enough black elves leaving me with the white elves left to do. I also have some gaps in what I wanted for the character figures for the dwarves, specifically some more obscure character classes and female dwarves. Then the race I have been putting of, the halflings, mainly as they don't feel they fit with the Viking game, I just wanted to do them.

So a few of the white elves have made it though. I am not altogether happy with them. I am not sure I can really make them any better without stripping them, As I don't see that happening I guess this is where they will stop.

The halflings look a little better. There are a few conversions in here that seem to have been worth it. I wanted some more classes than the original figures allowed and of course there are never enough female characters.

Lastly are the dwarves. I have a batch of the old grenadier dwarves I did a few years ago. Again, as most figures are geared towards building armies, there are relatively few female figures, So I have a few more here. The figure with the bird is supposed to be a magic user. As I have a few of those, this would either do as a senior mage in the Viking game or a druid.

 

Hexagonal Tiles - Rather a Lot of Them

When Covid started, I began almost a month off work. Time to get some hobby stuff done whilst I was stuck in. I spent a lot of money on gear and minis with big plans. Whilst I didn't finish anything I learned a lot.

Having pontificated about some terrain boards/tiles for a while, that was definitely the time. so I dove into a hexagonal terrain project. One of my mates was after some new terrain and I had the tools, skills and time. 

So now I am looking at the project again. Partly with the idea of doing myself a set and partly considering if I could do this commercially. When I recently was able to get ready access to my shed again I decided this was the time. Currently hating my job so anything I can do to get out of it right?

Having raided the shed I found enough bits to more than fill a 35l Really Useful Box. So quite a few. The plan is to give me a base set but also to have a play about with the idea and see what I can actually achieve. Various sets have been planned but I am starting with fantasy in mind and maybe even a bit of Sludge.

My personal plan is to stick to tables around 3' by 3' or 1m by 1m. Not that bothered which. Most of what I like is skirmish games so this size is perfect. Plus I don't have any more space. When I originally looked at the idea, I didn't have the right tools so  looked to buy them premade. Getting hold of hexagons at 100mm was a lot easier than 4" and in the round, the stuff that was out there was already 100mm. One thing I new was that I was going to need a lot of them. At least hundreds.

My original thoughts were just to use the bare mdf but having thought that something a bit more three dimensional so quickly developed the idea that adding some blue foam to the top surface. I am now thinking that it might be better to use a cnc milling machine rather than a laser. It would be easier to get repetition with fewer steps in the construction process.

Here we are though and I am reasonably happy.

Twice In A Month - Well Almost, Time For Painting And Terrain

For the second time in about a month I have found myself on involuntary lockdown. This time there has been nothing wrong with me. So stuck in and away from work and family I have tried to make the most of it. There was even a little bit of progress.

I am still not really feeling the urge to paint. That said I have managed to get a load of stuff primed. This includes not only my recent purchases but some stuff going back decades. In some cases more than two of them. It's a real mixed bag of stuff. Big guys, small guys, very big guys. I have ordered a load of fantasy stuff. Most is for the Viking Game. This included a load of female vikings. I also got hold of a load of female dwarves to round out my desire to be able to do at least one of every race, class and gender. I got somes elves too. Not quite so many though. The dwarves and elves are all from Bad Squidoo. I have wood elves and dark elves but want light elves. My plan calls for a slightly more ornate dark age armour so I settled on Romano-British / early Saxon. This might just happen this year.

I have some much loved, very old GW hobbits. I spent good money buying them up off eBay almost twenty years ago. Sadly, they just don't do it for me in what I have planned. There are only a few poses and no female figures. If I want to stick with the plan then I needed an alternative. So I looked to the stuff done by Mark Copplestone. This includes the Copplestone Castings stuff and the stuff he did for Grenadier. I have been waiting for these since December. I've already done some conversions. With what is on it's way I may even convert a few into Titansgrave. There is also some stuff from Macrocosm in there.

I don't really do D&D so I don't have a need for a whole range of odd, made-up, races. That said I don't include gnomes in this. Thinking back I don't know anyone who have played a gnome on tabletop. Ian played lying cheating, thief of a gnome illusionist (aka Tim the enchanter thief). This is even harder although I do have a plan.

The variety seemed to motivate me last year. Excuse me, the year before last. That said I am really having a hard time finding the head space to do this as family life is getting some most of my attention. No bad thing. 

Big battles have always been what I have aimed for but I am beginning to see that this isn't really on the cards for me. Even the games I have been buying have been skirmish games. A lot of the figures I have purchased in the last year or some have been post apocalyptic / sci-fi / cyberpunk. Withe the Cyberpunk game coming out closely followed by Reality's Edge I thought 2021 might be the year Cyberpunk as a genre came back to the fore. I would really like to give Malifaux a try to but nobody is remotely interested.

Still thinking it may happen but I am personally feeling This Is Not  A Test and Last Days. All of these are skirmish games so I am pepping enough terrain for this. This will hopefully include some 3" by 3" boards (well given how I have it planned its more likely to be 93cm by 93cm). I have a lot of boards planned so they need to be fairly thin and lightweight. If I have it right in my head these will be double sided.

