An opportunity to take stock

This is the 250th post on my blog! With a month and a half to go until the end of the year, I thought this would be an excellent time to have a bit of a look as to how my hobby is going, both in the general sense, and also taking into account the painting targets I set myself at the start of the year.

What were my targets?

• Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
  Done
• Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
  Started but abandoned at the halfway mark, having failed the 1,000 points challenge
• Finish the blasted Collodi crew
  Not yet done - but three models to base left
• 500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
  Not even started
• All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
  Not started
• No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up
  Abject and catastrophic failure due to Operation: Icestorm

I've also set myself some mid year targets around sorting out all the things I am supposed to be doing for other people. I've got that list down to three things now.

That said, I've got a reasonable amount painted. There's only been one month so far when I haven't finished a project, and often I've gotten two or three things done.

Part of this is just to try and get disordered thoughts in my head down into writing - I suspect this isn't the most interesting thing for other people to read. But it's useful for my brain, so I'm doing it.

What should I do for the rest of the year?

It's really become clear to me that over-planning or queuing up too much work just leads to me missing targets and getting disappointed with myself. I also have a massive tendency of over-estimating what I'll get done in a particular time scale. I need to remember this if I ever consider taking up commission painting - I'd be completely terrible at it.

Right now, my painting table is a mess of a whole ton of "in progress" projects. I'm not going to finish them all this year, but really, my first priority is just getting them each to a stage where I can leave them and pick them up later. In short, I get myself to a place where I am not constantly trying to catch up with my own ill conceived plans. Instead, I should pick up a thing, do a thing, and put it down again. Probably with a side project to distract me if it's a big thing. Fourteen "in progress" projects is a recipe for disaster.

Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech talks about moving towards the mountain. Rather than trying to plan out my entire route, I'm instead going to simply remind myself of where I'm going. As part of my blogging, I'll be putting up a project page, linking to the various projects I have ongoing, with a list of things that need doing - be that my Imperial Guard, the new Infinity stuff I have, or whatever.

This means that I won't end up committing to, say, spending three or four months blitzing my Imperial Guard only to be super enthused about Infinity and constantly day dreaming about assembling them (as I currently am).

The few remaining "other people" projects will get done, along with a rather time sensitive "secret Santa" kit bash at my local store. That one will get no coverage on the blog as I need to keep secret what I'm doing, although I may post a Christmas picture of what I receive...

Hopefully, this new way of thinking about what I'm doing will help me get more done. There should be less regretting what I'm currently working on and more employing bursts of enthusiasm on whatever my 'flavour of the month' is at that particular moment. How could this possibly go wrong?

A miraculous miracle, and a daemonic goal

I struggled through the heat to my painting desk this weekend to find a miraculous sight. My Bloodletter's base had cured itself! It turns out I'd layered the crackle paint on so thick it had taken about a week to dry!

I have also been rightly shamed and criticised by a good friend over a present I bought them years ago, with the intention of assembling and painting it for them as well, remains sitting in a box, un-started. I am now absolutely resolved to get this sorted by Christmas - this is doubly challenging, as it is the Forge World Keeper of Secrets, which is not a small job!

Still super pleased with that base

So, I took a serious look at what I need to do to make this happen. At the time of discussion, before the Bloodletter got finished, I had ten projects in progress, which is craziness and madness. I also had too many little niggly projects in the "not started" queue. Aaaand I had the Hobby Progress August challenge to get done.

So, I set myself the following things so my dear and lovely friend could see where her Daemon is in the queue:

In progress moved to done: 10
Start quick wins from the "to do" pile: 10
Guard Painting Commitment Started: 1
Guard Painting Commitment Finished: 1

I've now added this tracker to my "in progress" page so its all up on the net to shame me into action. And to motivate me further, I'm putting my allowance where my mouth is. If Ms Stabby is not painted by Christmas, I'm going to pay someone to do it - I'm putting money aside each month to cover it. Of course, I'm going to breeze this deadline with no problem and then I'll have put aside a nice little present for myself.

As a note, here's how I finally finished off the Bloodletter. Masking tape carefully protecting him while I "Purity Seal"ed the base so it stays where it is now. The gift wrapped blood letter just looked so silly I had to snap something of him.

