Boudi

 Little diorama to try and make more interesting environments and ambiance. Boudi sculpts from Hasslefree (https://hfminis.co.uk/) are good fun, and the base is from the Wamp Fusion bases line (https://www.wampstore.com/store/index.php?route=product/category&path=183).

 I've created texture on the flat surface of the stone water feature, which was great. I've avoided trying things like this for too long.

Originally I hand painted a few posters to stick on the wall, but ... yeah, let's not talk about those any time soon. Fair to say that printing out posters, weathering and sticking on is a better option. You simply can't achieve the granularity of detail to sell the effect, if drawing by hand.

 

The Summoning

This was a fun experiment. A friend supports Titan Forge's Patreon and printed the djinn for me. I was going to paint it as a standalone model, when my daughter suggested it should have something else there - so I added a figure from the Hasslefree range to help the narrative.

To tie them together, I've used the same colour on the fabrics and jewellery, and the pink glow from the summoning stone runs through the floor, underside of the djinn and the summoner's eyes. Tricky to photograph and I think lacking a "golden angle" so that's something for me to work on in future projects.

Other areas to improve on - adding texture to fabric. Missed opportunity here. But having multiple light sources balanced against ambient light was an interesting test. Some good areas, some not so good. But heading in the right direction.

Hobby Bingo 2018

I joined in the Hobby Bingo challenge in 2018 but frankly it was a bust by the time we closed December. 2018 was a hard year to finish, after such a bright start.

However, some of the challenges were completed! Every title is clickable through to the original post ...

Play and Paint a Model For an Army or Game You haven't Played in Over a Year
Guild Ball Morticians had Veteran Graves and Vileswarm added. I do miss playing this game.

Paint All the Models in a Faction Starter Box
Primaris Marines from the Dark Imperium box. This isn't quite a faction starter box, but it's equivalent - so I'm claiming it!

Paint a Model and Use a Technique You Haven't Mastered
Shadespire Ironskull's Boyz, using NMM copper.

Buy a Model and Paint it Within 48 Hours
Attended Banshee's painting workshop in March, and by the end of the weekend I'd painted the bust that came as part of the course.

Paint a Model in a Color You Don't Normally Use
Word Bearers. I've traditionally stayed away from reds, as mine ended up too pink - but I changed it around and pushed into the shadows for depth, and it worked quite well. So well in fact my daughter practically has a whole army of them now.

Make Something That's Not For the Battlefield
Love my sci-fi vending machines and, while they're part of a larger piece, they meet this requirement admirably. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only a nice row of chocolate bar dispensers.

Finish Painting a Model That's Been in Your Do-Do Pile For a Year 
Norsemen from Hasslefree were a purchase from ... 2016! So nearer two years on the painting pile, but we got there.

However, that's a very poor seven from a potential 25. I plan for 2019 to be a better year on this front.

2018 Goals

Not big on resolutions, but setting targets for the year is just dandy.

General

Quality

I want to lift the standards of my individual figure painting to the next level, again. The goal is still better use of colour theory, smoother layering and glazing and even improving simple accuracy on the basics. At most I will attend two painting courses in 2018 - one's already booked with Banshee (https://www.instagram.com/alfonso_giraldes_banshee/) and we'll see what the second will be.

Speed

Still hitting the #90MMC challenge. Can I produce a full figure in 90 minutes of painting? Combined with the pursuit of quality, I want to push my tabletop standard up and up.

Focus

Starting projects and seeing them through to completion, rather than adding more to-do piles onto the workbench. I want need projects ticked off the WIP list.

Armies on Parade

I plan to build a comically complex board for AoP this year for my Space Wolves. All the major parts are already ordered and it will hopefully be a labour of love through the first nine months of this year. Maybe.

Miniatures

Ironskull's Boyz [4]

My Shadespire faction of choice, and they're on the workbench at the moment. These will be the first goal to complete for this year. Despite making things more complicated by painting them all in non-metallic.

Hasslefree Miniatures [8]

Paint everything I picked up at Salute in 2016, including the Red Box Games figures - Bolverk the Bold, Howling Gorvhogguth, TradKarl plus Weird West Boudi, Harby, Rogue Drax, Blanche and Mystic Warrior Jen. These need to be completed before my Hasslefree Kickstarter goodies arrive.

