Shoe's 30 for 30, day 31: retro

Anyone who's been following for the last 30 days know that this month I've built or painted and sometimes wrote a pile of stuff.  I figured I'd take a post to go over the highs, lows, and learnings in the hopes that it might help someone else going on a similar journey, however short or long.  Also, it makes the 20 posts in the last four years seem extra anemic compared to 31 in one month.  March is greedy having 31 days.

The bill of goods, if anyone cares, looks like this:

• 15x scatter terrain (treasure chest, 4x scatter walls, 6x crates, 4x shacks)
• 26x minis painted
• 14x buildings (merchant's house, tavern, village hall, guard tower, modular house, house with modular roof, thatched roof cottage, second floor modular, merchant's shop, tavern #2, windmill, 2x farmhouses, Bugman's Brewery)
• 1x article

Thanks for being sunny today, weather!

I think the biggest improvements are around the techniques, materials and tools in the hobby.  I already had a pretty good handle on mini paints but craft paints are IMO a lot harder to use.  I said way back on day 2 that XPS is a pretty forgiving medium and I still believe that.  The limits of the materials and tools are a lot clearer now.  I can draw very good parallels between learning how to work with large Lego structures and this process.

One of the bigger learnings was how to plan a building project, even a small one, and what things make it easier, harder, more detailed, less accurate, etc.  I've infamously said that engineering is an exercise of tradeoffs and I hope that some of my rantings in the last 30 days show the process I went through and why I landed on the things I did.  Throughout the challenge up until Bugman's, I was pretty sure I would be building another structure.   It might seem lame but knowing this gave me an excuse to try something new and I experimented quite a lot. 

I also feel I've improved my painting quite a lot.  Part of that was making build concessions which meant that I was less likely to get bored/fatigued/interrupted.  That results in fewer mistakes.  A real big chunk of the improvement is due to finally making a proper wash.  It also took me a while to dial in how to properly drybrush with craft paints but I think I'm getting it now.  I'm still not a good painter and I might not ever be, but I don't feel like I'm going to mess a thing up anymore.  Vince gives the advice to paint bravely and I freely admit that I struggle with this one.

I only wrote one article though I have many (many) in the works that I got significant effort into.  I thought I'd need these more than I did which just means I get to pump up my post count for the rest of the year.  Bonus!  I also didn't do any illustrations which, well, is a little disappointing.  Soon, hopefully.

I learned a ton about architecture and the European middle ages, too.  I've typed it before but I'll type it again:  verisimilitude is important to me, and I expend considerable effort trying to get the details right.  My "research" leads me down rabbit holes pretty often and this one was no exception.  New words in my vocabulary that I picked up during this challenge:  dormer, hipped roofing, thatching, half-timbered, field stone, and probably a handful of others I've forgotten.

As an interesting anecdote, I started listening to RollPlay Swan Song a little before starting this challenge.  It was, more than most things, a near-constant companion during this effort.  The last bits of the last episode played as I set up this shot which is somehow fitting.  I've always found it interesting how disparate things can become closely associated.  I think I will associate this month with that show and how crazy, thought-provoking, and entertaining it is.  It's worth a watch if you have the time. 

It's been a heck of a month and at the end of my 30 day sojourn I feel a lot more confident in the field of table top crafting.  I didn't go into this thing with any particular expectations other than working on it, but I feel like I got more out of it than I put in.  Despite the time commitment, I think I'd do it again if I had the opportunity.  Then again, I do still have 71 minis to paint this year!

Also, shingles are still bullshit.