That wasn't the only progress I made at the weekend. The Gunnarsen brothers, violent abhuman mercenaries, were also fully assembled.

And, just to make things interesting, I've signed up for a tournament at Dark Sphere on the first weekend of August ("Dakka on Bakka"), and I want to try and add a special something for then (my August commitment, in fact). Its likely I've only got half of the weekend between then and now available! Time to get busy...

Leman Russ Completed, Help Needed, and a Kickstarter Delivers

Firstly, on Saturday morning, I was pleased to receive my pledge from the "Trolls of Trudvang" Kickstarter by JoeK Minis. I'd been keeping an eye on this one and not really planning to pledge (not being a fan of the big troll) but then an option came up for just the little troll, who I kind of liked, so I bit.

My Microsoft Paint skills are
clearly not up to the level
that my hand painting ones are

JoeK Minis are the first Kickstarter I've ever backed to deliver everything I pledged for, and in a double win - they did so on time. I've made the above trophy of awesomeness for JoeK to celebrate this achievement alongside his many others.

This weekend, I also painted a Leman Russ Battle Tank I've had lying around assembled and unpainted for a Very Long Time. This is my third Leman Russ - I now have two normal ones and one Demolisher. I tried out the excellent battle damage tutorial which Games Workshop did, which I've linked to below.



Finally, I have a big problem. I was tinkering around with a Bloodletter to try out a few paint effects. In fact, I was incredibly happy with the ones I did on him - and then I royally stuffed up the base.

As you can see, the Agrellan Earth I was basing with has gotten all over the bottom of his legs (and also has come out horribly - I think I put it on too thick). Has anyone got any ideas for rescuing this - either making it look not terrible or getting the stuff off without ruining the rest of the paint job?

And finally, here's a teaser to what I'm working on next...

An eclectic week of interesting acquisitions

I took advantage of a break in the weather this weekend to get a little bit of spray undercoating done. Because I am a good husband, I sorted out the wife's Razorwing Jet Fighter.

Unfortunately, the stuttering noises the white spray can was making as I finished this did not bode well...

So, the Leman Russ I'm picking up for the Hobby Progress Challenge has now had the bottom undercoated in white and the top undercoated in black. Kind of a reverse zenithal or something. I'm not too fussed, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Here's the Bloodletter, ready for a spot of paint. He is what I will tinker about with when I get fed up of tank, so I'm still doing something.

I also did a little trade with the Lead Plague. My ill gotten gains for this included this preacher with a club, amazing bling and ridiculous hair.

I also acquired this delightful Conversion Beamer, which I intend to end up with a gentleman of the Inquisitorial persuasion, once I find the right pieces for him.

My darling wife had also ordered me a couple of the White Dwarf binders, in the interests of me not clogging up the house quite so much. I can imagine a lot of people thinking that they're a waste of money and horribly over priced.

The White Dwarfs fit in very nicely, the quality is respectable, and there's some nice artwork on the inside. I also took the time to track down the people who make them (as I was pretty sure Games Workshop aren't going to be making something so specialised). The unbranded ones usually retail for only a couple of pounds less, and they don't have free shipping on larger orders. In short - respectable and sensible grown up purchase at a not terrible price!

The majority of my Arcworlde Kickstarter arrived this morning, neatly dodging a bunch of guys on bikes who were causing mayhem with the traffic around here later that day. Due to a heavy rules re-write, the books are due to come a little later. A couple of small things were missing from the packet, but I got in touch with Alex and the missing Boglins and dice will be over pretty swiftly. I am a teensy bit intimidated by some of the bigger metal pieces - I've been spoiled rotten by the plastic and resin, I tell you!

(For those keeping track, I now have one fully delivered Indiegogo project, and 3 partially delivered Kickstarters. It's a race to see which Kickstarter will be the first to get me all my pledge!)

And here's some metal in more ways than one! I'm going to try and get these chaps prepped for Sim this week, as her nickel allergy means handling metal figures without gloves causes actual burns to her skin! As such, I'm going to be cleaning them up and giving them a quick undercoat so she can then tag in and paint them.

