Grey Horde: February 2018

Bought: 0
Sold: 14 Dark Eldar Kabalites
Painted: 10 Word Bearers, 6 Vending Machines, 1 Sportscaster, 1 Space Wolf, 3 Norsemen
Total: -35

That's right. A big, fat zero at the top for things I bought!

Not as productive as I wanted, but still a decent month. A little more cleared from the Cupboard of Doom, and a few more projects progressed well. Selling off another unit of 40k 3rd edition "why on earth did I buy this?" was good, but ... finally wrapping up projects? A warm glow of happiness. That's my Norsemen, my Sportscasters and a terrain project all finished up.

Vampire Sportscaster

A mere 15 months after completing his Ogre counterpart, I've wrapped the second of the two sportscasters from Willy Miniatures. One small step for painting, one giant step to wrapping up another project.

I don't like the face on this sculpt, it feels wrong. He should be leering, and the mouth feels a little too big. It's beyond my skill to make it look other than a big happy grin, but there we have it. I did enjoy painting the leather coat, it's another approach to leather in constrast to my other recent projects.

Here's a shot of the pair of them together.

Eagle eyed viewers will notice I've gone back and updated Bob Bifford the Ogre's scarf to match Jim Johnson the Vampire's scarf. Plans are afoot to build a nice sideboard for my Guild Ball games to feature crowd and commentators, but that's way down the list of projects at the moment.

I feel my something-better-than-tabletop painting has come on in the 16 months between them. Especially in trying to build textures. Still a long way to go but it's nice to feel I've progressed.

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!

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!

Goblin Referee

Following the Ogre Sportscaster, this is the second of three figures I started to paint with Arcane Paintworks. He's a the Goblin Referee from the excellent Willy Miniatures (again) but painted up as an annoying little human - as I haven't yet seen goblins make an appearance in Guild Ball.

He's quite a small fellow too - compared to his colleague the Ogre. Smaller than a standard 28mm character and here's a scale shot to demonstrate the difference ...

The challenges here were:

• Use non-skintones for my shading. This adds a depth of colour and interest that's usually lacking in my skin work, and while my highlighting still needs practice I was delighted with the shading side of things - even if it was a little OTT.
• Paint four stages of eye following this guide. I managed to squeeze all four in here, as you can see from the top picture. This felt like quite an achievement considering the scale and space to work in. Moreso when you consider I only used a size 2 brush for the eyes to get that done.

At this point I genuinely feel my painting is starting to progress.

Ogre Sportscaster

This is the first of three figures I started painting during my painting course with Arcane Paintworks, and the focus was the jacket and face. He's an Ogre Sportscaster from the excellent Willy Miniatures and having looked at this month's White Dwarf, he bears more than a passing resemblance to their cartoon figures advertising Blood Bowl, but moving on ...

The base is very vanilla as he'll be standing to the side of the pitch mocking my Guild Ball players. The painting challenges for me here were:

• Highlight with a colour I wouldn't normally use. So there's a lot of yellow to work up from the base colour of tan ... you can see some areas of the figure were less successful than others, and that's fine. They're my little, horrible badges of honour while I got to grips with techniques. 
• Getting to grips with shading using a two-brush blending/feathering technique. Hard, hard, hard. My brain needs to think about this more, and my hands need more practice - but it started coming together after the first few tries.
• Try to use less colours on a figure. This worked well to make everything else a gentle background to try and emphasise the angry face.

I threw in some extreme highlighting on black trousers, as they were the last item on the figure to do and I'd painted myself into a corner.