November 28, 2012

Just a Progress Post

For the last few weeks I've been trying to decrease the number of items on my painting table, without a lot of success. That's probably because I keep adding more stuff to the backlog than I actually clear off! I've got several pieces of scenery and markers, a 'hero' model for SuperSystem which will also serve in my Nazi Death Cult for Kulten, plus the Lycaon and Vampire starter boxes for Empire of the Dead sitting up there. There are also a ton of primed figures-in-waiting up on top of the fridge (to keep them out of reach from both the cat and curious little-people fingers).

Sunday turned out to be a lazy sleep-in-then-stay-home day, which was pretty nice as they don't seem to happen terribly often. I did a few things around the house that required doing, watched some TV and then continued work on a few things from the miniature projects to-do list.

As you may have seen in my previous post I also received a large batch of stuff for a Stargate project that I've recently got into my head, so first up was a clean-up session for all the Jaffa guards. I sat in the kitchen trying to enjoy what little sunshine we would get for the day while working on these. There wasn't a lot of clean up work required on most of them, which was actually pretty nice as model cleanup is one part of the hobby I don't particularly enjoy. I do fear a little bit about some of the staff weapons, as many of them were bent quite badly while in the package. Bending them back into shape, some of them felt pretty soft, so at some point I expect that a few of them will break. However, with a little over 90 minutes of time I had everything glued to their bases (except for the cannons) and ready for priming. I think I'll try out some Army Painter metal primer to save myself a ton of brush time.

The stargate itself only required a little bit of filing along the inside of the ring. I don't think I'll be able to get it completely smooth and seamless without a little bit of green stuff though. The DHD took less than a minute to construct. All that's left now to clean up are SG-1 and SG-9 squads. I don't expect that to take more than a half hour and will likely do that after rehearsal this evening.

I also spent a little bit of time in and out of my painting chair during the day on Sunday. I'm not sure why, but I just haven't been feeling very inspired when it comes to painting up the Empire of the Dead starters. The figures are top-notch, one-piece sculpts and the game is a lot of fun, but I feel like I'm forcing it a bit. I did get started on the Lycaon faction box though, and they're coming along decently enough. I expect I'll need another two or three hours to complete the base coats. I decided not to stray too much from the reference pictures in the books, going mostly with grey and white clothing and leather shades for boots and belts. I won't finish them this week or next, as I've a conference to attend starting on Sunday.

I stopped in at a game shop after doing some shopping at the mall Monday evening. I had hopes of picking up a can of metallic primer spray. They were out of stock but I was able to pick up a can of Quickshade Soft Tone, which I'm looking forward to trying out and do hope to have better results than what I've had with the inks. I have two ideas for test models; one will be a tactical space marine from my Obsidian Fists chapter for Warhammer 40k who are predominantly painted in GW Mithril Silver  with black and glossy blue trim. The other is an odd color combination I've had in mind for my Necron army for quite a while that I haven't tried out yet. I won't be getting into those projects until mid-December, so stay tuned for that. Although now that I think of it, between work and holiday stuff December might be a difficult month to get much hobby stuff worked through.

And lastly, a few more ork boyz have their first coat of snot green applied. The significant other was working on those while I applied some decals to my latest squad of tactical marines.

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