On a Roll?

Productive (for me) night last night.

"Do you see this gun? Well, DO YOU?"

This is Reaper's Undead Outlaw miniature. I'm not much into Old West stuff, but this guy is pretty bad ass. I've had it for a few years without planning on doing anything with it, but last night I needed a "palate cleanser" from Skaven and he made it to the top of my list.

"How about you over there? Do YOU see my gun?"

Even more incredible, I actually finished it in one day - I haven't done that in quite a while (the Reaper Bones ratman from October doesn't count, as it sucks.)

Fairly random color scheme - the only "have to have" color is purple, as that has become my theme color for my undead. I was afraid that the sand color for the duster would be a bad choice next to his bony bits, but keeping it a warm tone to the cold tone of the bones fixed that. Pretty pleased with him overall.

"FINE. I'll find someone else who appreciates rusty-ass revolvers."

Cool miniature - actually makes me want to work on a Weird West project.

Cheatin' Scum!

Yep, tonight is another cheat. I got my hands on some of the nice new plastic bases that come with the latest edition of Necromunda recently (as well as some indifferent looking plastic gangers :P ), and wanted to see how they would look with one of my old Necro minis on it. As luck would have it, my faithful old Hive Scum ("Blondie") was in need of having his plasma pistol replaced, so I pushed him to the front of tonight's queue:

"In this world, there are two kinds of plasma pistols my friend..."

Like a large percentage of people who painted this guy, I immediately thought of Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" character and so painted him accordingly circa 1998. At the time, I lopped off his left hand and replaced it with a rather chunky plastic Ork plasma pistol, painted fire engine red (my preferred plasma weapon color back then). It never looked right throughout the years, so I snapped it off and replaced it with a Space Marine one. Still pretty chunky, but it looks better to me. I tried to find my old Confrontation pistol sprues to use a plasma pistol from there, but I think this one fits the Marauder Miniature ascetic pretty well. Said pistol is now a low-profile black, reasoning that Blondie doesn't want to call attention to the fact that he is probably carrying an illegal or stolen weapon.

As you can see, I attempted the cool kids method of painting glowy bits on the gun (no OSL though, I am not a Golden Daemon painter!). Probably needs to be brighter, but - eh.

I worked the base to look as nasty and gross as any floor as one would find on the Hive Bottom. Rust and paint chips show that the maintenance crew hasn't been this way for a few millennia...

In the end, I'm not a fan of adding to/painting parts of already painted miniatures. For some reason, I tend to rush through the work even faster than I would painting a miniature from scratch. The gun is pretty minimalistic (kind of the point, but I went a littl TOO much so), and the base looks too busy. In the future when I start adding my old Escher gangers to them, I'll probably skip the fancy hazard striping.

One Day I Will Paint Something That Isn't Skaven Bloodbowl Stuff...

...but today isn't that day.

L to R - Lineman, Catcher (Gutter Runner), Catcher (Gutter Runner), Kicker (demoted to Lineman)

New phone, new bad photos. To be fair, it's a quarter to 3 am here, and I'm on call this week (I was already called in four hours ago for a procedure that ended up not happening), so my photography is worse than usual. Glad to be done with these guys, they sat around too long.

Ze Butts.

Now that I feel settled into my shift, I have realized that I'm more open to spending large amounts of time painting - with four days off a week, I better be painting.

Mandatory team shot, with added Tilt-o-Vision!
Seven more to go.

Those two that I painted around 1990 are really starting to stand out, now that the rest of the team is getting finished. Doubt I'll do anything about it - I still like how they look, and it's a nice reminder on how my work looked back then.

Looks like I need a bigger backdrop too...

Unrepentant Mini Murderer

And here she is - the killer of the second skeletaur, showing absolutely no remorse...

Ferocious.

...Now where have I seen this before? Let me see...

Delusions of Grandeur.

The Dangers Of Comparison

Well - been a while. As I am the only person who sees this blog (seriously, my statistics page backs this claim up), I'm not too ashamed about not posting here for two months. Partially, my new job has been running me through my paces, but mostly I haven't felt like painting due to the mistake of comparing my work to others.

When I have time, I enjoy browsing the blogs of others to get ideas and inspiration. Unfortunately, I have been looking at the works of "Golden Daemon-level" painters as well and have been getting that annoying "why bother?" thought in the back of my mind. While I don't really think that I'm a bad painter, I'm not really an artsy-type either; I don't really feel the need to blend 10 layers for a shade, or work on my OSL or perfect my NMM (actually, I've never seriously tried NMM - I have my metallics RIGHT THERE).

The problem is that once doubt starts to creep into one's mind, it's tough to keep it out. While I was on my training schedule at work, I tended to be too exhausted to even want to pick up a paintbrush but now that I'm on my regular shift (three 12 hour days in a row, giving me 4 days off thankyouverymuch) I have been working to exorcise the demons of Doubt out of my brain and actually get shit painted.

Maybe with an Exorcist kitbash?

Eh, I'll get over it. I'll make sure to start putting those four days to good use (I spent the past three of those days just putting my hobby area in order - it was kind of a wreck after nearly two years of hobby indifference).

A skeletaur did get finished, though. One, that is. His buddy was attacked by a cat
and I haven't found the heart to fix him yet.

(Edit: Ooo, sorry about the harsh picture - I didn't feel like setting up my photo stuff. The mini looks better in real life, really. REALLY.)

If anything, I need to get back to work just to keep the Ghost of H.G. Wells happy. Can't have a sad ghost blubbering around the joint, can we?

Sinners Beware...

Well, I didn't have a week and a half long nap - I managed to jack up my back somehow which made painting nigh-impossible though. Being hardheaded, I tried to finish the skeletaurs anyway but all I managed to do was make then look terrible. My back's better now, so I'll try to fix them a little and be done with them.

I did manage to do other hobby-related things, however:

That's about 75% of my Adeptus Ministorum force, assembled and base-coated. This will most likely be my main 2018 project, now that 40K is reasonably playable again. I have about 17 Seraphim and a handful of characters (extra Sister Superiors and a couple of the older sculpts of the Cannoness, which will count as SS with combi-weapons). Once money starts flowing for me again, I'll hunt down 2-3 more old style Rhinos, a new-style Rhino body to go with the new-style Immolator bits that I have for some reason, and a metal Saint Celestine. I like the new plastic saint model, but the whole "I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe" ribbons put me off. More basic sisters would bee good too ;)

Here's how they'll eventually look. I painted these about 5 years ago, and then avoided the army because the red I wanted to use took several coats to get good coverage (Poly-S Rock Island Red, I think). Fast-forward to a year ago, when I discovered that Wal-Mart was selling spray cans of a Krylon primer that matched the Poly-S paint almost perfectly! Yes I bought them out, and true to form, WM never carried that color again. Fuckers.

Well, time to finish a couple crappy skeletaur paintjobs.

There Goes My Last "Good" Excuse!

Anyone who has visited here knows that for the past year(ish), I have been yammering on about how I didn't have the drive to paint due to Rad Tech school, and the fun of clinicals. Well, I've since graduated, got certified, am legal to practice in the state of Texas, and after one very happy phone call yesterday, I now have a job at the hospital that I really wanted to work at (pending their sift through my "sordid" past :D ). Can I feel settled enough now?

More interesting, I'm starting my shift Fri, Sat, Sun - 10am - 10pm, so four days to get paint in! No excuses except for my laziness, which is the strongest hurdle of all. I think I'll finish off those Grenadier skeletaurs that are sitting on my desk now!

I mean, after a nap, of course.... ;)