Raggy's Gaming Adventures

Almost half way into the year now and I wanted to talk about my personal project for this year. Namely averaging one fully painted miniature/day over the year. That's 365 painted pieces in 2018. I am adding a few further restrictions for myself: It must go from primed to varnished in 2018 (finishing models from before or unfinished models don't count). The model must be the size of a 25mm human or bigger to count (ie no smaller than a Mansions of Madness investigator) Bigger models still only count as 1! So... how am I doing? Well... Carry over: (16 + 11 small) Space Hulk: 6 Terminators Mansions of Madness: 2xShoggoths, 2xCthonians, 1xDark Young, 1xDunwich Horror Blood Bowl: Wood Elf & Chaos Apothecaries, Ball marker Generic: 10 Barrels Lady Morrigan Wander: Tank Despite the focus on getting new figures completely painted, I have not neglected the figures I had already started last year. Completed: (146 + 34 small) Space Hulk:  20xSpace Hulk door...

A recent post on a Facebook Group I follow called Paint All the Minis challenged painters to attempt a colour they've struggled with in the past. This was really perfect timing for me as one of the figures that had been sat in my lead mountain was Warrior Monk Masahiro from this Test of Honour box . I wanted to go with the traditional orange robes but this has always been a tricky colour for me. At the same time, I have a full set of the Scale Color Inktensity line... soooo when you've got a hammer, everything becomes a nail to be glazed. Starting point is a nice zenithal prime (using Stynylrez Black and White) before building an orange glaze: I used a 4:1 mix of Yellow to Red inktensity for a nice vibrant orange: It's important to remember that glazes like this filter light. When applied over other colors there can be some unexpected results - in this case there is a lot of green in the Stynylrez Black and this came through strongly. The result is kinda gr...

For a while now, I have considered taking on commissions and doing paid painting jobs. I often find myself wanting to paint models that I have no desire to own or figures for games that I know I will never play (such as hundreds of Wargames Factory Samurai). Of course commission painting is the end goal of many serious painters. The idea of being able to make a living off of painting toy soldiers is a dream for many. I am not sure I have ever looked to it as an end goal in that way but rather something to try out and maybe do on the side. Maybe that should have been a clue that this really wasn't something for me, but I forged ahead and gave it a go anyway. The idea I had was to batch paint a few boxes of The Farstriders warband for Underworlds:Shadespire. These models look great, each warband is only 3 figures so painting up 4 boxes in a go is still only 12 figures to paint. They are also mostly one colour and can be airbrushed very quickly. I also wanted to film the p...

Well folks... it's happened. After well over a year of being pretty pumped and motivated - feeling like I'm getting a ton of painting done and really stepping up my talent. After all that, I feel like I've hit a wall. *BAM* I know why, a few things combined that really shouldn't have so much influence on me: Real life issues, doing badly in a contest I'd previously done well in, leaving an online community that had felt like a place to share my progress with others that shared my passion. Whining about this sad state of being is not really the point of this post however. I want to explore things to get you re-invested in the hobby. As with pretty much everything else I talk about, Uncle Atom has gotten there first (and done it better). You can see a couple of the more relevant videos here and here . So what can you do to fend off the brick wall? Paint with others - if you are lucky enough to have other hobbyists nearby, meet up regularly! Get togeth...