And finally, I decided to play around with the piece of scenery I got from Candy Art Studio last week and took a shot of a couple of my models having a disagreement over it. I'm playing around with my photography set up to try and balance quick and easy with good shots.

Sitting down and painting a model

Having resolved to do a bunch of painting over the Bank Holiday weekend, I found myself approaching Sunday lunchtime with only a little base coating done on my Commissar Lord, this month's target for the Hobby Progress Challenge.

So, I sat down, and I painted him. With a short break in the middle, I've just come out of four straight hours painting, and I don't regret it, am not feeling burnt out from the painting, and I have a painted figure.

Now, his base isn't painted, but that's because I need to leave the basing gloop I use to dry overnight, but he's scraped in under the deadline. Also, he's not just base coated and washed - the cloak had some proper hand blending done on it, and things like his medal ribbons were picked out properly.

I am pleasantly happy with my self right now. I'm going to potter back downstairs and try and get a little bit of work done on the Beastmen shortly. I should also sort dinner.

I have put the plastic Sentinel I was tinkering with away. Looking at the coming month, I am going to be ridiculously busy with non war-gaming related bits and pieces, so an ambitious painting challenge is . . . ill considered.

So, in the coming week, I'm going to pull out another character - probably a priest - and prep him up so I can get a quick, easy win. The wins are helpful, as they're helping me Get Stuff Done and feeling motivated. And that can't be a bad thing!

Putting motivation theory into practice: I finished a model!

Well, after last week's waffling on about getting motivated and staying motivated, I really needed to put my money where my mouth is.

The Mk I Thunder Armour model is now complete and finished! My darling wife thinks I should do some edge highlighting to finish him off, but I am quite content with how he is. Hopefully, Tommie won't be too disappointed in me.

So the Mk I moves over to the "finished" column. I've undercoated the Commissar Lord so he moves over to the "Painting" column, and that leaves a slot in assembly. As the Lord Commissar will take a while to paint, and I still have a bunch of Beastmen to finish off, I picked a slightly bigger assembly job.

The job in question is an armoured Sentinel, which are much cheaper in the new Astra Militarum book. I wasn't sure if a Plasma Cannon or a Lascannon would be better, so I'm going to try magnetising it so I can try both out.

I have also picked up the most recent White Dwarf magazines and have been studying through them for every last detail of what's going on with the new rules set for 40K which will be out on Saturday. It will surprise no-one to learn I am mind-bendingly excited about this.

There is no point in jumping into rumour and speculation at this point - I'll have the book in my hands in under a week. From what I've seen from the official GW sources, there's a huge potential to tell stories which is a big part of what I love about the hobby.

A busy week...

This week's post is a little late as I'm on a work training course which is taking up most of my time! I have a pile of posts I want to make, including battle reports, my Beastman painting tutorial and some thoughts about gaming things in my head - but the need for course revision is seriously knocking them for six, along with any hope of getting any painting and modelling done.

Last week, however, was pretty eventful from a hobby standpoint!

The Goblinaid figures I ordered from Ral Partha Europe while I was on holiday for my birthday arrived, along with a lovely note from them explaining the delay - they'd been completely swamped in the last week after it was announced they weren't going to be available any more.

I went to a massive Apocalypse game at Dark Sphere, which will deserve a post of its own at some point. I fielded 3,200 points of Guard, Inquisition and Assassins, and my side didn't actually lose!

My wife saw my blog post talking about my Beastman woes and decided to kick my motivation into gear by solving the problem for me... She is a wonderful woman.

She's sorted out the nine chaps who don't need cross body rifles to give me something to paint while she does the 11 difficult ones. As soon as my training course finishes, I will be right on these! They just need a little liquid green stuff and a few more grenades and pouches, then I'll be underway with the painting.

So, sorry about the silence, but it is because the world is so full of good things I've not had the time. Hope to be able to post again soon.

As a side note - who is coming to Salute this year? Would people be interested in meeting up after the show for dinner, or arranging to meet around lunch time in the venue somewhere?