Heresy Miniatures [4]

Finish everything I picked up at Salute in 2016. Brother Bude and the Ghoul King are the only ones left, but then I did find a couple of older demon dogs that need painting up as well ...

Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolves [41]

Paint up the whole Ironclaw Strike Force and wrap the rest of the Dark Imperium box at the same time. What have I done?

Guild Ball Morticians [3]

Complete the Season 1 & 2 roster with Vileswarm and Veteran Graves. So close to completion, I can taste it.

Guild Ball Fishermen [5]

Complete the Season 1 & 2 roster with alternate Shark, Corsair, Sakana, Jac and Tentacles.

Willy Miniatures [1]

Sportscasters. I finished the Ogre (let's call him Bob) last year and have the Vampire (who is definitely not Jim Johnson from Blood Bowl) and then that completes my homebrew Guild Ball NPC collection.

This sets my initial goals at 66 figures. I'm going to double down and aim to get these finished in the first six months of the year. Ouch. But if we don't set goals to stretch ourselves, how will we grow?

2017 Goals - End of Year Review

Well that year drifted by quickly, didn't it? The progress in the last six months from the original list written up at the beginning of 2017 hasn't been a pretty read for progress I'm afraid. But let's look at progress across the year.

The Bad

• Infamy [3] - No progress.
• Guild Ball Fishermen [5] - No progress.

Whoops. These just dropped down the list when new projects present themselves. I'd sorely love to wrap up the Guild Ball figures just to tick another one off the list.

The Inbetween

• Hasslefree Miniatures [12] - Completed 4.
• Heresy Miniatures [1] - Completed 2.
• Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolves [28] - Completed 9.
• Warhammer 40,000 Death Guard [16] - One test model done, but will pause this as I plan to swap to Word Bearers.
• Shadespire [4] - Started.
• Guild Ball Morticians [3] - Completed 1.
• Willy Miniatures [1] - Started the vampire, but not finished.

Hit and miss here. Some forward steps made but then a few steps back. Space Wolves were complicated by buying the Dark Imperium box set and Shadespire, so they've taken precedence. I did manage to complete the Inceptors, Ancient and five Wolves from the original box.

The Good

• Colony 87 - Completed all 9.
• Blood Rage - Completed 1 wolf.
• Conan - Completed 10 wolves.
• Zombicide: Black Plague - Completed 22 wolves.
• Terrain - 6 pieces from Crooked Dice, 3 containers from TTcombat, 3 armoured containers, 9 barrels, 12 crates from Games Workshop, and a few other odds and ends.
• Human Interface - Completed 3 characters.
• Arcworlde - Completed 1 Ork.
• The Walking Dead - Completed 1 zombie.

 A few really small projects were completed at the last minute (Human Interface, Arcworlde & The Walking Dead) which was nice to clear off the backlog. Small projects hanging around start to irk after a while, so these quick wins please me.

The Summary
The total number of distinct things completed, not including tiddlers like crates and barrels, is over 100. Which is honestly about 40-50 better than I thought it would be, despite my optimistic goals at the beginning of the year.

I'll think on what I want from 2018 before posting goals. Some quick ones come to mind, but let's make it a challenging one again too.

2017 Goals - Half Year Review

Approaching the half year mark already, so it feels fair to look back at my Painting Backlog Goals and my progress against that to-date.

Infamy [3] - No progress.

Colony 87 [9] - Completed all 9.

Hasslefree Miniatures [12] - Completed 4.

Heresy Miniatures [3] - Completed 1.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolves [28] - Wolves in progress. First 62 bases completed.

Warhammer 40,000 Death Guard [16] - One test model done, but will pause this as I plan to swap to Word Bearers instead later in the year.

Guild Ball Morticians [3] - Completed 1.

Guild Ball Fishermen [5] - No progress.

Willy Miniatures [1] - No progress.

So a lot still to do from the original list - but with the above progress and other pieces, that's 41 models done so far. I feel the Colony 87 were the real highlight in the first six months.

Interesting to see on my painting desk how easily distracted I am. In between inventing work for myself with the mass wolf painting, there's a lot of undercoated pieces which aren't listed above - that have somehow, magically made it to my desk. For someone who considers themselves reasonably focused for work, it's interesting how I've let that slide when it comes to hobby ... so greater discpline is required.

Onward to greater heights for the second half of the year!

Colonel Hogan

Fresh from Admiral Almos, his firm right hand (oooh, matron) was painted as my March #90MMC figure, and another attempt to do the green/blue uniform but stronger highlights.

