Three years of painting (2021 week 31)

I've been painting minis For Realz(TM) for just over three years now, and in a recent perusal of Paint All the Minis facebook group, I came upon someone who's starting their painting journey. That got me thinking (in a drunken stupor, naturally) that it'd be fun to document my journey at a less-than-weekly cadence. This would be that post.

Three years ago with my giant Army Painter starter kit (the older version of this one) and a set of really awful synthetic brushes, I painted my first minis. These three Reaper Bones orc spearmen are the first three followed by the three orc archers. IIRC, they're rattle can primed with a very rough dry brush value sketch followed by a more-than-heavy glaze. I've documented the process here but I stole it from Vince Venturella as a cheap-and-easy way to paint at a reasonable quality level in a reasonable amount of time. I poured time into the speardoods to the tune of about 24 hours which today seems extremely long but the results were good enough that I haven't stopped yet. Note that these guys were rebased last year when I rebased the vast majority of my painted figs. Yeah, it was that kind of year.

Also note that these six guys don't have painted eyes--the last group that I didn't paint eyes on. In one of his videos, Vince gave the guidance "always paint eyes." His reasoning was that if you do it all the time, you'll get used to it and get better at it. He's not wrong. Now, after around 600 figures most of which have painted eyes, I not only don't fear it anymore--I actually look forward to it most of the time. For anyone struggling with super fine detailed work, it does get better and despite the hype to the contrary, it is a place where specialized tools can help. Specifically, a nice sharp brush of a stiffness you can work with and paints/additives that will a) flow off the brush appropriately, and b) won't dry on the tip will really make things easier. 

I remember 2019 as "the year before covid" which I suppose a lot of us do, also as "the year of youtube" where I made a video every week for not quite half the year. I did have figs completed right around that time (Regault Battle Pods, if you're curious) but I don't feel like those guys are particularly comparable. Instead, here are five Reaper Bones 4 bog skellingtons painted in August of 2019. These are not well painted. They were a speed paint after a half year of not painting very much. IIRC these beasties were done in about eight hours for the five of them which at the time was about as fast as I could go and one of the first times that I started to seriously appreciate the power of batch painting. Finished mini counter: ~157

Last year was a mess for just about everyone--some moreso than others. This week in 2020 was a week of characters and IIRC, at that point I wasn't pushing a bow wave of posts. These are some of those characters minus one which I gave away (the whole batch can be found here). This was right around where I realized that covid wasn't ending anytime soon and was starting to settle into working from home. I was also experimenting with James Wappel's shaded basecoat and pushing both speed and quality. The speed hadn't arrived yet, but the quality was markedly improved. Looking at these figs up close now, I'm only able to see the flaws and the places I'd put maybe a half hour more in and get a lot more out. Finished mini counter: ~259

This year I wanted to drive hard on the progress I'd made in 2020 and started the year off strong with some fairly high quality figs. I hit the year's count goal in March (under promise, over deliver, yo) which is way before I thought I would. I've yet to finish all of my goals, but we're well on our way. Last week we saw this year's early July offering in all of his glory. He started as a batch paint but ended up being a solo paint trying to get a lot of stuff more right than usual. He weighs in at around 10 hours and I think the result is good. I mean, I was going to keep pouring in hours until I was either happy with the result or super tired of working on him so I suppose that was a given. I hope I'm still painting this time next year to see how far I've come and I also hope I have the wherewithal to do these kinds of hobby journey posts semi-regularly moving forward. Finished mini counter: ~591

I recognize that my painting volume and drive to improve is not typical. Most folks in the hobby aren't going to paint 100 figs in a year and aren't probably as committed to learning as I usually am. That said, if you're at least as interested at getting better in this hobby, keep going and keep learning.