A Year Without Posting

Holy shit! Time sure does fly. I am really sorry I haven’t been posting anything as of late (past year… har, har…). I guess my drive for it has flown for a while. A lot has happened and unfortunately I haven’t been able to uphold my ideals or my wishes. I did get quite a lot of painting done. Not as much as I would like but still quite a bit none the less. A few things will change in my hobby spectrum. I will get onto the changes further below, after a summary of things I have managed to accomplish this year!

First off I did manage to finish my first bust! I painted up a space pirate lizard mercenary future sci-fi lizard (did I say lizard twice?) guy named Noctu. The bust was sculpted by a local artist (Savage Forged Miniatures). The bust was a blast to paint. I wanted to paint something completely new for me. I rarely use blues, yellows and pinks in my miniatures and I really wanted some practice and attempted to paint this guy with those three colors. I figured most people would paint him in green or other warm colors and I decided to go for a vibrant and crazy pink. I am really pleased with how he turned out.
In the end there are quite a few things I would tweak or change on him, but I consider him finished and will leave him as be. I do need something to compare to later models after all… Unfortunately this is also the only bust I have painted this year. Not really a good start for a new ‘career’ in a more professional/serious take on the hobby.

I have been an avid tabletop gamer for quite a few years now. Focusing mostly on Malifaux and the occasional other game. After these many years I have finally reached the breaking point where I just cannot handle it anymore. I have too much to paint and too little time to play. Not to mention that finding and arranging for play-meet-ups is getting harder and harder to accomplish. Especially in terms of Malifaux I found my regular playing group falling apart within a few months. It is tiresome and unnecessary hard to maintain and keep a group of players afloat, especially when the majority of players are not interested themselves in maintaining a running community. It is a peeve that I have always had and that has now reached a point where I no longer wish to band others together to enjoy a game they would like to play. I have better things to do with my time.

I still would like to occasionally play the one game or the other. I am to the point where I will be getting rid of the majority of my gaming models, except for a few I wish to keep because I like them too much. One thing I will definitely and unfortunately be getting rid of is my collection of Malifaux Gremlins. As much as I love the suckers, the amount I have (entire faction+) is to cumbersom to handle for casual gaming days. I also have way too much to enjoy, really. The amount of Malifaux models alone that I have will keep me busy for many years to come. Hence I will cut short there. I still have managed to paint quite a few things for Malifaux though. It’s still fun to paint the miniatures. It’s just a shame I can never really get them on the table.

I have also painted many other miniatures for my own use. Rumbleslam, Infinity, Eden, etc… Quite the cool lot of stuff. Games I rarely or never play. If I think about Bushido miniatures it really kind of pisses me off. I have had the models painted for nearly one year and have yet to play the game. It’s just too difficult to find people who are interested enough in a game to actually pursue a gaming session or even a demo game. Why waste my time on running after these people?

Another thing I have been dealing with this past year is commissions. I do occasional commissions for birthday presents or just to gift friends a nice little something in between. These still take up a bit of my painting time and are often not really something I would wish to pursue. I know I will never be a commission painter for hire, as I would go nuts working on stuff for others and not on my own things.

Luckily the commissions I had this year were flexible enough for me to experiment with a few things. Like painting leathers on the Manhunter from Kingdom Death Monster. Or just going nuts painting a crazy lizard mercenary for a friend’s birthday. The dwarf Rumbleslam team was a whole lot of fun to paint as well. It helped me practice with red tones and crazy toned bodies.

Commissions may be great for experiments, but ultimately my goal should be to experiment with and on my own stuff. I have specific models for specific themes and things I want to try out on them. I have two more commission models to paint after the Manhunter. Once that is done I will not be painting for anyone for a long time and work off some of my miniature hoard and load, just to clear off some stuff from my table or project bench. I feel bad for investing so much money in the hobby, but not enough time. A struggle I am sure many of you are all too familiar with.

The direction I will be going is leaning towards a concentrated effort on my Kingdom Death: Monster stuff, soon to be there. I will slap in a few gaming miniatures as well, but will ultimately focus on single projects of Kingdom Death stuff. Luckily nothing there needs to be uniform and I can paint stuff any way I like it. Meaning I have the variety to try out stuff without worrying about a coherent color scheme for a group of models.

In the mean time I will take some more ‘professional’ and dedicated photos of my existing painted miniatures and will end up making a few posts about them in the coming weeks. Just to help document my past efforts and maintain a little keep’s sake of some of the miniatures I will be parting myself from. I also blog a little bit indirectly on the side in the form of a group blog we have called Pinseldiktator. It is a Facebook blog based on our efforts as a painting group/gang. We usually meet up most Fridays and paint together for anything between 3 and 11 hours. Sometimes really long nights.

The painting community is where I will end up putting my efforts into instead of the gaming side. I am sick of seeing plastic heaps of unpainted crap on tables and people being completely content with it. Painting is easy and fun. Even if it does consume time it is a productive hobby and I believe it is a good way for people to relax and turn on the creative center of their brain.

As said, Pinseldiktator is mostly a weekly thing. We update there regularly (and you can see works of some of my painting friends and newcomers). Otherwise I plan to post semi regularly here. If I can weekly with update and WIP shots, if at least that. Maybe a rant in-between. And of course more good intentions nobody plans to pursue. 😛
With that I will hopefully see you next week. Thanks for reading this huge mofo post.

P.S. here is an awesome lizard.