LL13: Progress, Pain, and Procrastination

Well, it's down to just a couple more days before leaving for Lock and Load. I'm in a final mad rush of painting and assembly and pre-packing. The painting has turned into partial success and partial failure. I was hoping to paint 2 new things, but it looks like Lylyth is the only thing I'm going to get done. On the flip side, I have gotten a fair amount of assembly work donw. I have a second Angelius mostly assembled at this point, but it still needs some putty work that I'll probably try to wrap up before leaving.

I think the bigger challenge I'm facing is packing all my models. I want to bring my Croxorz and my Legion, but that's some 150 models, including 2 huge bases. Well, 3 counting Lylyth 3, but she's not fully assembled so it's not a big deal. In any case, I'll figure it out. Driving has an advantage of storage options that wouldn't necessarily be flying-friendly.

So what are my hopes for attending Lock and Load? Well, it's simple. First, I want to talk with other painters and share tips. Second, I want to have a great time playing a ton of casual games. So if you're attending and interested in getting a game in, I'll be floating in and out of the Iron Arena during the whole event. Come and find me!

Afflictor (take 2)

Here's my second Afflictor. This was an amusing project but it went on longer than I expected. Some quick notes about this project:

* I really hated painting the Skorne model for this. I don't know how the Skorne players out there do it. Honestly! Maybe it's because it reminded me too much of painting Menoth.
* I used one of the metal bases for this to help improve stability a bit.
* There's no pin between the Afflictor and the Swordsman, thus it is somewhat fragile. In hindsight, I should have put a pin in. I may yet have to depending on how much it ends up bending during game play.

Ok, back to packing for Lock and Load.

LL13: Impressions of Preparing

This is sort of a massive mash-up post. It's a combination of musings about going to Lock and Load, preparing for a painting competition, and just a general update of things going on at my painting desk. Rather than go into a lot of detail, I'm just going to include a lot of pictures and short notes.

A few days ago, I decided to paint something new for the Lock and Load painting competition. Not really a lot of time to get something done, but I'm making an honest effort to push for it. The assembly part went really smooth actually.

Priming on the other hand turned into a disaster. My can of Krylon primer seems to have turned bad on me. I'd had problems before, but it really got horrible. So I ended up stripping them and starting over. I lost a day, but fortunately the stripping and re-priming went smooth.

And yes, I switched back to Duplicolor primer. It's shmowza math. I'm never switching from it again.

And here you can see some progress. The new Lylyth sculpt is really quite nice. I'm not sure this will turn out to be my best work, but I'm going to make a huge effort on it prior to leaving. Hopefully I'm not doing final work on it while I'm at L&L.

I've still got a ton of stuff to do before I leave for L&L. Not the least of which is figuring out how to pack my entire Legion model collection and pack up a painting kit. Oh, and get some models assembled and primed to bring along for painting practice while I'm there. So much to do, and so little sleep to get.

From the Desk: Archangel Nearly Assembled

So I've finally got myself a bit more focused on my painting desk and I made some serious progress the last couple days. Specifically on the wings.

As it turned out, I opted to order the Scythean spines from the PP parts store and use those as replacements for the wing claws. They are obviously different in shape, but I like the look of them overall. Here you can see also that I've got pins in place for the wings. I've actually got the whole thing assembled in that respect (other than some remaining gap filling), but I'm planning to leave the wings off for the initial painting work and then I'll clean it up afterwards. I'm even debating whether to leave them detachable for transport purposes, but the painter in me revolts at that idea.

Here's a shot of the entire assembled thing, excluding an actual base. There's a Stormguard there for size reference just for kicks.

Afflictor

Catching up on my April goal at this point. First Afflictor is done!

Play it Painted: April Failure, May Goal

So I failed at my April goal. Not entirely, but mostly. Only Pendrake got finished and everything else is still in progress. My May goal (which also aligns with my Lock&Load goal) is to wrap up these projects and also get my Archangel at least fully assembled and primed. Ideally I will also get the Archangel at least partially painted if not entirely, but I'm not going to count on it. This month will be a remarkable test of my willpower to stay focused on painted over reading the Dresden books.