Pirate Bands

I'm slowly working through my zombie survivors. However, as I'm painting them "properly", the shading and highlighting is taking forever. I wouldn't mind so much, but what little I achieve in an hour will be wiped out when I matt varnish them :-( Got to increase the contrast between base and shade/highlight!

Anyway, another of my many projects is Pirates. They're a fairly quiet side project, but a group slips onto the painting schedule occasionally. I have plenty of unpainted Pirates, mostly Foundry, Reaper and Scorpion Miniatures. To date, I've painted two bands of Foundry pirates, shown below. The first group suffer from the matt varnish effect - they were shaded and highlighted, honest. The second group don't, but that's only because I'm waiting for warmer weather before I varnish them. I'm planning to test Humbrol matt varnish on some other figures, so hopefully it'll be kinder to the paint job.

These are the Foundry Horrible Henchmen figures, and were the first group I painted. They didn't look particularly ship bound to me, so I put them on "outdoor" bases. I'm in the middle of changing my basing technique across all my figures (new paints only, I'm not mad enough to redo many hundreds of figures), as I'm not happy with the textured paint look. At the very least I need to add some static grass to the bases, just to make them a bit less bland.

The next group I painted were Henry Morgan's Crew. I clipped off the original bases and pinned them to BlackCat wooden bases. Not really crazy about the giant pistols and skulls, but I don't find them offensive enough to want to redo them :-) The next set of bases I plan to use have the wood effect as part of the base, rather than just being a base topper - and no giant hats!

Dwarf Villagers

Many many (many) moons ago, when getting to the FLGS involved dodging marauding dinosaurs, Citadel produced a range of dwarf villagers. Some of them were done for one of the campaign packs they produced (it's in the loft somewhere, but I can't remember where, or which one), others just because they could :-)

So, without further ado, some dwarf villagers, all pre-slottabase

Some general civilian types. The guy at the end has a pirate feel that I'd forgotten about. I still have (unpainted) the Dwarf Pirates that Citadel produced, so he may get press-ganged when I finally get around to painting them.

Most of the female Dwarves in my collection. Not quite sure what the ratio of female to male Dwarves is, but hopefully it's higher than that suggested by the various figure manufacturers.

Prospecting for gold's (figs 2 and 4) hungry work, which keeps the cook busy.

Innkeeper, along with a patron and a rat-catcher (should have photographed him at a bit of an angle). Not sure if the guy on stilts has height issues, or if he's testing an invention. Sadly, I suspect the former.

Recently Completed

Just a few photos of a couple of recently completed miniatures.

The first figure is a 54 mm WW2 British infantryman from the Tamiya British Infantry on Patrol box. I finished painting him early last year, but only got around to basing him a couple of weeks ago. It's the first 54 mm figure I've painted, and was done mostly as a learning exercise. It's not great, but looks okay in a dark display cabinet.

The next figure was the second 54 mm figure I started, and the third I finished :-) He was another learning exercise, but got interrupted when I had to concentrate on Blackbeard. I finally finished painting him late last year, and based him at the same time as the British figure.

The model is a Wee Friends Miniatures late imperial Roman auxiliary. It's an okay figure, but took a lot of filling at the shoulders and there were some annoying resin "blobs" on the figure, including one under his left eye that left a flat area when I removed it. I made a mess of his spear, which I cut too short, but again, early attempt, and I learned quite a few things, so overall I'm happy enough.

There are also some Pig Iron heavy weapon troopers and pirates completed, but I'll get them based and varnished before photographing them

Resolutions for 2011

Most years I sit down with a sheet of paper and jot down bullet points of my plans for the coming year. I then pin the sheet to a noticeboard and pretty much forget about it. This being the 21st century and all, I thought I'd get all hi-tech. I also hope that by putting my plans down here, I'll be less inclined to "forget" about them.

So, my gaming related plans and aspirations for 2011 are:

Painting

• Improve my painting. Kind-of a given for a painter, but worth saying. Hopefully it'll prevent me from falling into a rut and remind me to keep experimenting
• Experiment more. Try coloured washes when painting skin and armour, practise designs on clothing (borders on cloaks) and skin (tattoos), have another go at NMM etc.
  
• Learn just what the "consistency of skimmed milk" actually looks like, so I can judge when paint is properly thinned :-)
  
• Spend a bit more time looking at what colours I have available for a particular part. All too often I just grab the same paint each time, and only afterwards find a colour that might have been more interesting
• Practise blending and gradients. My transitions are still too sharp, so I'd like to smooth them out more. This may involve using retarder in the paint to slow drying and allow for wet blending. Yet another item in the experiment category
• Stay focused on the project I'm working on. I have a bad habit of starting to prepare the next project while still in the middle of the current one. This tends to split my concentration and make me want to rush the current one to get it finished (at the moment I'm actually thinking about the project after the next one, which is just not helpful)

Modelling

• Get back to converting figures. I enjoy this aspect of the hobby, but it always seems to take away painting time, so I tend to find excuses not to do it. I need to make the time to select and work on a conversion project
• Sculpting. I sculpted some figures a few years ago and want to get back to it, so I'm hoping the conversions will get me into the correct mindset . I enjoy painting, but the creation of a figure from nothing but putty and wire is equally satisfying (and infinitely more stressful, when you're as bad at it as I am). This aspiration may get converted to heavily modifying an existing figure, depending on time constraints
  

General

• Try and enjoy the hobby more. I tend to focus on the painting side, so I'm going to try and not just jump from painting project to painting project this year. The hope is to do more modelling, sculpting and gaming (possibly even exceed my total of last year's one wargame!)
• Practise with my camera and try and take better photographs. I bought my first DSLR before Christmas, so I need to learn to use it properly