Busy Busy

So it's been a while since my last post and clearly I didn't starve to death after all, which you know is a plus. Still unemployed and still looking to try and end that unlucky streak cos it's getting depressingly long now. Still I try to remain upbeat. I had a good Xmas, smaller and a bit quieter than usual and maybe better for that. My 37th birthday is in a few days and not at all sure what I am going to do for it. Normally I'd go to the Chinese place for all you can eat and stuff myself there, then head to the Odeon and watch 2-3 movies back to back, but that takes money I don't have sadly. So I'll likely stay in and paint.

I took a couple months break from painting after getting my ass handed to me in a 6th edition game of Warhammer 40k, but I'm back at it now and nearly finished 3 new units to add to my Imperial Fists which are:

• A Stormtalon Gunship (slightly converted to fix the gawd awful chin turret).
• A Land Speeder Storm (pain in the ass to paint, but it looks good when done, shame the rules for it are crap).
• An Attack Bike (magnetised the weapon port so it can be fitted with either Heavy Bolter or Multi-melta depending on which role I need it to carry out on the battlefield)

I've also finished the Whirlwind Missile Tank that had been on my painting desk for a year and have made a good start on my 3rd Tactical Squad (armed with Plasma Weapons to deal with pesky power armoured opponents) and an Aegis Defense Line. I have the remaining 4 members of my Chapter Master's Honour Guard, a Bike Squad and a 10 man Assault Squad to finish once those are done and then onto 2 Devastator Squads, another Attack Bike and a bunch of Transport Vehicles which will finish off what I currently have figures for.

I have a tax rebate coming and also the first of what should be several payments for wrongly sold Payment Protection Insurance, so will be clearing the debt I owe my best mate with that and I might treat myself to a Land Raider with what's left over as I really want one and ideally a Terminator Assault Squad to deploy from it and an Army Transport Case and on and on. And after that there's the desire for a nice game table and scenery to go on it and *sighs* it really is a very all consuming hobby.

Still it keeps my mind occupied, which DDO doesn't do so much these days and I'm sort of taking a bit of a sabbatical from it between updates. There is a big update due at some point in February but until that goes live it's very much a case of "been there, done that" many times before and so I'm taking this time to get a lot of painting and reading done.

I have a stack of like 4 novels on my To-Read pile at the moment and at least a couple more in my shopping basket on amazon to add to it as soon as I can afford them. I've also been making my way through a lot of trade paperbacks over the past year, both the GI Joe ones that IDW put out which I buy and the DC Comics ones that my good friend Ian buys and generously lends me. I have mixed feelings about DC's New 52 as while the quality of a lot of the stories and art is very good, their continuity is now a huge mess and while that might not bother new readers, it certainly bothers me. DC had such a great continuity starting from their total reboot of Crisis on Infinite Earths in the mid 80's and it seems like they have just thrown that all away for a short term sales boost.

So that's me currently, not at work but rarely idle. I do wonder what I am going to have to curtail when I do get a job and have to devote a great chunk of time to that.

Progress Being Made... Mostly

So I finally finished off some of my Space Marines. Woo hooo!!! I completed the 10 man Tactical Squad and the Razorback Tank (with both of its turret choices) that I'd had on the go for ages, as well as start and finish painting the Contemptor Dreadnought that I bought myself as a Xmas present, as frankly it was way too nice a model to leave alone. I've magnetised the arm sockets and the weapons (currently an Assault Cannon and a Close Combat Arm with built-in Storm Bolter but I plan on getting more arms as soon as I can afford them). which was devilishly tricky to do, but very happy with the finished result as it gives the model far more versatility than it would have had otherwise.

However, as lovely as it is to get those off the To-Do List and onto my display shelf, my Housemate Gareth went and bought me a Space Marine Bike for Xmas. Not an Attack Bike, Tony bought me one of those, but a regular bike, which means I now need to buy more of them in order to be able to actually field it. I don't have the money to do that right now, but when I do I'll be getting another 7 of them so that along with the Attack Bike I can field a full unit of 10, which should be pretty awesome.

