Back in the Saddle!

After what seems to be the “winter doldrums” for me in terms of minis painting, I seem to have found my brushes and again and gotten back to work!I really feel the urge to get some paint on plastic and metal.

I’ve started in on another Space Marine Tactical Squad, and at the same time begun working on the Old Crow tanks I have (trying to get them ready for a big Stargrunt game in a few weeks time). Here’s what my table looks like at the moment (so you can see I’m not shining you on):

I did my first tac squad about a year ago and I’ve kinda forgotten the colors I used, so this first batch of five I’ll be doing to get my mojo back in that regard. Shouldn’t be a problem though.

When I went to basecoat one of my tanks I ran out of paint. I’m using Tamiya Model Color, which I have to say, even dribbling out of the can on its last bit of pressure is some very high quality paint. I’ll be sure to get another can this weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, I’ll be taking part in EndGame’s Grey Knights painting challenge on Saturday. I have no desire to play a Grey Knights army in 40K (and not much desire to play 40K in the first place) but I do like the Grey Knight minis, so for the contest I’ll be doing a squad. Normally I am a very slow and methodical painter – these 5 tac marines I’m working on now will probably take me three weeks to finish. But for this contest, the challenge is to get it all done in about 6 hours! I do know some speed painting techniques and I’ll try and put them to use. I deliberately chose the GK Power Armor squad to paint because I can just use some metallic primer and washes to set it all up, and the rest is all detail work.

Finally, I realize I still have some minis collections I haven’t shown, namely my Bloodbowl teams and my War of the Ring game pieces (FFG not GW), so I’ll try to get some pics of those up soon.

Progress!!

A wind is blowing…

My motivation to paint and model tends to wax and wane. Recently, my collection of unpainted minis has built up to a point where I really need to address the pile before I buy anything new. I have those two resin tanks and the SST Cougars to do, the Space Hulk repaint, a handful of Pig Iron System Troopers and that big box of Space Marines I just got staring at me every time I sit down at my work table.

I think I know what’s holding me up. My desire to get to these other minis is being checked by three Cadwallon figures I promised to paint for a friend. I really need to get those done and when I do, it’ll free me with regard to The Pile. As long as I let these three figures sit unpainted, I fear I may keep picking up new minis until I’ll never be able to finish them all.

So, Cadwallon, you bastard, here I come!

How do you guys keep your momentum up? For example, I am in awe of the dude at Fawcett Avenue Conscripts. Not only is he a great painter and modeler, he turns out prolific amounts of painted figures at a rate I could never hope to match. Check his blog out because he’s got some great stuff on there!