Oh nuts - Imperial Beastman kit bash problems with assembly

In continuance of the Hobby Progress Challenge, I got as far as adding arms to my Imperial Beastmen today.

Or rather, I didn't.

Here's a dry fit from the front, using blu tac to hold him together.

And here's the problem. The arms on the Ungor body fit on by sloping inwards - the Catachan torsos were designed to be parallel. I could get away with it when both hands aren't on the gun, but for the models where both hands are holding it - and I want some like that - this is going to be a big pain and a bunch of green stuff.

The head also needs to be raised really rather significantly to not get in the way of the gun.

At this point, I was moving my light to get another shot and knocked a pint glass full of water all over my painting area and me. That's now cleared up, but I have decided I have most definitely had enough of modelling for the evening.

Painted Guardsmen, Viking Horror, and finding military history in the oddest places...

To start off with some good news, I've successfully finished painting my first commitment in The Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge! I'm really pleased to have shrugged off last year's painting curse - these twenty models, painted in a month, are more than twice what I painted in the whole of last year.

For this month, I'm trying to do 20 Imperial Beastmen, which I will use as Penal Legion. I will be super sad if the new Guard Codex does away with Penal Legion once I've finished modelling them! I'm also acutely aware I still owe you all a "how to" painting guide for them, which I hope to get up this month.

A good friend of mine, James Holloway, who I have sometimes mentioned here as The Gonzo History Project, has written a short book. It's called The Barest Branch and is available to buy on DriveThruFiction. If 9th Century Lovecraft inspired horror is your thing, then I would suggest going and having a peek. Its available for the same sort of pocket change that the short Games Workshop ebooks go for, and I'm pretty sure a few of the people who read this blog would similarly find it interesting. So please, go buy it, read it, and leave a comment on James' blog telling him what you thought of it!

The other day, I went for a walk near my work, and was surprised to turn a corner and find an anti-aircraft gun.

It turns out that Mudchute City Farm is based on land that was an anti-aircraft site during the blitz. There's a little history about it on their website, and a little more on plaques around the site.

The purpose of the site was to help protect the London docks during the blitz. There were plenty of interesting facts, including that the guns did not actually shoot many bombers down - their main purpose was to force them to fly higher and make their bombs less accurate.

There was also mention of how they were usually electronically and remotely fired from a bunker, but that in one particular incident, a bomb hit disabled the remote firing, so someone got a medal for rallying the crews to go out and man them manually through the raid.

This is definitely the sort of thing I would recommend people make the effort to go and see if they are nearby in the area - its not much, but its in easy reach of Canary Wharf and Maritime Greenwich, so would not be too hard to make a trek to via the DLR should you happen to find yourself in either place.

Hobby Progress Challenge, Platoon Britannica Meet Up, and a couple of games

I find myself almost a little incoherent today. Things have really started taking off in terms of Getting Things Done, and alongside some busy work commitments, I'm feeling pretty wiped out!

I am trying to make my first commitment for the Hobby Progress Challenge. Given I didn't manage to reach double figures of completed painted miniatures last year, if I complete my first 20 Guardsmen, I'll have already more than doubled last year's achievements by the end of February. Its ambitious, but hopefully I'll pull through!

Here they are, in glorious, glorious coloured progress! As I mentioned in my previous progress post, I'm trying out using a piece of hardboard as both a painting base and a palette to mix my colours on. I'm certainly finding things a lot easier, and while I'm just painting to a simple gaming standard, it is super useful.

As a side note, I am starting to think that the old GW "Desert Yellow" separates and goes streaky if you so much as look at it funny. No wonder my tanks ended up with massive streaks on them. I am kind of looking forward to using up my old stock and colour matching to a new one in the hope of it being a bit more consistent in terms of coverage.

The photo above was taken at Dark Sphere on Sunday, at the Platoon Britannica painting meet up. Max Von Deadlock covers the event itself coherently and with a picture over on his blog much better than I could, so I'll simply direct my readership to him for details of how that went.

