Painting has been chugging along at a decent clip, especially given that my main project at this stage is a brand new Dark Eldar army. Not all of it has been start to finish batch painting, in between major batches of troops and vehicles I've been painting either a handful of minis or a one off as a palette cleanser.
Distractions and Motivation
Motivation wise I have been in a bit of a state. My usual painting distractions have not been helping me as much as they used to. A lot of the podcasts I've been listening to are a combination of general gaming, board gaming, and tabletop wargaming stuff. Unfortunately there are only one or two stand out ones that still engage me, but the rest of them increasingly have very little to say that differentiates themselves from my faves, so I think I'm at my limit to the volume of internet games men I can listen to. I also listen to a variety of political and history podcasts which have been good in quality and content have left me feeling despair at the state of the world, and as such have ceased to be good as a painting distraction. Being well informed about the state of Yemen doesn't equate to motivation at the painters desk.My YouTube backlog has been growing for a long time, but ultimately I managed to get through the last of it once I started aggressively pruning the overly long videos from it. Most of it is painting videos from a variety of my favorite YouTube painters and a few interesting games people, though those are a rarity and they have to be doing some very interesting for me to care. Lately though only a few of the channels have been able to hold my interest. I'll always listen to Doc Faust, but some of the other channels have fully migrated to Patreon or are churning out easy content to beat the algorithms, one of them has even stopped entirely, which means this source of content is rapidly drying up.
This turning away from my usual distractions have left me bereft of content to keep my brain distracted while my hands and eyes do the hard work of cranking through rank and file, or four layers of shade and highlights, depending on what I'm working on. In a surprising turn I've found that falling back on music, especially video game soundtracks and relaxation mixes have worked spectacularly well at calming me down. I've also re-watched a couple of things on Netflix, which did well in keeping my arse in my seat and painting at a respectable pace.
Streaming and Social Media
I tried streaming again and I got my first viewer that stuck around and actually engaged with me via the chat. He was quite nice, a far cry from mainstream Twitch culture as I understand it, but the entire thing highlighted the how stressful streaming can be. As the one on the stage, so to speak, not only do I have to maintain my own pace, but also engage with the audience and offer comment and critique on their work. While it is good to connect with other hobbyists over the internet, I must admit, I did not find this a fun experience. Once the camera rolls I feel like I need to be engaging at all times, which sucks when painting because at heart it is a slow, contemplative experience. To be effective at it you have to learn to externalize your thought process about your work and narrate it as you go, mistakes and all.That being said, I find it much easier to cut together and make a painting tutorial and post it on YouTube rather than stream. I find it weird to say that, as streaming doesn't require the level of production value that making decent looking YouTube videos takes. Never the less, getting my recording set up and busting out clip studio pro again is something I will do in the future, once I get around to my next small filler project.
Regarding putting myself out on social media in general. I find the need to be entertaining and engaging all the time on the internet sucks, especially live on Twitch. Posting is far more tolerable as I can shoot something out and come back later and get a nice little pile of likes with an occasional reblogs. Yet in the back of my mind there is a part of me that is telling me that this entire endeavor is a waste of time unless is it monetized, as pretty much everyone else does it. I also have to remind myself that social media should never be a career, I'd end up working harder at it than I do my corporate job and still find myself sliding into poverty. I suppose the reason why I'd create is to feel creatively fulfilled, which is something I do not get at all from life in general and even at the height of my productivity with YouTube video creation I was not entirely satisfied with the result, after all, I don't exactly have a voice for radio, nor the charisma.
Painting
In spite of everything my painting has been extremely productive. I've completed all of the leg infantry for my Dark Eldar army project and am moving on to a batch of Venoms and Jetbikes. After that I have all of the larger vehicles, which I'll get done in one run.
I discussed the batching processing at length in one of my previous articles and overall it has been one of the most successful attempts at getting an army painted en-mass. I could in theory use this process for commission jobs, should I ever find myself unemployed and need to support myself by doing other people's hobby for them. The best part of this method is that it doesn't use an overall wash for the main colour, which removes the need to re-layer the mid tone, thus saves time. Though this may not work with some models, so a targeted pin wash may be able to work with a technique like this.
In between the batches of infantry I did a couple of smaller bits and pieces with the intention of both trying new things, and keeping myself engaged by forcing myself to do something different.
