A thing a week 2021 (week 51)

And rounding out the last batch of the year we have my remaining 10x Frostgrave Soldiers. I'm fond of the Northstar line of Frostgrave minis and this box is the remainder from the first batch I painted way back at the end of 2018 when I'd first started. I was far enough ahead this year to spend a little more time on these than I might have otherwise done. So, they might be slightly higher quality than my normal batch paints. The photos still suck, tho, so that should be familiar. Some day I'll figure out how my camera works but clearly not this year.

Like most of the other figs I paint, we start with a prime, shadowumbral (yeah, I'm callin' this one), and zenithal. I did some basecoating with the airbrush but less than you might expect and if I'm really honest, it helped more psychologically than artistically. Figs with only basic prep are more daunting than ones with colors on them even if the airbrush work is rough and kind of messy. I don't know why this is but it's proven true time and time again and part of how I get through big batches. Starting a big batch I will often slap an ugly wash on all of the figs to get rid of the "blank white page" aspect of staring at a field of unpainted minis.

I honestly don't know how army painters do it. I'm pretty happy with this being the last batch of the year if I'm honest. While I do like burning through figs, I don't like making such harsh cuts to quality over and over again. It gets worse with figs I like or figs that can take a higher quality paint job which is certainly not all figs. There's also a crushing weight of "holy crap, that's a lot of work" which can be daunting to break down. These guys, though, I'm pretty happy with. Happy, but never satisfied.

2021 finished mini counter: 362/100