Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Lead addiction getting to me

Working on my Cancon aquisitions, Skulldred photo minis/boards and Hawkmoon sculpts all at the same time is seriously crunching me for space and mind juice.

My mistake was to base up and prime all the cancon minis I could like a conveyer belt factory.   It works too well...  This ate up several meters square, and prevented me from filing them away in bags like the rest of my collection.  Now I am going NUTS in my little workspace.  Lead addiction can, apparently lead to claustrophobia.

Owning a cat has also forced me into a much smaller space.  I cannot have both windows and the door open as she likes base diving out (1600 in vet bills) or jumping onto my collection.  She destroys game boards too.

No space.  No air.  Going... NUUUUTS!

To tide me over a stop gap until spoon' tells us his secret storage tricks, I have been blutacking my based minis to foamcore and placing them in box files so I can regain control of my office.  You get about 70 x 30mm bases in an a4 box, not bad.

Spending last night reboxing my 'painted' collection has unforunately highlighted that most of my minis are not finished to my liking.  Many are painted but not detailed, or have been rebased but the base not painted and finished.  A great deal of minis are base coated and washed, but not highlighted and worst of all, lots of them have naked shield bumps.  Yep.  I usually plan to do this kick arse shield and set the mini aside for later while I finish his mates.  Its sad that I have so many figures mostly done only to stop near the goal posts.

I have to do something about this!  But not now.  Too much work to do and too little space to do it in.  Box up everything then get Hawkmoon done and dusted so I can get back to Skulldred.

So all this made me think about my goals hobby wise, and I realise I have to divide my hobby into three parts to deal with my addictions impact on my living space.

First there is collecting minis.  Easy to curb, jusy stop buying.  The need to get that rare mini to complete a set is one part of lead addiction, and you always fight the feeling that your missing something amazing on ebay.  But its not too hard to fight the urge.  I soothe this ache by sitting down and sorting through my unpainted mini tubs.  Really enjoyable and relaxing.

Second, painting minis.  This is not top of everyones addiction, and to many lucky souls just owning is enough.  I want mine painted, and painted well (well, for me anyway- not to golden demon standard).  Worse, I like blended minis with crisp outlining.  I do not like obvious brush marks. I blame Fraser Grey.
This ultimately means my minis take a long time to finish.  I can kick out foundry style 'three shades to game ready' minis in no time... but finished to my personal tastes is time consuming.
Here I have to learn to curb my perfectionism, which is painful to an artist type.  That brings me to hobby division 3.
Gaming.  This is the part of my hobby that requires finished varnished minis and terrain.  I want, for example, a warband for each race.  That means a lot of minis painted to game standard at least.  If I can focus on a small number of Skulldred warbands, say four, to begin with, and get six key models done, I can relax and game with these for a while.
The terrain aspect is also a concern.  I love making it, but have no way to store it, especially now my Cat attacks it.

Order of initiative:  Daves new plan

So first things first, I am boxing away the whole collection, dusting down the shelving and getting the studio back into shape.  I need to clear several square meters to set up a Skulldred photo board and a space I can use dirt and sand away from my painting and sculpting space.

Once thats all done I can start trickling my projects through.  My John Blanche Undead Assault proj is taking up several shelves on its own, so breaking that up into sub projects will help.  All my GW plastics boxes I got for christmas will go into storage.

I think I may have to sit down in the future and prepaint a whole array of shields so that I can check off a load of figures quickly.  I am inclined towards making some flat centered shields ideal for painting and getting these cast up rather than filling citadel plastic shields.

Maybe I print off some paper banners to begin with from my oldhammer resources too.

I am thinking of setting up a 'totally finished only' shelf.  No varnish, no tufts... your not coming in!

6 comments:

  1. What Hawkmoon sculpts - I missed that one?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep. If I can finish the sculpts without going nuts. Got hawky on my desk right now- sword raised crying HAWKMOON! Endless frikkin chainmail.

      Delete
  2. I find nothing more depressing than the 'almost finished' mini. It's like a little headache that won't go away until it's dealt with. I'd recommend halting all projects, lining out all those almost done minis and finishing them off. I know exactly what you mean about the perfectionism too. I determined at the start of my latest project that in order to get things done, I'd have to find some techniques that sped up my working time. Every mini could not have copious blending and multiple glazes etc. I didn't want too much of a drop in quality, but I needed to streamline the process. Picking out a limited palette, concentrating on the spot colour areas as well as faces, bases and shields was one thing I decided, as well as employing things like the dip. It's as much a valid tool as any other kind of wash. It's paying dividends, sometimes you have to balance quality with the time you have to spend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great idea. You rock dip and washes though... I just ordered me some army painter strong and dark tone to replace by near empty washes.
      Tried drybrushing my black primed figures brown and applying a brown wash recently- since lots of things brown and works as flesh darks it speeds thinv up!

      Delete
    2. All I'll say is don't judge until you've finished and applied some matt varnish. The first couple of times I used dip on commission work, and I thought 'This is garbage' but when you hit it with matt, the magic happens.

      Delete