The Painting Plan

Unfinished, incoherent and unsatisfying. This is what I'm trying to avoid. 

When it comes to the painting side of the hobby, I've always just kind of picked up and painted whatever I happen to feel like at the time. This is an approach that, while immediately gratifying, doesn't really make for satisfying long-term results. It leaves me with a few painted figures, a mountain of half-finished stuff, and nothing resembling a coherent collection or anything useful for gaming with. So I've decided a change of tack is needed.

I'm hoping that by setting myself a series of small, easily-achievable goals, I can keep myself from getting distracted along the way and, hopefully, the sum result of all these mini-goals will be that I achieve something coherent and satisfying upon completion of the lot.

Starting from the top down, my two main "macro-goals" (i.e. major things I want to achieve) that I've set myself are as follows:

• Get all the Space Hulk Guys painted (self-explanatory)

• Get the beginnings of a useable WH40K army painted (more on this later)

Now, the current shape of the plan is to initially concentrate on the former of these, but leaving myself leeway to dip into the latter, should I find myself needing a break from red, blue and purple.

Now, the Space Hulk Guys essentially amounts to twenty-two Genestealers, a Broodlord, two five-man squads of Terminators, the Librarian, and Brother Claudio up there (second from left), all squadless and rampaging about the place with his lightning claws. I've faffed around enough to have nailed down the colour schemes I'll be using now, so I just need to to break the thirty five models down into manageable lumps. More on this next time.

Back Aboard the Battlewagon

The unboxing that set it all off again.

So, here we go.

Late last year, I was sucked back into "hobby" when Games Workshop all of a sudden released the "4th" edition of Space Hulk. I'd sort of kept half an eye on what was going on in the world of little toy spacemen, but for a variety of reasons hadn't really had the time, or inclination, to involve myself in it all any more deeply.

"Aha", thinks I, "this is an entirely self-contained game, with a limited number of guys to paint. If I drop seventy five quid on this, it'll be a nice little, manageable project/toy, without leaving me up to my neck in hobby detritus and unfinished projects. I'll bash these out and that'll be that."

What an idiot.

Like a blithering alcoholic, kidding himself that he could have maybe just one beer, I now find myself, a couple of months later, having slipped back into all the bad old hobby habits I had before, with only a handful of half-painted models and a head full of grandiose plans to show for it. Hence this blog; an effort to catalogue my progress and force myself to be a bit more disciplined in my approach.

So, here we go…