Breaking Painter's Block: Anvil Industry Werewolf

People may have noticed that recently I've not been posting much of my painting progress. Well, that's because there really hasn't been any! I've been suffering from a bad case of painter's block, and wasn't really sure how to fix it.

In the end, I realised that I've hardly ever bought a new thing and painted it straight away - I end up never really using my "new toy" enthusiasm with my painting - instead trying to slog through older purchases where the shine may have worn off.

So, during my Friday lunch break at work, I popped onto the Anvil Industry website and ordered their Halloween special Werewolf. Saturday morning, I woke up to find him on my door mat. The plan was to assemble and base him on Saturday, and paint him on Sunday. No fancy display jobs - just a quick tabletop quality job.

Here he is! The tail had come off the sprue, but wasn't damaged because of it. Anvil have this clever trick where they use the base slot as the main casting sprue, with basing items (usually ruins) to make other joins where necessary.

I wasn't sure if Anvil Resin needed washing, but I washed it anyway like a good paranoid person. It was around this point I realised that the basing piece for this wasn't rubble, but a severed arm! I'm also looking to try and up my game with basing, so added a few rocks from one of the various GW basing kits I have kicking around for the resin bits (most expensive grit you'll ever own).

Then I used a mix of Vallejo Coarse Pumice (the see through stuff) and Sandy Paste. It hadn't occurred to me to mix them both, but then I saw that Legion of Plastic was using both on the same base, and given he's a certified modelling genius, I decided to blindly and badly copy him to see if I thought it looked cool.

Here you can see how I patched rock, the larger grain "Coarse Pumice" and the finer "Sandy Paste".

And then I painted him. I could show you a few of the work in progress painting pictures, but they're ultimately not very interesting. I ended up doing the basing sand first thing on Sunday morning, but otherwise kept to the planned schedule. For a bit of fun, I had some blood running down the side of the base from the severed arm.

I definitely like how the base turned out, and I'll be doing a few more of my bases this way. It also made me realise quite how much my painting skills have slipped in a month and a bit of not painting!

I can already see four or five areas where there's over-painting or things I could touch up, but I'm not going to go back to him now. He's served his purpose - I'm excited and motivated to paint some other things. I've also learnt to try and get a little done every day to keep my skills up / improving. Although, while I say that, I have a lot of preparation and assembly to do at the moment...