Any Day Now

Those archers are so close to being done that it's driving me nuts. All I've got left to paint are just a pair of belts and some small metal areas, although I will need to go back and tidy up some patches of skin and clothing. Oh yeah, and one dude's hair. That's it!

Now I just hope the baby is willing to cooperate tomorrow and snooze a bit. So please be very very quiet....

Cheap Paint Stands

Last summer while shopping for craft-type items for our wedding, my wife and I spent a fair amount of time searching through the mass of stuff at A. C. Moore, a large art-supply chain. I couldn't help but also check the aisles for anything that might be useful for painting miniatures or wargaming. As luck would have it I came across a bunch of these little paint pots sold in packets of a dozen. Inspiration struck me as I looked at them... they would make perfect stands for use in painting miniatures! I purchased two packs for I think less than a dollar each and set about looking for some sort of temporary adhesive to use with them. I've tried regular double-sided tape but was not impressed as it seemed to lack the strength needed for metal miniatures, even those as little as the 15mm scale ones. Fortunately I found some Scotch brand double-sided poster mounting tape that looked more rugged and thought it would at least be worth giving it a try. As it turned out the paint pots and mounting tape have worked out perfectly. That tape has a foam-like center so you can really jam a miniature's base tab down into it. The adhesive sticks very well to both metal and plastic but you can easily pop the figures off once they're complete.

It was the success of this method that really gave me the spark that I needed to begin painting again in earnest. In the past I painted 15mm miniatures (almost exclusively for DBA armies) after I had already glued them onto their base, typically in groups of two to four miniatures. This was mainly due to my desire to start playing even before I had things painted, although it also provided a nice handle for painting. However a few years ago I finally decided to try painting them separately and worry later about coming up with a workable way to texture and paint the bases. This was stymied though when I couldn't find a good way of holding onto the little buggers well enough to be able to paint them. But now that I'm using the paint pots and have a suitable basing method, I doubt that I will ever go back to my old ways. The quality of my painting has improved and even their bases look better too.

Even though they've appeared in my earlier Work-In-Progress photos, I have included two more shots of my painting stands in action as further illustration. I want to take new photos of my finished HYW English elements and so thought these shots below could in the meantime serve as a preview of the painting I did in the Summer and Fall of 2008.

Irish Kern and Gascon Crossbowmen

English Bombard and Crew

Day Of Distractions

I'm a little frustrated right now. I probably could have finished the archers today but I got distracted and spent most of my prime painting time instead arguing politics on Facebook. I also went swimming today (two days in a row!) which felt so nice that I don't begrudge that missed painting opportunity at all. So all I painted today was the base color for the arrows and two of the guys' hand weapons, though they might be mallets. Hopefully I'll have more to report tomorrow but I am satisfied that I at least did not take the day off but still managed to get something done. Fifteen minutes a day minimum, right?

Archers WIP

Above is another WIP shot of the archer group, this one taken at the end of yesterday's painting. I had started off wanting each of the figures to have both individually colored shirts and hoods, but halfway through I decided it was too much. It seemed to me that if I had continued with that scheme that there would be simply too many colors in too small of an area, especially once I had based them together only a few millimeters apart. I therefore repainted the hoods on the figures with the red shirt and the green shirt to match that of the guy in blue. I'm happy with the change as they are still individualistic but also now look like they are meant to be together.

Right then, time to finish these chaps up!

One Is Enough

After a couple of days of looking at a blank EvilBugg and having nothing to write, I have decided that I am not going to bother with it at this time. There really is no point in trying to make this blog conform to some type of predetermined form as that would not be true to me as a writer. Rather than trying to appease some hypothetical audience, why not allow myself to roam at will? If others enjoy my wanderings, then they are welcome to come along. But otherwise… vaya con dios, amigos. There will still be a significant majority of hobby-related posts, but please excuse whatever tangents I should happen to occasionally follow. So for the time being at least, that’s it for EvilBugg. Adios!!

Some Context Please

I’m steadily making progress on the archers but they’re still not finished. Because I didn’t want these fellows to have a uniform appearance as I want them to be distinct from the compulsory block of 6x4Lb, switching up the colors for each one has slowed me down a bit. I finished painting their shirts (or whatever the medieval term would be for such… I’ll have to look that up) and started on their hoods as well so that now they’re starting to look close to finished. I’ll be sure to get pictures of them up as soon as they’re done.

In the meanwhile I would like to establish some context and a sense of where I’ll be doing most my painting for the foreseeable future. Below is a photo of my new painting station that I’ve been using since Saturday. I get a lot of natural light and sitting at the dining table seems to encourage better posture so that my back still feels good. Keeping the area around me clean and organized has been good for my mental state too so hopefully I'll stick to that as well.

For comparison, see below the set up that I was using this past summer and fall. Looking at this photo makes me very appreciative of my current situation and I think will certainly help me enjoy it that much more, which in turn should help me stay motived.


Is it any wonder then that I didn't paint more in a setting such as that? Just looking at it makes me feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic.

1st Work-In-Progress Photo

This is my first ever Work-In-Progress photo!! These are the bowmen that I've been painting over the last few days. They're taking a bit longer than I had expected but I'm happy with how they look so far... not crazy about the red-shirted fellow's face but viewed in person doesn't look so bad. I will most likely finish them tomorrow, although I am not planning on basing them until I am ready to base the billmen as well.

I have some photos of the other elements which I painted for the HYW:English army last fall and will get them posted soon.

That's it for now, time to go to sleep.

EvilBugg

Just a quick organizational note… I decided to start another blog as a place for all non-gaming related posts. I think this way I should be able to keep diceRolla more focused without all the clutter and randomness that marred some of my previous forays into the world of blogging. Happily for me the name of one of my old blogs was available and thus was born the newest incarnation of EvilBugg.

Cheers!

What I'm Painting

Yesterday I resumed painting some medieval archers with longbows which I had initially begun painting approximately six months ago. Last summer I started work on an English army of the Hundred Years War for the game De Bellis Antiquitatis using the beautiful 15mm-scale HYW range by Corvus Belli. I completed my first element for the army, a base of two wild Irish kerns that would serve as my Psiloi, just before my wedding on August 20, 2008. In the fall I managed to paint another three elements (spearmen, crossbowmen, and a bombard) as well as priming the aforementioned archers and giving their skin its first coat of color. But that was all until I finally got back to it yesterday afternoon. I did some more painting today and will hopefully be getting photos up soon.

After this batch of archers is complete, this is what I will still have left to paint for my Hundred Years War English army:

3 mounted command
4 dismounted command
6 mounted men-at-arms
8 dismounted men-at-arms
18 archers with longbows
4 billmen
Camp and camp followers

I think I should be able to finish tomorrow the 4 archers that I’m currently painting and so may start prepping the billmen tonight, but even if not they should be ready to go by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

Saturday Night

The Nuggets are losing to the Lakers 97-95 with 37.1 seconds to go in the fourth quarter of Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals. It's a Saturday night and I am at home writing an introduction to my new blog. Welcome!

Although I really enjoy painting miniatures and wargaming, I feel like I have too often put down my brush for a break and taken months, sometimes years even, to return to my favorite hobby. But by that point it's usually a new project that has ignited my enthusiasm and hence over the years I have walked away from far too many incomplete plans. Therefore I hope to use this blog as a means of keeping myself motivated and painting but otherwise to simply follow my interests in the wargaming hobby.

That's it, enough of this introduction. It's a blog, capeesh?