I plan on getting the Ravenwing Battalion Box, which is pretty cool. While I don't play Dark Angels, it has 6 Bikes, another Attack Bike (which along with the one my brother Rhys is getting for my birthday next week will also give me the option to instead field a unit of 3 Attack Bikes), and a Land Speeder too, along with a ton of bits for customising figures and vehicles. I also need to get a bunch of the sculpted shoulder pads from Games Workshop bits Mail Order as frankly I'm terrible at using transfers and I think they look better anyway. My eventual goal is to have the entire Third Company of the Imperial Fists, plus support from the First and Tenth companies, but that's more of a long term thing. I'm not in any hurry to assemble and paint up another 4 Tactical Squads, one yes, four NO!

I was suppossed to be clearing space on my painting desk, but as I type this sat on it behind me are the assembled forms of 5 Scouts and 5 Assault Marines with Jump Packs and I'm about a third of the way through assembling the other 5 Assault Marines. The reason for this is that my circle of friends have formed a league for our Warhammer 40,000 battles and I have my first match tomorrow, a grudge match against Richie's Eldar. Last time I whupped the floor with them, so he's eager for revenge. Should be fun.

Painting Update

Well my painting proceeds slowly but surely. I have abandoned the attempt to try and get a good score on Cool Mini or Not for this year, took too long a break mid year in painting to be able to catch up and improve my skills enough for that to remain a feasible goal, so that's now one for 2012. I've found that I am very good at starting projects and not so hot on finishing them, however, I now am in the position that I'm running out of room on my painting desk for any new start-up's, so I aim to finish a bunch of figures for my Space Marine Army so as to free up some room, and also because it's looking likely that our group of  friends will be getting some games together soon, there's been talk of a league being formed and I'm determined to be able to field a fully painted army right from the start.

Thus far I have finished painting the following:

• A 5 man Terminator Squad. Not happy with them as had not really finalised my army colour scheme when I painted them, so they will do, for now, but will be replaced in time.
• A 10 man Tactical Squad. Very happy with these.
• An Emperor's Champion. Mostly happy with this guy, could have turned out better, but he will suffice. He is going to be one of my Chapter Master's honour guards.

I am in the process of painting the following:

• A Techmarine with Servo Harness.
• A 10 man Tactical Squad.
• A Chapter Master (Pedro Kantor figure) and 2 honour guards.
• A Predator Tank.
• A Whirlwind Tank.
• A Razorback Tank.
• A Chaplain in Terminator Armour.
• Captain Lysander.

And I have the following to assemble & paint up still:

• A 10 man Assault Squad.
• A 5 man Scout Squad.
• 2x 10 man Devastator Squads.
• 2x Rhino Tanks.
• A Razorback Tank.
• A Contemptor-pattern Dreadnought.
• A Space Marine Attack Bike.
• A 6 man Sternguard Veteran Squad.

All in all a pretty formidable force and one I'm hoping will be up to the challenges that will be posed by battling against Tony's Tau, Emil's Ultramarines, Charlie's Dark Eldar, Valda's Ork's, Richie's Eldar, Mike's Tyranids and Lee's Imperial Guards. I'm certainly not going to lack for variety in my opponents!

A Goal...

 It's always important to have one, else what do you have to strive towards?

 With that in mind I've set myself a goal with regards to my painting skills. My favourite miniature painter is a Russian lady by the name of Natalya Melnik, who goes by the handle of Alexi Z online. She has many figures listed on Cool Mini Or Not (and many more that are just as impressive on her homepage). Her highest rated figure is a lofty 9.8 out of 10. My highest rated figure is a palty 4.4 by comparison.

 It would be an utterly insane and impossible challenge to equal her best by years end, so instead I'm setting myself the target to equal her worst score which is a 6.7. She got this score incidentally for the first figure she ever painted! Whether the figure in question deserves a 6.7 rating is doubtful to my thinking, I'd rate it a 5.5 myself, but that is it's score and so that is my challenge.

Stocking Up

 Since I got back into painting a couple months back, I've been slowly but surely updating my set up for it. I used to paint on a fold-up dining table which was a bit wobbly and hardly ideal. That is now down in the lounge and I've replaced it with a rather more sturdy wooden table that I bought at the British Heart Foundation's furniture shop, and then enlisted Tony's help to carry it the short distance back to the house. That was the easy part really compared to the far larger task of sorting out my paints & tools.

 I use paints by Games Workshop as they are the most readily availiable to me (Krackers Games Store that sell them is only a 3 min walk from my house after all). They are not the best paints, and most of the best painters whose work I admire, use other ranges such as those by Vallejo or Reaper instead. Maybe someday I'll consider such a change myself, but for the time being at least GW's range suits me fine.