He gets a pet too, another of the Colony 87 models, and again I've tried to pair the animal with the person, so it's sitting to attention and literally at his right hand. Clumsy metaphors with miniatures is becoming a specialty it seems.

Admiral Almos

I'm still playing catch-up, but this was my 90-minute miniature challenge (#90MMC) for February - the wonderfully detailed, and super small, Admiral Almos from Hasslefree's Grymm command squad. He's finally based, so here are the photos!

The base and creature were already painted, but have been sat waiting patiently for him to be finished for a while now. I wanted to capture the "where the hell's my pet tiger?" look in the eyes and positioning. Hopefully that comes across in the pictures.

On review I spent too long on the face, trying to get the expression right. This really is a tiny figure and I was determined to bring out the character. It didn't leave me long to finish the rest, but the military uniform was blue and then green highlights with red shading to try and emulate a shiny, pearlescent uniform texture - I had Babylon 5 in mind at the time and wish I'd made the cuffs and trim a red instead of a leather brown. Successful? Not quite, but one for the future to play with when not working inside 90 minutes.

Funny how the ambitious ideas pop up when you're already up against the clock!

2017 Goals - Painting Backlog

When I started writing everything down I realised it was becoming quite a lengthy post, so have split it into three sections. Summary, Hobby and Backlog. Here are the broader goals around the painting backlog

This year I wanted to be a little more disciplined in my approach and wrap up projects, rather than let whimsy take me where it will and end up with too much start on the workbench. So here are my goals with which I'll judge myself by end of year.

Infamy [3]
With pretty much the whole range of figures sat in a cupboard, I'm waiting for my  Twistered pledge to arrive before dive into this lot as I want to have a consistent feel through everything - so crazy as it sounds most of these will wait until 2018. But I do have a couple of larger 54mm automatas and a Tesla bust to improve my larger scale painting with.

Colony 87 [9]
Finish all the figures from the second set released last year, completing the set and bringing the total to 15 models in all.

Hasslefree Miniatures [12]
Paint everything I picked up at Salute - Admiral Almos, Colonel Hogan, Hostrom Hammersmith, Ullr the Red, Bolverk the Bold, Howling Gorvhogguth, TradKarl, Weird West Boudi, Harby, Rogue Drax, Blanche and Mystic Warrior Jen.

Heresy Miniatures [3]
Finish everything I picked up at Salute. Started with an Ogre at the end of 2016, and have a few more left - the Colossus, Ghoul King and Brother Bude.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolves [28]
Dust off and rebase my existing models with the new Sector Imperialis basing kit. Paint up the whole Ironclaw Strike Force that may have been purchased over Christmas. Whoops.

Warhammer 40,000 Death Guard [16]
Complete two tactical squads and a random Demon Prince I found in the cupboard.

Guild Ball Morticians [3]
Complete the Season 1 & 2 roster with Scalpel, Vileswarm and Veteran Graves.

Guild Ball Fishermen [5]
Complete the Season 1 & 2 roster with alternate Shark, Corsair, Sakana, Jac and Tentacles.

Willy Miniatures [1]
Sportscasters. I finished the Ogre (let's call him Bob) last year and have the Vampire (who is definitely not Jim Johnson from Blood Bowl) and then that completes my homebrew Guild Ball NPC collection.

This sets my initial goals at 80 figures, which would be more than I've completed in a calendar year since returning to painting at the start of 2015. That's an average of over 1.5 figures a week, consistently through the year. Quite a challenge for me I hope. Now a number of these will be tabletop or thereabouts, but a few will be stepping stones in pushing my ability.

Achieving this would also mean I can play a nice selection of rosters for Guild Ball or Kill Team events in 40k. It also helps flesh out my sci-fi civilian options for a diorama that's brewing in the back of my mind.

There's a bonus entry here too. Complete everything in my Zombicide Black Plague monster set. That's a little more ambitious as I think there's about 100-150 figures in that pile. Note that doesn't even include the hero characters - because I have 66 of those sods, which is a year on its own at my speed! This one is definitely not very smart, but that's why it's down here as a bonus.

So that's me and the plan for the coming year. You'll already see I've managed to start into the Colony 87 figures but need to pick up the pace - as one figure a week isn't going to be enough to meet the targets. Especially when there's such variety in there, but let's see I we do!