June 2020: Hobby Productivity Blog #7

I’m going to go against the grain of my usually self-deprecating nature and say I’ve made a qualitative leap this month.

After feeling like I’d plateaued with my painting (and not on a very high plateau, at that) I decided to try something new. I set aside some time to dive into the world of YouTube, and came away with the intention to try Zenithal priming.

I’d never heard of this method until recently. Basically, you undercoat everything black, then spray a lighter colour (white, or one of the contrast base colours) from the top down, hitting the areas the sunlight would, and leaving the shadows darker.

I felt this seemed to give me a much better starting point with a miniature. In fact, it almost felt like cheating. I’m not saying what I’ve done here is going to impress anyone other than myself, but it’s a decent leap forward from everything I’ve done up until now.

This little fellow might be familiar to kids from the HeroQuest era. He’s a goblin from the Battlemasters game, from around the same time.

The other minis here are mainly from Midlam Miniatures. I’m a huge fan of the “Oldhammer” vibe of their characters. Last month I painted some of their Kev Adams goblins.

Going up a level with my painting has got me thinking about all the miniatures I’ve painted in the last 6 months, and how I should strip them and start again. From all the advice I’ve seen online, this is a dark and ruinous path to go down. There be dragons, as the saying goes.

The final Midlam piece I’ve painted this month. He reminds me of a pub landlord who’s having to fetch his sword and sort out yet another brawl outside his premises. I picked up the much-recommended Song of Blades & Heroes rulebook recently, and will definitely be using these guys in my first warband.

In other work, I’m a lot less impressed with these guys. To be fair, this was just a quick “get them ready for the table” job, using about 3 paints. The first is a unit of knights from Perry Miniatures. I had built and painted 6 of them last year, and this was me finally getting round to the rest. Because of this, the bases look a little different. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, though.

These Perry bowmen are going to be multibased on a strip of wood. They’ll be in a row of 6. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out. I should have it finished by this time next month.

I mentioned last month that I’d picked up some GW minis for the first time since my return to the hobby. The Necrons I bought are an absolute disgrace to build (alright, maybe it’s just my lack of skill, but let me have my soapbox) and they’ll be getting sold, or given away very soon.

The Chaos Marauders, on the other hand, I quite enjoyed putting together. The first one was good fun to paint, too. I actually managed to do some “proper” eyes on him. These were primed with Citadel Grey Seer before my Zenithal adventure, but I’m still happy enough with my work.

Finally, I managed a game with my new 6mm terrain. I invited the wife up to the spare room for some “hardcore six”. I think she misunderstood me. She looked fairly glum sitting there in her fishnets, repeatedly rolling ones, and wrapping her knuckles with a tape measure.

“I told you I’d give you a right pounding”, I said.

I slept on the couch that evening.