Tuesday 25 October 2011

Staying Unfocussed

I read a number of other peoples blog and plogs and a recurring theme seems to be the question of how do people stay committed to a project.  I feel I've done pretty well on this over the years, I played and painted the dwarfs for pretty much 15 years non stop (ok a big break in the middle but was commited to that army when I did paint anything).  Since I branched out and started with the WE (branched out, da dum cha) they were originally intended as a 'quality painting' project.  Unfortunately I got really bored of them really quickly and just shelved them.  I then started gaming regularly again which led me to looking at wanting other armies to play and I bought the lizards to have as a 'quick' project whist I could concentrate on the woodies.  Then 8th came out and blew the whole gambit by utterly changing how armies were constructed.

So what did I do?  I went back to my dwarfs painted up enough to get them on the table, played a few games, got bored of them all over again and wanted a new army!  That lead to me bashing out the WE next because I happened to get hooked on painting a few of their models again.  Then I got hooked into the lizards and got them really going, plus I picked up some Malifaux, Epic, 40k, Skaven and doubtlessly some other stuff.

I think had I tried to stay with one army I'd have really struggled, I'd get bored painting the same thing over and over and the shelve the project.  Instead I've got my scatter gun approach which keeps me desperate to paint something new all the time.  Last week was a slow week, I did an ogre to show a clubmate, a couple of bret knights to try and come up with a scheme for when I do the army (project Pokemon* continues).  This week saw me finish off a third bret knight and then bash out 40 skaven and I've got 2 malifaux models on my painting table for when they're done.  Before the ogre it was WE's.

I have a tournament coming up, I've got a choice of 4 armies I can bring out for it, one's a bit limited but the others I can take virtually everything from the books.  The most common question I've had on my painting is how on earth I can paint so much and stay motivated?  The answer is
1. so much because I've set my standards well below my best, mass army painting = mass army paintjob.
2. Because I enjoy painting a variety of different stuff so it doesn't get stale.


* Gotta catch 'em all - I want a painted version of every army

Monday 24 October 2011

Club Hobby Guru

The last couple of weeks saw me get somewhat hobby distracted.  I flipped back to my WE in order to get some updates done for a silly list I was wanting to take for a tournament in late November, but it's now looking like I'm not going to be able to attend.

But progress was made, I painted a forest dragon and 13 more glade riders (I now have 20 in total, yes, I know they're rubbish).

But then I hit the wall a little but playing a game vs Jon (a clubmate) with his brand new Ogres in the classic grey plastic scheme.  He's dedicated to painting them up though so we were chatting paint schemes.  I very tounge in cheek suggested he go for a night time scheme.  There are a number of 'source lit' night time armies, mostly VC, floating about in the UK tournament scene.  The majority of them look 'ok' but nothing special in my eyes.  So in suggesting this I was saying 'spray black, dust with lighter colour 'claim it's done'...

We then got onto more serious schemes and how easy it would be to paint an ogre army using current techniques.  Total army is 6 bulls, 6-8 iron guts, 4 lead belchers, 3 characters, 4 mournfangs, iron blaster and 3 sabretusks.  Model count is very low, so that's the first tick.  Models themseleves are quite big and simple, so painting between the lines is quite easy and they don't have a lot of unnecessary detail on them, so you're not wasting time on intricate stuff people will never look at!

Discussion then turned to how to make them look good.  As it happens there have been a few nice armies floating around with different skin tones, mostly blues, but I'd seen a beasts army with a very effective red skin scheme.  So I suggested that.  Jon was thinking black trousers but that's quite a tricky paint scheme so I suggested grey and after that it's really only metals and leather.

With that set I went away and dug out the 4 ogre models I'd bought thinking I might use them in a WoC project which I then shelved (and sold on recently).  I then tried to work out the quickest possible way of painting them.  To be clear Jon doesn't really enjoy painting and wanted a few pointers on how to go about it, I didn't just steal his scheme!

So speed being the call of the day with a tournament in a months time
1. Red skin - that'd be a trip to halfords for their red primer
2. Grey trousers - foundation grey - astrimonicon I think
3.  Iyander darksun for the leather basecoat
4. Boltgun metal

Everything then got a black wash and a few highlights reapplied to the red and metals before basing.

Really simple and quite effective.  Over to Jon now to roll it out across an army.