87? Really?

[Apologies up front. I'm an engineering manager, and thus sometimes that side of my brain takes over and looks at metrics.]

So the year is up, and I was looking back at how much I painted this last year, using this blog as a tally sheet. 85 models! I couldn't believe I'd painted that much! There's a pretty good variety in there too. It was actually quite shocking to see how much stuff I'd painted, and how the effort had distributed out:
Cryx: 32
Mercs: 31
Menoth: 15
Trolls: 1
Cygnar: 1
Circle: 1
Minions: 1
Khador: 1
non-PP: 2

All things considered, I feel pretty good about my progress this last year. I developed a number of skills, entered KublaCon with an entry I felt good about, and overall got a lot of painting done. Compared to 2007 where I only painted 47 models, I also feel like my speed has really picked up, and I'm painting on a more regular basis with less downtime due to burnout. It probably helps that I've scaled back on other activities and learned how to manage my time better.

So what does 2009 hold for my painting hobby? After some not-so-serious thought, here's my top 3 goals for the year:
1) Close out my unpainted models down to 2 factions at a time.
2) Start a Legion army.
3) Enter KublaCon again with entries I feel even better about than last year.

Sorcha

No, I haven't started playing Khador too now. This is a Christmas gift for Sean who is playing Khador a lot now. I've wanted to paint this model for a while and I figured this would be a good option. He's undoubtedly already got Sorcha, but hopefully this alternate sculpt will find a place in his collection.
Admitted, digressing into rules for a moment, I think Sorcha would be a really fun caster to play. However she has a reputation of being a real pain to play against and one of the leading "power gamer" casters. Perhaps if people see effort put into painting her well, it will take the sting out of playing against her. Hey! A guy can dream!
I spent a pile of time cleaning up details on this model as I went along. The white on the armor never did end up looking great to me. My blending is just not quite clean enough still to pull off white armor plates.
The coat on the other hand worked out quite well. The "imperfections" in the blending tend to create a sense of texture. That coupled with a fair variation in color created an effect I was quite pleased with.
The metals were again part of the new style I've been working on. Lots of blending in black paint to create a more dramatic shading and highlighting on metals.

Holiday Link Dump

Today is another link dump day! A couple of random things I came across that were interesting to me on the Privateer Forums. Perhaps no one else, but at least now I won't lose these links.

This was a post about creating molds for bases which I found very interesting. I'm definitely going to try this out for myself.

Legion paint scheme
This was a post of some Legion models for which I somewhat liked the color scheme. Not entirely, but it's helping me decide what I want to eventually go with.

Terminus

Now this was a big model. Lich Lord Terminus is probably in the top 5 largest models I've painted. This is the latest addition to my Cryx force. I kept in style with the other Cryx models I've painted, and also focused on a balance of speed painting and quality. As a result, I got him done pretty fast, mostly due to the use of washes and 2 brush blending techniques.

Still having a little bit of color balance challenge with my photo setup again, so the blue/yellow shifts between the left and right sides. Kinda screwed up the saturation which makes the blade of the sword look all white. It's actually painted to look like carved bone. Oh well.

The armor was the standard formula I've used before. The skirt and darkened armor plates was CXH then 2 brush blended with CXB and then black to shade them.

The wings were a whole different issue. I did a number of passes and washes, starting with a base mix of half Rucksack Tan and half Midlund Flesh. Then I did a heavy wash of Battlefield Brown and "sponged" and "rubbed" some places clean of the wash to restore the highlights. Then I did 2 more heavy washes of Umbral Umber and Black in controled areas and 2 brush blended the washes at the edges to smooth them out. This created a deeper and richer shading for the wings which have a lot of surface complexity to work with.

There were a number of features of this model that I didn't like so much, nor make a big attempt to work with. The face/mouth are an example. He actually has a gun barrel in his mouth, but honestly I thought it was kinda silly. There's lots of detail under his chest as well which I didn't put much work into other than the standard washes. I could have done a bunch of OSL work, but again, the focus was on finishing in a timely manner. Overall I'm happy with the results and don't regret any of the shortcuts I took.

Random Resource Day

While I'm in the middle of a meeting at work, figured I'd post an interesting resource that I found on the Privateer forums today: Tartan Generator.

December Goal

Well, the whole "showdown" idea has devolved into just setting goals for myself. So it's time to set a December goal. Given that it's the holidays, and I'm likely to be busy with visitors and activities and such, I'm going to set a modest goal.

First, I want to get Terminus done. It's a great model, and he's already assembled.

Second, I picked up the Blessing of Vengeance last night and it's an awesome model. Highly positionable. I'm totally bumping it in the priority queue.

Third, well, I'm not sure there will be a third, but I'm going to shoot for getting the 4 Shredders done.

Well, that's the plan. We'll see how I do. I'm not expecting to make it, but hopefully I can carve out enough time to finish these.