From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #141

So much insanity everywhere. My muse is distraught.

This week has not been as productive as I'd like. I unfortunately got food poisoning on Friday and that left me a mess for a couple days. Work has been hectic due to my new larger role. And in general I've found myself just quite busy overall. Still though I did manage to get some stuff done. This weekend was largely about getting things assembled and finished up. The Neraph got done, and I finally got caught up on posting stuff to the blog. I also got these small terrain pieces done which were essentially tests for the new Vallego Weathering paints I picked up. I'll try to post a review of them later once I can write that up. In addition I got a bunch of models assembled and/or primed, including: Mysterious Emissary (primed), 3 Changelings (assembled/primed), The Claw (assembled/primed), The Thorn (assembled/primed), Swamp Mother (assembled), and 3 sets of Gupps (assembled). The Swamp Mother is the translucent version and I have a devious scheme in mind for that. I'll post pictures of that project for sure.

I still haven't gotten any games in yet this year and January is pretty much gone. It's been a real challenge, but schedule-wise and mentally to get myself out for a game once my son is in bed.

Total games played this year: 0

And now some completely frivolous musings that can be freely ignored...
My inner artist/hobbyist needs to just get something off his chest at this point. I'm not inviting a discussion here. I have plenty of those going on within social media and real world already. These thoughts are just my artist-self needing a quiet voice.
The pain and fear I see around me lately has become nearly unbearable. So much division, and so many lines of angry and hate. The artist within me weeps for this. It is precisely the diversity of humanity that makes art such a vital medium of communication, and it is precisely the diversity of humanity that art needs in order to truly fire the soul. Without difference, there is only black.

Neraph (take 2)

The Neraph from the starter box. Nothing amazing here. Who knows when I'll actually field 2 Neraphs, but heck, it's painted.

50 Articles To Read

In case you missed it, this has a really great list of painting articles from 2016: 50 Articles and Tutorials To 'Do Not Miss' From 2016.

Will O The Wisps

These little pretties were both fun and horrific to work on. Getting them assembled quickly revealed that they would be highly fragile on their bases, so I ended up putting pins in them. Then after I was done with assembly and priming, I discovered that the massive vertical seams hadn't closed all the way. I managed to mostly hide that with some painting tricks though and the end result worked out ok.
When I was painting them I wanted to stick fairly close to the artwork, but I wanted to make them more spooky. I had seen an example posted on one of the Facebook groups where the person had made the faces more stark white, so I shamelessly stole that bit of inspiration. I made their faces skeletal and hollow, but kept the rest of the body with the sort of glowing look and modulated the color towards dark purple at the bottom. The wings are where I went much more different, and I still have mixed feelings there. However I feel like I did a pretty good job of nailing the "spooky" look.

Bandersnatch

There is simply no good angle to photograph this model from. It's just wild. The original version of this model has a miner with a pistol and lamp who is meant to be casting the shadow that the Bandersnatch is coming out of. I opted to exclude the miner just simply because I felt it drew attention from the Bandersnatch itself. I'm honestly quite glad that I did too. I also tried to work with the original art in terms of the colors for it, which turned out to be an interesting challenge.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #140

Finally getting a desk post in...

I've been slacking pretty bad on the blog here in this new year. I'm finally gaining steam on painting, but it's still feeling like a bit of an uphill struggle. I've got a couple other things done that I just haven't photographed and posted yet. The Neraph here is in progress and would have been my last unpainted Legion model if there wasn't a bit of an accident at my FLGS the other day, where I picked up the Grotesque Assassin and Nyss Warlord. I'm honestly not quite sure why I got them since I'm not planning to play WM/H anytime in the next couple months.

I picked up four Vallejo weathering paints the other day to experiment with. I'll post a couple examples later this week but my first impression is pretty positive.

Total games played this year: 0

Shredders (take 13 and 14)

These were the Shredders from the Legion box, which I finally got around to painting. Nothing amazing other than it only took me maybe 3 hours of effort total to do both of them.

2016 Wrap Up and 2017 Resolutions

[Disclaimer: This post contains fluffy, introspective nonsense... Just like last year's did.]

2016 was a very good year for hobby time. Despite all the other suck that happened in 2016, I had a generally great year personally.

Last year's goals:
1) Paint arcs on all my Legion models - Success! Piece of cake.
2) Close out DZC - Success! Got this done early and it felt great.
3) Get my Cygnar collection up to 95% painted - Success! I'm actually at 100% painted.
4) Play 52 games this year - Success! Counting both WMH and Malifaux I played 56 games.
5) Attend 1 convention - Success! Lock & Load again of course.
6) Paint a Batman model for my comics fixer - Fail! I got it assembled, but not even primed.
7) Play tighter games - Success! Hard to actually measure, but I feel good about this.
8) Pack away old models - Success! All the space I made in my case got filled by Cygnar though.
9) Archive selected models - Success! Actually there weren't that many, but it's done.
10) Read another book about painting - Success! Finished A Brilliant History of Color in Art. Great read.

A huge highlight was really the 56 games I played. As a working father it can be really hard to get games in. Honestly one of the best parts of playing was starting a Malifaux campaign. I have been absolutely loving the Malifaux campaign and I'm looking forward to plenty more of it.

Models painted last year:
Cygnar: 45
Malifaux: 24
Legion: 12
Minions: 8
DZC: 7
Mercs: 3
Convergence: 1
Looking at it from a size perspective (excluding DZC):
Small based: 57
Medium based: 14
Large based: 21
Huge based: 1

So not quite as prolific this year, painting an even 100 models, compared to 130 last year. The big difference being that this year I tackled more solos and especially Malifaux whereas last year there was a massive amount of Cygnar painting that filled the ranks. I did however build more terrain this year (6 additional pieces, one of which didn't get it's own post).

Goals for next year:
1) Paint the Batman model for my comics fixer - Again, gonna try to get this done.
2) Play 52 games - Again, great goal to have every year.
3) Read 2 books about painting - Books good.

My goals this year are thinner than last year mostly because I've got some family situation stuff going on that will preclude me from traveling much. Plus my work situation has changed (due to a promotion) so I'm purposefully not setting a bunch of goals for myself here. What I do want to do is really enjoy painting again.

And that's it. Here's to a fantastic 2016 and hopes for a great 2017. Cheers to all!