Another thing in my head is to do suited terrain. Obviously a green board is the place to start but I can see winter, deserts, bare earth and a few post-apocalyptic boards to start. There are about another dozen or so ideas floating around in my head. 

When the shops reopen I will get on with this but in the meantime I have spent looking at terrain. I have some trees brought years ago. These all need basing so some woodland bases with detachable trees seemed like a good idea. 

Bushes are also something I want to do. I think bushes were the first bit of terrain I ever tried to do in the form of gluing lichen to flocked card. I have hated lichen ever since. Thanks to YouTube I have a few ideas. Not convinced I will get what I want out of it but I will give it a try. I was prepping some bases on my mini-band saw and I have managed to bust it. I think the band has just come off so I am hoping it will be an easy fix.

End Of The Week - And I Am Reasonably Pleased (35)

This week I am more than happy with my painting performance. I am getting closer to having a completed force for my Viking RPG game. Thirty five figures done and dusted (well varnished) so I am quite content. Admittedly the majority were relatively simple and most were on the small side. Still a fair amount of work has gone into them so I am not counting them as a half figure.

I have a figure that I used as a black elf  (svartalfar) leader but when I saw these I thought they would do what I wanted. A king queen and a couple of palace guards. The touch of purple is possibly too much but I thought it gave them a nice imperial feel.

Every king and queen need a few hench elves. I am not sure about the pointy hats. I did think about doing a christmas game featuring black elves so maybe it will work.

Three more of the black tree designs high elves painted as black elves. I have already done a set of these last year but a few more can't hurt.

 This is not really a black elf but a mage from thr Frostgrave Nickstarter. I could think of no really useful purpose for him before but he seems to fit with the bad guys.

I have done two batches of lizardmen skinks. The onl small one in a mix of plastic and metal. The first batch was almost all metal. These were quite well detailed figures.

The second batch of this week's skinks. These are almost all plastic and relatively simple models to paint so a very quick job. I really didn't put that much effort into them.

Finally a group shot of all of what I have done. So I now have 36 in total. I have some of the newer plastic skinks too. I might get them done in the not to distant future. I have to say that I think the older figures are much nicer even if they are mono-pose.

Start Of The Week - Higher Hopes

The painting of 28mm figures is still my life and this week it's mostly focussed on fantasy RPG stuff. As I am about to go to bed I figured that I should post what I am expecting to do this week.

Firstly, there are more of the lizardmen I started batch painting last week. There are another 12 on the table which are already petty close to being finished. I expect these to be completed by close of play tomorrow. 

There is a little more work in most of these as they are all metal figures and they had a lot more detail in them. They are much nicer than the plastic ones. If things go well I might just start off the last twelve and I may even finish them off. These are nice simple figures to paint especially the plastic ones.

Almost two years ago I started painting some black elves. I liked these guys at the time and wanted to get some more so I did at the end of 2017. Although none of these are strictly speaking black elves (I think they are actually high elves) they do actually fit the aesthetic of my Viking game a bit better. Whilst I am not sure about the pointy hats they seem to work with what I want. They are a bit more involved that the lizardmen and will take a bit more effort.

End Of The Week - ?/^&$%" (0)

Some progress has been made, never as much as I would like. Most of the current project and the background project now has a base colour and a wash although there are a few I have barely touched. Almost not detailing has been done and that is what generally takes the time. What I have done so far looks pretty good to me. If I pushed it today I would probably finish but I have friends here so that is unlikely to happen. My plan is basically to add another five figures into the mix. If I can finish them next week it would put be back on track. A bit of basing of some more elves (alfar) has been done. These are planned as black alfar for the Viking Game.

Today's post is a little bit early so maybe I am being a little bit premature in saying this but I haven't finished any figures again this week. It has been a very busy week for me. Painting has played a major part in it but unfortunately the paint has been emulsion and the objects involved were walls. Someone now has a Slytherin themed bedroom. After a series of some hard and some fun days, painting has not been on the top of the agenda.

Instead of painting I have been board gaming. This has been an enjoyable distraction. There may be some more of that next week. I will probably get around to posting some pictures of the games when I get round to it.

Elemental

Although my painting plans for the week are almost complete, I decided to finish off another project piece. I am pretty sure I got this large . elemental about three years ago. It's a Reaper Bones model. I am not sure I would pay for something like this in metal as it probably isn't going to get a lot of use but for a good chunk under £10/$10 I thought it was worth while.

It has been sat around, primed and on a textured for about two years so it is probably about time I got around to it. There is a fairly simple paint job. Primed light grey and painted a mid blue. You can't really tell the mid blue is there after heavy blue wash. If I was doing it again I probably would put the original base colour down and just use the wash. Lower down the model and in some of the crevices but mostly on the bas I put on a heavy green wash. You can just about tell if you look hard enough.  Then there is an old GW paint, Ice Blue for a highlight. It really needed something to bring out the details and finally a white high, highlight.