Sometimes I am caught off guard by a model. I think to myself "Wow! I love those! I want to paint those!" If they aren't in my primary factions, then I often wait or look for an opportunity to paint them for someone else. In the case of the Gun Mages, MK2 made them available to the mercenary Highborn contract, which made me very excited. I proxied them one game and found them to be excellent. I rushed out and bought them soon after. I stuck them to bases temporarily and played them unpainted while I was finishing up previous projects. Then I started painting them and... they were tedious. Not just a little tedious. They were painfully tedious. I honestly couldn't explain why either. Painting units is frequently soul-crushing, but these were especially so for some reason. I finished them up, and they aren't great, but they are finished. So it got me thinking... why were they so painfully tedious to paint?1) Units are tedious. Duh!! Painting a whole unit of models together can be frustrating. So much time gets spent in the beginning and so little progress seems to get made.
2) I primed these white, and I often have a problem with being frustrated with my progress when painting over white. It has to do with the color balance to the eye. I typically don't base coat everything before doing shading and highlighting, so I'll get to this point where half the model is done and the other half is stark white. It makes my eyes angry.
3) Although these models appear like nice simple sculpts, there was something about the color choices I had and the surfaces available that just didn't seem to jive. I think used much more of a brown palette and eliminated the green that I'd have been happier. Unfortunately that didn't become clearer to me until I was nearly done. *sigh*
4) Rushing to get them done obviously got me cranky. I was sick of proxying other models in my battles while I tried to get these guys done. Lesson learned: Don't field something until AFTER it's painted.
Most of this is no revelation to anyone out there I'm sure. This just felt like a chance for me to step back and pay attention to where my own personal desire to paint is gravitating towards and aim more in that direction.
3 comments:
Nice looking figs- the green cloaks was an interesting choice. Well done.
#3 is the same reason I'm having trouble with my trollblood stonescribes and bearer. You would think brown and green go well but I am having trouble. I Should've just painted them in varying shades of brown hehe... But yours look really good, I think the blue helps tie the brown and green together.... Hmmm there's an idea, I'll use blue on the tartans! Thanks for the inspiration!! :)
Try doing up any Skorne unit!
I can relate with starting, not finishing - moving on to other projects, and then rushing just to get them done...
Have to figure out some shortcuts to unit painting, but sometimes whenever I do that I feel like I'm shorting them out of a decent paint job.
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