As I have little in the way of painted figures to show off, or games to talk about, I thought I would take the time to update you on whats going on in my head these days as well as touching back on my choice of new Brushes that I mentioned awhile ago.
As you know over the last month or so I've put a fair amount of time into getting many of my unpainted figures based and arranged into units. I did this for a number of reasons..
- It helped to clarify the condition of my collection and pointed out figures that were lacking/needed and ones that could be passed along to other lead heads. AKA bringing some focus to my collecting...lord knows I need it!
- It helped ensure that I had the right number of slotta bases for my figs....still need more!
- It gave me units that could be arranged for battle rather quickly compared to rooting around in various boxes trying to find missing figures and then having to blue-tac them into bases and wasting valuable gaming time.
- It got me thinking about how I'm going to store my figures in the future....the bag and shoebox system I have now is not a long term solution!
- Having them built and based would also allow me to get around to priming and ultimately painting.
So with the bald truth staring me in the face...and knowing my plodding painting speed...I have decided to try some new tactics for getting painted forces on the table.
- Bulk Priming: I've just used up an entire can of dark gray primer getting about 2/3s of my "Bretonian" army ready for painting....all in one afternoon...its going to take days to get the paint off my fingers!
- Bulk Painting: Following the advice of ZeroTwoThree on his blog Paint Machine I have decided to try painting a BUNCH of figures with similiar color schemes all at once...hence my work table now looking like this.
As you can see...last night was "flesh night!" - Adjusting Expectations: This is the tough one...I'm having to accept the fact that if I want to get usable painted forces on the table in a sane amount of time I'm going to have to cut a few corners. I still want very nice looking units that display the wonderful character of the figures I chose to paint...but they may not all be showcase level paint jobs...finding the balance between speed and perfection is the challenge before me now.
Anyway....I digress....Lets talk about Brushes!
As I mentioned in a previous post (Here) I recently changed brushes and gave the ones from Rosemary & Co. a try. I replaced my much loved set of Windsor and Newton sable brushes with a wider selection of the R&Co's Sable/synthetic blend brushes....so whats the verdict after 5 months? Its good! I like them a lot and they have manged to hold their points fairly well...and as mentioned in the previous post their price is hard to beat! If I have one complaint it would be that their bristles are too long...One of my favorite aspects of the W&N sables was their short bristle length...I find the ones from R&Co to be a bit bendy due to the extra length...but again the price makes these a worthwhile investment. If you're married to the W&N (which I fully understand...they are AWESOME) then you might think about picking up some of these for painting metals or other tasks that are "beneath" your better brushes.
I'm not saying I'll use them forever...but with the amount of painting I hope to due this year I'm going to ride them out till the bitter end!
That's all for now...got to get back to "Flesh Highlight 1 night" ...sigh...pray for me in my hour of need...
Cheers,
Blue