Because I have no common sense whatsoever, I travelled straight from the painting day to Reading. Less of Reading was underwater than I expected. I stayed overnight before playing two games against a friend who plays Space Wolves. I just looked back at my blog and realised I haven't played him since July 2012. I'm an absolutely terrible person. We got in two excellent games - one at 1,500 points against his Space Wolves, and another one at 500 points against his new Dark Eldar force he's putting together. Many photos were taken, so expect battle reports on them in the future, when I start working through the massive backlog of reports I have to do! Huge thanks to my hosts in Reading, and I'll try to make it less than a year and a half before our next game...

20 Guardsmen assembled

I'm feeling quite accomplished from a hobby point of view. My "progress" took a bit of a knock at Warhammer World, followed by a Tempestus Firebase related bargain that my wife was lovely enough to get me as a present.

So, one of the things that my painting lesson at Golem suggested was that I should mix my paint on something closer to what I was painting, rather than a wet palette. I've been noticing a bit of a problem with getting a consistent consistency of paint, so following the lesson, I'm going to give it a try. This involved a cheap bit of hardboard I picked up from 4D Model Shop, and spraying it with the undercoat I use. As I undercoat in both black and white, I split the spraying half and half. I'll now be mixing my paint on this and I'll see how that helps.

And here is the real progress. On the weekend, I finished assembly the 20 Guardsmen for my February commitment in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge. As I was out on Sunday evening, and my wife had her airbrush out, she offered to undercoat them for me. As she was using a new airbrush (also from 4D, oddly enough), a couple are a little less smoothly undercoated than we would usually do, but I'm pretty sure we'll cover over that with the base coat.

I do still have a bunch of battle reports to write up and post up, but life has been pretty hectic recently. I don't want the blogging to end up getting in the way of actually getting some modelling and painting done!

Progress of a sort - one bit at a time

With another week passed, I haven't managed to finish anything.

This isn't as bad as it sounds - I've still done a lot, and in some cases the end is in sight, but the real fact remains - nothing is finished yet this year.

I'm really starting to feel the Arbitrator is coming together. I've redone his legs in blue, and I think that's helped in breaking up the colour blocks on the model. I don't think I'm going to go for this combination on my final ones though - there's just not quite enough armour, and Guard flak vests are really distinctive.

As before, the first level of water effects ended up shrinking down and not being flat, so another, second layer has been added and is still drying. This is the frustrating thing with these swamp bases and water effects - I don't know if I'm "finished" until several days later when I get to see the models with everything dry.

I've also completely assembled an Imperial Guard squad. In a sense, the assembly is finished, but the miniatures are not finished finished. Also, in order to complete the Hobby Progress Challenge with any chance of success I need to get two squads done rather than one!

So hopefully, I will be well into the assembly of the second squad by the end of next week, the Arbitrator will be as good as finished and the Wicked Dolls will finally be done. I'm really feeling like I've got some momentum!

First week of painting for a new year

I spent the first couple of days of the New Year completely clearing off my painting table, as it had gained an awful lot of junk I wasn't working on. Once it was finished, I took the opportunity to lay out all my current Kanban board on the table so I could see all my work in progress.

Then, after a little more procrastination, I sat down and tried to start doing a little bit each day.

I started work on the head swaps for another five Guardsmen for the Independent Characters' Hobby Progress Challenge. I'm quite happy with the chap with the rebreather and the Bretonnian head.

And a couple of them needed a little green stuff to make the heads work with the bodies.

I picked up the Chaos Champion, too, gluing him to his base and filling in the hole with green stuff, as I've decided to try out Agrellan Earth on this chap! Not much more than that yet - but he's moving a little again.

I've started painting the Arbitrator. I'm worried there's a bit too much red on him, but I think that's down to the choice of parts I used to put him together. I'm trying to decide if I should break up the massive amount of red with something else, like changing the trousers to Dark Blue or something similar.

The armour is going more to what the leg plates are like rather than the helmet - that missed a few stages as I sorted out his face. Trying to decide what colour to make his gun - whether to go with some sort of particular case colour, or mostly gun metal.

And finally, three Wicked Dolls are pinned and glued to their bases, ready for water effects! The end of the road is in sight with these chaps. This makes me inordinately happy - they've been an absolute pain for ages.