So the past two months have been pretty brutal on my painting progress if I am being honest here. After NoVA Open I came back absolutely drained. I not only had the post-con drain of hobbying and gaming too much but it was just tiring on me physically. One of those 'getting older' kind of experiences I suppose, but that's why I didn't do a post-con blog about it. If you're curious about pictures you can go right HERE.
It was a better experience this year compared with the one in 2018, primarily because I actually signed up for stuff this go around! I ended up attending roughly half of my events, though I wish I had gone to all of them. Regardless of the events I missed, the ones I attended were a blast. I have to say I think I hung around the Warhammer 30k Richmond group crowd the most. A lot of great people from that group but also some of the best looking armies. Something about their passion for the Horus Heresy and the stories they wove with the scenarios just really drew me in. I only participated in one event with them, the Zone Mortalis, but I had a blast and would do it again!
After a week like that, I came back and I frankly didn't start painting again until nearly a month later! Part of that was a dedicated time of respite from painting and trying to get as much done before the NoVA Open but real life has a nice way of making sure to exhaust you to where video games seemed to have been an easier choice. This is true, it's a lot easier to go play video games than to do this hobby and sometimes that wins out. I did spend a good amount of time assembling new models as I snagged some Dark Elves from Greebo games for Blood Bowl.
So when I did decide to pick the brush back up I started off with Warcry's Iron Golem warband. I had the color scheme in mind: frost exposed skin and metallic green armor! After looking up some tutorials I decided to give the skin a try aaaaaand...ended up with the Grimace. Yikes. I was disheartened but I didn't quite give up (took me a couple days to get over my own frustration) and I somehow salvaged the paint scheme to be less frost and more desert themed. I think it kind of worked but I'll be honest I'm not in love with the scheme and given the chance to do it again I will try to avoid it.
I think that's ok though which is weird to me. It goes against how I've operated for a long where I treated all models as something more than they really have to be, which is something along the lines of "they have to be perfect because I spent all this money on them!" I suppose for some that are true but as I've been painting more I've also come to appreciate the process of discovery. Sometimes it works out in my favor, like those pink Yu-Jing from infinity, but sometimes it doesn't and that's fine with me. By exploring and opening myself up to failure I ended up with some new skills (e.g. recovering from a bad scheme), experience with new techniques, and an appreciation for other color combinations I would have never explored otherwise.
So after the Iron Golems, I went and started working on the Untamed Beasts and I felt the results were more pleasing to my eye. Not to say the Iron Golems are not contrast paint friendly, but I felt that you could pretty much do the entire Warband with nothing but contrast paints had some great results with this band. I also appreciated the models more as I painted them, as earlier I was not a fan of the whole tribal theme. After getting my hands on them I appreciated the sculpts and that helped the painting process go more smoothly. I experimented with some other paints, specifically Scale 75 colors, and found that the ultra-matte effect their paints have had an undesired effect on things like cloaks but worked really well on the bone weaponry.
I started working on some Blood Angel Primaris marines but didn't finish them in time before October ended, but here are some progress pictures anyways.
Slow couple of months but I think I am picking back up. How is your hobby progress coming along? Let me know what you're working on regardless of the smoothness or struggle it might be and I hope you end up doing well. We're almost done with this year and the bi-monthly progress report so it should be interesting to see how I did over the whole year. Well until then folks take care of yourselves out there and happy gaming!
As always, an inspiration, sir. "I didn't get much done..." *shows several completed warbands*
ReplyDeleteMy. Eyes. Are. Rolling.