This free Sequitor was unexpectedly thrust into my hands while I was buying something at the GW located close to my place of work. I had intended to enter the finished model in the release day comp, but I missed the deadline. Either way, for me this was a chance to try out the Game Colour Verdigris paint before I apply it to the Shadespire Steelheart minis, which I'm going to use for a comp entry down the line.
While it was tough to establish that initial base coat, once it was down the results proved to be excellent. I'd only ever paint this colour onto a white base coat, otherwise the number of layers required for a good layer of starting colour will be nearly impossible to achieve. For shading I gave the entire model a wash with Drakenhof Nightshade, then did successive re-layers of the verdigris to re-establish the mid tones. Attempts to lay in some more gradual shades by diluting some dark blue gray didn't quite work as expected, so I re-layered the verdigris to cover up that mistake. In future I'll try thinned layers of the overall glaze to achieve a transition from mid tones to shades.
After that a some simple highlights of pure white and the armour was done.
I also tried NMM on this model, and again I'll never understand how to do it, it seems. How to achieve it properly, especially with the oddly shaped hammer head. In retrospect I should've applied a flat metallic coat and practiced my true metal shading techniques, the kind that uses successive layers of black glaze to achieve shades and Vallejo metallic medium for a highlight. I'll do it before I attempt it on Steelheart's band. On the upside, I think I nailed the NMM gold reasonably well, so I can at least say I tried it.
The Visarch here is the final result of an attempt to lift my game in terms of painting quality. First up, I aimed to give this miniature at least three passes of highlight and use some of my limited knowledge of colour theory to get some decent shading going, mostly with dark blues mixed with my deepest shade green to get a very dark blue green colour, washed on over successive layers mixed in with some glaze medium. The sword was also an attempt to work a decent colour transition, and this time was definitely the best attempt at it yet. Other than that the cloak and the fur were a decent enough job for a higher standard and work well with the rest of the model. On reflection I wasn't much of a fan of this model in the early stages, but as the colours came together I started to warm on it, to the point where I genuinely think that this is one of the finer pieces I've put out in years. I was certainly showered with praise on Instagram for it.
Finally some more additions to my active Necromunda gang. Due to recent combat experience it became clear I had a distinct lack of heavy and special weapons to bring to a firefight. So, an extra box of Escher gangers and a decent order of special and heavy weapons from Victoria minis and now I have a line of fully kitted up Escher to even the firepower balance. The painting wasn't too hard, mostly following over the method I'd previously codified for doing the first batch of this gang. The snag came when I realized that I had failed to record the exact colours I'd used. Fortunately I was able to reconstruct it from memory, and substitute when I couldn't remember. In the end the final result was pretty much indistinguishable from the originals.
Wargaming
I've got a new regular opponent that has an excellent narrative bent to the hobby. I've played a few games with him and all of them have been great. You can find his tumblr here, I especially recommend the battle reports. We've played a couple of 40k games of various sizes, as well as an intro game of Necromunda and Gaslands.
I've also been going along to the regular Necromunda night at my local FLGS. I've had one victory and one defeat in the campaign so far. Unfortunately, due to misery at work I haven't been feeling well enough to go out to the last couple of game nights. Wargaming can be hard, especially after a long day of staring at a screen, sometimes it is just easier to stay at home, have an unhurried dinner and catch up on some hobby. It also seems that many of the players have similar problems and likewise often stay away for similar reasons.
I've also been going along to the regular Necromunda night at my local FLGS. I've had one victory and one defeat in the campaign so far. Unfortunately, due to misery at work I haven't been feeling well enough to go out to the last couple of game nights. Wargaming can be hard, especially after a long day of staring at a screen, sometimes it is just easier to stay at home, have an unhurried dinner and catch up on some hobby. It also seems that many of the players have similar problems and likewise often stay away for similar reasons.
Upcoming
I am please to say that the list for my current cycle is beginning to dwindle and the prospect of making a new list and working on grows ever closer. So far the big projects that remain are what remains of the Dark Eldar, which are all vehicles, the final two miniatures from the Triumvirate II boxed set, the Yncarne is one I am not looking forward to painting. A full strength Astra Militarum Platoon, and a Twisted miniatures Highway Woman, which I'm going to try for a quality paint job as a potential future entry into either the Crystal Dragon or at ScaleACT. Speaking of which I should probably decide what I want to enter into ScaleACT, if anything. That'll do for now, I hope by the next time I write one of these I'll be back in the swing of YouTube video creation.
