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.

Play It Painted: April Goal

Super fast to document my goal for April (mostly for my own motivation):

• Paint Extreme Carnivean
• Paint Pendrake
• Assemble and paint 2 Afflictors
• Assemble Archangel

If I do all that, it'll be a miracle.

Play it Painted: March Results

As reported earlier, I finished my March goal well ahead of schedule. The caveat to that is that since 16th I haven't picked up a brush at all. I've been traveling for work and that put a huge crimp in my painting progress. But I'm back and super excited to set a goal for April. However before I do that (tomorrow), I wanted to recap my results and share some other notes.

March Accomplishments:

• Painted 5 Warmongers
• Painted 5 Warspears
• Painted Warspear Chieftain
• Finished painting Judicator
• Assembled and primed Pendrake
• Finished assembling and primed Extreme Carnivean

And how about my compatriots? Well Mike encountered a catastrophe when the dog ate one of his Warspear models. Lance shifted gears and did painting on Slaughterhausers and assembly on more trollkin stuff. And Henry, well, I actually played a game against his Skorne last night (and I lost I might add), but I got to witness firsthand his painted Paingivers and also a remarkably well painted banner on his Titan Gladiator.

Ok, so now that I'm back from travel, I'm planning to get back to the desk and get more work done. I'll post tomorrow about my April goal.

Warspear Chieftan

And this wraps up my March painting goal! Very early, but by design since I'm going to be traveling for work off and on for the next couple weeks so I needed to get these done early. I painted this guy at the same time as 5 Warspears and 5 Warmongers. Painting 11 medium based models all at once would normally feel soul crushing, but in this case I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Perhaps it was because I've been painting singles and huge based models most recently. In any case, it feels great to have all these guys done, not just for the ability to put them on the table but for the huge dent it puts into my unpainted model list. I also have to admit, my meager and crowded desk was pretty much at capacity having 11 medium based models in progress at once. Anyway time to do some reflection on the project.

What went well:
* Having a goal and driving towards it made a big difference. Just like when I painted the second Gatorman Posse and Ironback Spitter for the Gold Rush Rampage, using the Play-It-Painted-2k13 justification helped to get me excited and keep me focused. I've played pretty much zero games on my computer and painted nearly every night.
* Speed painting but allowing myself to spend time on certain details was a nice approach. I'm happy with the results given the time spent.
* Painting all 11 as a group definitely helped since I could use assembly-line techniques. However doing a mix of Warmongers and Warspears kept things mixed up so it wasn't too monotonous. I might do something similar if I decide to eventually paint Archers and Swordsmen.

What could have been better:
* The usual: More time, more details, etc. Honestly, I'm pretty happy about these guys overall so I'm just going to nitpick a couple things that I cut corners on due to speed.
* Warspear beards could have been more interesting. I just sort of "did something" and moved on.
* More highlighting on some key areas, particularly metals, would have helped with pop.

Ok, enough reflection. I need to start figuring out an April goal and begin assembling.

Blighted Ogrun Warspears

Warspears done for my March painting goal! Thoughts to follow with the Warspear Chieftan.

Blighted Ogrun Warmongers

Warmongers done for my March painting goal! No in-depth analysis here. I'll talk more about it in the Warspear Chieftan post.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #26

I hate the whole daylight savings time change thing. Spring forward? More like sleep thief.

First is my progress on my March painting goal, the Blighted Ogryn. Things have moved forward a lot. I got the armor mostly done, the loincloths, the spears, and generally a bunch of stuff. I'm mostly down to cleanups, highlights, and details. Of course I expect that all the detail work will take a fair amount of time. In any case, I'm happy with how quickly these are moving.

Next I have a quick glimpse into one of my painting tips that has served me well for a long time now. I use post-its on my desk and make notes on the remaining things that need to be done on my current projects. This helps me to make sure I don't accidentally miss anything. I keep adding to it as I spot things and scratch them off as I complete them. This has been a valuable tool for me, particularly on squads and on competition projects.

Next, but without pictures, are the assembly work I did on Pendrake. He's all assembled and attached to a base. Just need to prime him and I can get started on him, but that's pending my March goal.

Also, as mentioned earlier this week, I finished the Judicator. It was a huge relief to have that done and not looming over me as an unfinished project.

And then there was, oh, wait, this isn't painting related. It's my margarita in the foreground while my steaks were cooking! And with that I'll sign off for the evening.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #25

Super fast cause I'm exhausted from a busy weekend.

Here's a shot of 3 of my Blighted Ogrun that are in progress for my March painting goal. I'm not bothering to show them all because all 11 are in the same state. Skin is mostly done. Fur is base coated and washed. My next big step will be to tackle the metals which will be a soul crushing task. Fortunately all the models have very accessible poses so it isn't a nightmare to paint any of them in particular.

Some other things I did during this week:

• Finished Rask
• Started painting some terrain bits (damaged barriers from Secret Weapon)
• Ton of sorting and organizing of my painting desk... not sexy, but helpful
• Prototyped a new color scheme for a painting project I'm thinking of starting

No progress on the Judicator, but every time I proxy it I get more and more anxious to finish it.

From the Desk: Play it Painted

If you're a part of the online Warmachine/Hordes community, you'd practically have to be living under a virtual rock to not have heard of Muse On Minis' "Play it painted 2013". As a guy who has long preferred to play with painted model, and often self-imposed playing with only painted models, it's exciting to see all the people getting involved. Whenever I go to events I try to make a point of going around and giving encouraging comments to those people who have at least made an effort to paint their armies. Regardless of skill level, I can always find something positive to point out to people about their painting to help motivate them.

Speaking of motivation, I wanted to keep my own motivation to paint fueled so I pinged my close 3 friends about painting goals for March. We're trading emails to help keep each other excited about moving forward. So what were the goals?

Mike: "5 Warspears, Warspear UA, Swamp Gobbers, Shepherd, Angelius, Naga, pThags." - I have no clue how he's going to get all that done, but Mike has been a painting machine lately so I wouldn't put it past him.
Henry: "Paingivers + Krea." - Henry's new slide into Skorne is exciting. He's got a bunch of other things in progress so I wouldn't be surprised if he does more than that.
Lance: "Finish Calandra and the War Wagon. Paint Bomber #2." - Painting huge-based models is a monster task. If Lance pulls this off I will be giving him a serious high-5. I'm also very eager to see his magma-troll themed War Wagon.

Any here's my painting goal: 5 Warmongers, 5 Warspears, and the Warspear UA. 11 medium based models. As of last night they are all primed and ready to go. Doing this will not only make a huge dent in my overall unpainted queue, but it will clear my desk nicely for the Archangel that I've already pre-ordered and expect to arrive at the end of this month. The nice thing about painting all 11 of these at once is that it will help them be fairly consistent looking. I also have my existing War Chief as a guide so I already have a blueprint for the paint scheme ready to go.

So that's our goals for March! I'll do my best to post pics as we go. And to all of you out there looking for motivation, I highly recommend checking out that MoM thread linked above. It is incredibly inspiring to see so many people posting pictures of progress.