Back when I began painting at the tender age of 12, GW used to sell their paints in themed box sets. Each box had 9 different paints in and the boxes were named for the figures they were best designed for (Colour being the basic set and then from there, there were others like Monster, Creature, Space Marine, Metallics etc etc). They were good paints, and each time I'd lose interest in painting I'd pack them away and keep them safe until whenever my interest returned and I'd unpack them and they'd be used again. As time went by though, they got thicker and thicker and one by one they turned solid and became useless.

This time when I set about unpacking them again, I stopped and instead made myself go through every box, testing each and every paint in them and I finally binned all the useless ones, destroying the old boxes as each was emptied. I was able to keep a fairly impressive number of paints, many of which are long since unavaliable such as the metallic blue, green and purple paints I have, and the shocking pink. But my collection is left with some pretty massive gaps in it too and so each pay day I've been getting a few more paints to fill out the range. Today I added Bronze, a dark shade of Gold, a dark Flesh and a black wash to my growing collection to plug gaps that I've noticed over the past couple weeks whilst painting the figures I'm currently working on.

I've also had to take a look at the tools I use. I know now that I need a new set of paintbrushes as the ones I have are cheap and don't hold a good point (the tip always curves into a claw, which while sometimes useful is annoying too). My modelling knife needs replacing and if I don't want my table top getting scored up I need a decent cutting mat too. The biggest issue that I've found I need to resolve though is lighting, and for that I'm going to need to go hunt for a good angle-poise light, as the light from my rooms central bulb is simply not sufficient, and I refuse to allow my painting times to be dictated to me by the hours of daylight.

I've also bought a supply of materials to decorate the bases of my figures, namely a couple types of sand, small pebbles and clumps of fake grass. I'm a long way from being able to craft some of truly stunning bases I've seen made for miniatures on Cool Mini Or Not, but even these basic materials will be a great leap forward from simply coating the base with green paint and dipping it in flock as I've always done in the past.

Sticking My Neck Out

Anyone who knows me well will know that I'm not one for drawing attention to myself. I'm a definate introvert and am usually the guy sat in a corner being quiet at parties etc. At work I like to just be able to get on with it and not have to answer questions about what I'm doing and why (which is why I adore my co-worker Becky as she's brilliant at handling all of that sort of thing, leaving me to just get on and make cakes in peace). But there is this teeny tiny bit of me that craves a bit of praise. Not much. I'm not greedy, a "Well done" once in a while goes a very long way with me.

So with that in mind I've taken the step of posting pictures of some of the miniatures I've painted in the past, and will post more of the ones I'm working on now once I have them done. I have posted these up on Facebook for my friends to see, and also on a new account I've made on Cool Mini Or Not for everyone in the world to take a look at them, rate them and comment on them. I am looking forward to their criticism and comments, as I want to improve at this hobby and part of that development is taking on board ideas and techniques from my peers.

If you wish to have a look at my work and rate it, then have a look here. My username there is Mr.Flibble. I'd ask you to be kind in whatever you choose to write/rate them as, but thats not really what I'm aiming for by doing this, so instead I'll ask you to be honest. Flattery won't help me to get better after all.

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.

Attention To Detail

I've been spending a quiet day indoors relaxing and enjoying a day off work. I'd much rather the day off wasn't a Sunday as I prefer to work those, but rest is good regardless. I've spent the day listening to music, watching a bit of TV (and more later on, as a new series of "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" starts at 10pm on BBC3 tonight), but mostly painting miniatures.

This week I picked up my paintbrushes again, and have thus far managed to finish the following:

• A pair of large Yuan-Ti Abominations (snakemen with large scimitars).
• A pair of Chaos Warriors (humans in platemail armour with swords & shields).
• An Elf Ranger with longbow.
• A Elf Priestess with twin whips.
• A Dwarf Warrior with axe, shield and crossbow, which is to represent Matt's character Jebodiah Bugman at my Friday night D&D games.

I am also working on, but have not yet finished (and in fact have barely started on some of these):

• A Lich (skeletal wizard).
• A Human Necromancer/Wearer of Purple. Intended as a villain model for my D&D game.
• 6 more Chaos Warriors including a drummer. When done I'll have a regiment of 16 of these, complete with drummer, standard bearer and leader.
  
