Progress to July 2011

Time for the mid-year progress report. I had planned to do a work-in-progress post on my Dad's Army figures, but as they're almost finished, I'll leave it until they're done.

Figures completed this year

I've only finished the Reaper Space Marine, Studio McVey Lt. Kara Black and limited edition Joseph Bugman figures that I mentioned in my April update since that post.

I ended up painting the figures serially, rather than in parallel, which added to the length of time it took. Looking back on it, painting figures where there was little overlap in colours, other than the flesh, was a mistake. I normally paint for an hour, so when painting a number of figures, I try to work through them all in the given time. What I have found, however, is that when painting just one figure, I pretty much spend the whole hour on one part.

As of writing, I still have the Reaper Marine and Lt. Black to base, so I'll post some pictures when they're finished. I am making the base of the Reaper Marine from scratch as I can't find one I like, but, unfortunately, this will slow me down - it's just as well I don't do this for a living :-)

The current Dad's Army figures are actually progressing quite quickly for me - just approaching four weeks, and nearly finished. Granted, they're all wearing uniforms, and have a lot of colours in common, but still...

Painting

I'm hopefully still improving, but that's kind-of "eye of the beholder" stuff. I have to admit that I'm getting a bit tired of the "proper painting" thing at the moment, and I'm looking forward to some less demanding painting when I finish the Dad's Army figures.

Modelling

This aspect has pretty much ground to a halt just now - blame Dad's Army again. As I mentioned earlier, I'm building a base for the Reaper Marine, but other than that, it's pure painting just now.

General

I'm not quite sure what my attitude to painting is at the moment. I'm still enjoying it, but not quite as enthusiastically as I was earlier in the year. That may in part be the weather, as I'm much more of a cold weather person (I empathise with the Trolls in Terry Pratchett's novels, although the deep freeze would probably be a bit too far the other way). Fortunately, I've been at this hobby long enough to know that these things go in cycles, so I'm not too worried. I've found that slowing down until the painting urge returns is the best approach - perhaps switching my primary focus to other modelling projects, like basing figures or making scenery. The worst idea (for me at least) is to stop completely, as it can be very difficult to restart.

The lack of finished figures and the lack of figures that I want to buy aren't helping. That being said, I've just ordered a few figures from Studio McVey, including their new Dark Emissary figure. This one is a slight gamble, as the dimensions suggest he's closer to 40mm than 32mm. He's for my Demon Apocalypse setting, however, so a little leeway is allowed.

I'm still studying towards an Open University degree that I started few years ago. I finished a module last October (2010), so I think it's time to get back on that particular horse and start studying again. Once that happens, my painting time gets cut back drastically, basically being reduced to weekends. As figures take three times longer to finish, I'll probably be sticking to more gaming quality painting (although I did paint Blackbeard while studying last year, so display standard can be done)

Bonus Pictures

Loads of self-indulgent words this week (well, that's what blogs are for), so I thought I'd end with a few random pictures.

These are various limited edition Citadel figures, from many moons ago.

One of the original models they produced for a Power Armoured Space Marine (usual caveat, if memory serves). I couldn't think of how to paint him - hence the overall metal theme.

One of a now defunct (although possibly being resurrected, if rumours are correct) race. Even though I have hundreds of Dwarfs, the whole Squat thing did nothing for me. This is the only figure I have, and I think he came out before the main range.

One of my favourite figures - just loads of character. One of the first figures I used my heavy drybrushing technique on, and I think it worked (it looks better in real life than the photograph suggests). He's on a Milliput base, rather than a slottabase, something I did quite often in those days - just didn't like slottabases. At some point, however, I should really finish his base :-)