Painting

So... what to write about... I'll start I guess with what has consumed much of my time of late and that's painting. Painting minature figures that is, not painting on canvas or any such related forms of art for which I entirely lack the skillsets required. I've painted before, a fair few times now in fact, only to eventually lose interest or have something come up and it all get packed away again and not see daylight then for months or even years afterwards.

I started painting figures back when I was about 12 years old and a friend of mine called Ashley introduced me to a board game called Blood Bowl. He also intrioduced me to Dungeons & Dragons too, so he has quite a lot to answer for considering the geek I turned out to be! Getting back to the subject at hand, Blood Bowl is a fantasy version of american football with a lot more violence (it ain't called Blood Bowl for nothing!), played with teams of figures. As the rulebooks showed nicely painted up versions of these figures, I was soon buying a set of paints, a couple brushes and having a go myself.

I was also interested in a another board game called Advanced Heroquest, which too featured miniature figures and so they too went under the brush for some added colour. This led to my interest in the tabletop wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB), where instead of a few figures, you assembled and painted whole armies of them! I can remember collecting a sizeable army of Dwarf's and then later a smaller force of Undead. For another such game (Epic 40,000) I collected a huge Chaos force complete with Titan's (massive towering war machines). I later either sold (Dwarfs & Undead) or lost (Epic Chaos) these armies and my interest waned and eventually died off. I never lost interest in the games exactly, just in the painting side of it.

Fast forward a few years and a new edition of Blood Bowl came out and a league was started at the local Games Club and so I got back into it, painting up my beloved Chaos All Star team (which I still own). I also started on a Chaos army for WFB but never got that far on it, and most of the figures remain unpainted to this day in their boxes atop my bookcases. Over the next few years I'd regain interest for a months or two and then it would fade away. I painted up numerous character models for D&D in this time, and started work on a massive project to build a Tarrasque for D&D (which was never finished and eventually binned). Then a few years back I packed it all up and put it away. I was tempted now and then to take it up again over the years but never did so, until recently.

See a couple of my friends mentioned that they were getting in to Warhammer 40,000, a sci-fi version of WFB and a game I'd long wanted to try but had always shied away from for various reasons. But I was tempted to try again, so I took the plunge. I bought myself a decent desk this time to paint at (an old wooden kitchen table, a steal for just £40), some new paints and brushes, sorted through all the old paints I still had and binned any that were no longer useable, keeping those that were (a surprisingly large number including some awesome paints such as metallic blue, green & purple and also truly shocking shade of pink).

I also decided on an army and forked out for a fair number of figures and sets (getting double the number due to a fortunate mix up in the mail!) for a Space Marine army. I've settled on the Imperial Fists as my chapter as they both look good in their yellow and red armor and their backstory and such rocks. When I have photos of finished models I'll post them on the blog.

In addition to them I've gone through my stock of unpainted figures and dragged a few out into the light of day to have a go at, as I enjoy painting characters and individuals far more than units of troops.