• A Kajira (slavegirl).
• A Dwarf Wizard.
• A Dracolich (undead dragon).

I've also done more work on the massive model Tarrasque that I've been working on for ages now. Still a long way to go before that is finished, though all but one of its limbs is now assembled and stuck to the torso. Just got the last leg to fill with Plaster of Paris (so as to counteract the weight of the body and help the assembled creature to stand upright), and then trim the joint to fit the bulk of the figure, before sticking it together. I've also got to make its giant horns and attach those to either side of its head, for whch I have a quantity of modelling putty to mould them out of.

Normally I'd have spent my day off studying and revising my course, which is what I did on Friday followed by taking the second course exam which covered Copy Editing. I had been dreading this one, as Copy Editing is a lot trickier than just Proofreading alone, but it wasn't as hard as I had feared it might be, and I think I've done really well. I won't know for sure for a while yet, as I now need to mail off the papers to the publishing company to get them graded. I plan on getting them photocopied first, just so I have a record in case they get lost in the post or some such thing.

I thought the title of this post to be fitting, as paying attention to detail is going to be paramount from now on in both my hobby (figure painting) as well as the professional work I aspire to do (Freelance Proofreading).

Hot... Too Hot!

Phew... It's 2:30am. By rights I should be asleep by now, normally I would be, only its a holiday and if you can't stay up stupidly late on holiday then when can you?

But tonight is not a nice night, it's hot, sticky, and the air is so thick I could probably cut a slice of it if I were so inclined to try. So I'm sat at my computer, not the slightest bit sleepy, sipping iced fruit cordial by the pint in a somewhat futile effort to stay cool. The back door is open onto my tiny garden, the kitchen window is open also, only there's no breeze, so no air is circulating. I can't open my own rooms window (believe me, I've tried!).

I have very little inclination to do anything, but apparently enough to sit here, type and ramble on. Ohh and paint, every now and then I shift to my painting desk (conviniently next to my computer desk) and add a few touches to one of the many figures sat there, slowly but surely working towards their completion, whereupon they can join the rather pathetically small collection of completed figures on their shelf. My unfinished figures outnumber the finished ones by a factor of something like 20 to 1.

I would try to sleep, only it is too hot to sleep under covers, and the idea of trying to sleep in this heat frankly makes me cringe, plus I'm not sleepy so all I'd end up doing is lying there and sweating in the dark. Not exactly an appealing way to pass the time.

I'm out of cordial, need more. Must stay cool.

H O L I D A Y !!!

Yes a week of no work, well not paid work at any rate. Still I can hardly call the coming week restful. In addition to a large laundry pile and a very onerous looking pile of dishes needing doing, I have a painting table chock full of semi-painted metal figures that I really should get to work on. I aim to complete at least a few of them.

I also have a monster project that I'm working on, to build... well, a monster. A Tarrasque to be precise. You can see where I got the idea, and some of my work on this behemoth at the EN World boards here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=12861 (scroll down to my posts). Since the first 5 photos posted there I'll admit I actually haven't done any more of it. I got that much done on my last holiday. So this week I need to head to the art shop in town, get some plaster of paris, assemble the other leg and fill both of them to give the critter weight, then build a 150x150mm base for it to stand on, trim everything to fit, glue the remaining parts together and then fill any gaps with putty. Easy! *whimpers*

Too I have a lot of typing to get done. I'm 3 sessions behind on typing out my D&D campaign's story logs, which I keep online here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=100196 so that needs doing, so I can get caught back up to where we finished at last night (the group meets every Friday night at the local games club). And I want to get this done before next Friday else I'll end up even further behind.

Plus my MSN is rarely not beeping merrily away as one or another of my contacts wishes to talk about something or other, and I have roleplay obligations to my homestone (gorean chatroom) Parrot Cove. So all in all a busy week ahead. But at least I don't have to wear a shirt and tie, that stupid apron and hat and that... wretched name badge!

I have two bottles of red wine in the fridge (yes I like red wine chilled, and before you call me a heathen, try it. Red wine is delicious cold), a big loaf of fresh slightly crusty bread, corned beef, pink salmon, chilli sauce, ice pops, milk, coffee and sweetener, plus a freezer and cupboards full of good stuff to eat. I'm going to enjoy my week off work!