Or something?
For the first time in a LONG time, I have a space where I can work where I also can keep ever so helpful canine and feline assistants away. I've also found the local group of other folks into all kinds of weird, smaller-press, miniatures-agnostic rulesets. So yeah, I might have some inspiration here. So I've... started painting. And I've realized I have a way to go to get caught up.
I realized a lot of my project paralysis was based around perfectionism, and that I don't want to put something on the table if it doesn't look good enough to me. Which means a level of detail that I'm always impressed to see in other people's work which also horrifically stresses me out when I try to do it. (I'm looking at you, eyes) There are also a bunch of different painting techniques currently making the rounds, and I need to figure out which one (or ones) work best for me. Angel Giraldez, Kevin Dallimore, and Doctor Faust all have their own techniques, and the paints that they use do too. Considering how many of my paints are Vallejo Model Air (and are thus already pre-thinned), that affects things too. So I've decided to start with monsters and weird stuff just to I can knock the rust off my brush handling and then I can work on the specific bits once I have a feel for how the paint works.
I'd picked up these pirates at one of the (many!) local game stores and tried giving transparent models a bit of a go. I wanted to see how the various inks washes, and speed colors might work. All of them received a gloss coat before painting, and then gloss and matte varnishes when finished. Somewhere I have a pic of which models got which paints, but that's beyond me to dig out at the moment.
Since that got me going, I decided to keep working on models I had around from one of the Reaper Bones kickstarters. Tried different eye colors depending on whether they were friendly (or friendlier) spirits vs. ones likely to just be antagonistic.
I tried this lot out with Army Painter's Pastel Seafoam to see what would come of it. If anything, I'd probably be more careful mopping out larger globs in the future. Skulls by AK Interactive.
Back in February, Badger Games was at our local GenghisGon with a whole slew of western goodies, which got me into Dead Man's Hand and Dracula's America, so I've also taken a stab at some Weird West stuff like these Spectral Gunfighters from Great Escape Games. Zenithal base with an airbrush layer of the Pastel Seafoam, detailed with some watered down Plasmatic Bolt.
Since so many western terrain companies make hearses, I figured they could benefit from some appropriate horses to draw the hearse in a literal ghost town. Vallejo white primer, Army Painter Pallid Bone, Vallejo Ivory drybrush. Cacti and skull by AK Interactive.
Currently on the table in the queue:
Krong the Mighty and Warlord Grom, from Superfigs
Zombie Gunfighters from Wargames Foundry
Apes in Space from Eureka Miniatures
Red Hand Coven and Plainswalker Posse from North Star Miniatures
Mariachi Band from Great Escape Games
One of umpteen Beholders from WizKids Games
