Finally - some painting time!!!

So, The Big Cheese was complaining that not enough people contribute regularly on here, so I thought I'd make a blog entry - who knows? If you're all unlucky, I might even keep it up!! }:)

For Christmas, I was lucky enough to receive a GW Paintstation from my sister, which is a great present, as I've been looking for a way to rationalise the way in which my painting has been creeping from the back garage and into the dining room over the last few months. This was about to become problematic, due to my eldest daughter being two and half years old, and having grasping fingers for anything interesting - and we all know how interesting toy soldiers can be! ;)

Using my new paint station, I have been able to stop this lava-like creep of materials and push-back the tide. In addition, the paintstation means I can just get out my painting for as short or as long a period of time as I want to paint for and then put it safely away again on the shevles, nice and high and beyond reach!

It also means that I can establish a little system of painting several miniatures at once, which stops me getting bored when I am painting squads, and my system won't be disturbed or upset by moving bits of things about. Such uncontrolled disturbance has caused me to do less painting over the last three months-or-so, however, since I built my new paintstation, its been all-guns firing on the painting front!

I have, however, been left with rather a backlog of half-painted minis as well as the mountain of unpainted lead, so I thought I'd expand on my plan a little, as much for my benefit as for yours! ;)

I don't like to have more than four miniatures from any given squad at once in front of me, otherwise I get bored painting the same colours again and again and again! But I also like to have a character miniature in progress as well. In addition, I make myself paint something that I feel a little bit guilty about having bought or traded and not got around to painting yet. So, for those not bothering to count, I've been keeping six minitures in front of me, generally painting them once "colour" at a time (unless I get carried away) until they're done, and I then I replace them with the next figure to be worked on.

After starting working like this, the first half-painted squad that I've been painting has been my Heresy Customs Inspectors, which I finished a couple of nights ago, and I've uploaded a (not great) picture of here:

I am now working on a Space Marine Squad for my Storm Lords army, which itself will be a part of my Rogue Trader force. Second squad of the seventh company (just for myself, as no-one else will be interested), but it means I get to look in my copy of Codex Astartes lots, which is always fun :D

The character miniature that I am currently painting is Black Scorpion's Cop Girl, who I started at the same time as Adrianna, as I didn't know which of these two I wanted to enter into Adam's competition, and I ended up painting Adrianna:

More info on Cop Girl to follow when she's done :)

As for my guilt minis - I've finished off a Black Hat Celophod Soldier, nominally 18mm, but it hardly matters with freaky aliens like these!. It just needs his base finished now. I might post a pic if anyone says they're interested, otherwise I'll hold off until the whole squad has been done.

But I've put the Celophod squad on one side for a while whilst I do some work on my Baccus 6mm Zulus. The main reasons for this are two-fold:
1) I want to finish of my skin-colour testing of 6mm Zulus that I started last year;
2) My wife's uncle is really into Zulus and was really taken with the ones I've finished so far, even though they're unbased and still on strips. He wants me to make a 6mmm "zulus charging the british" diorama for him, so I'll be able to use my test zulus to do this when I'm done.

I also like to work on a piece of scenary of some kind at the same time (so my soldiers have something to fight over when I do get time to game), and I've got a piece that I picked up cheap and second-hand in Sheffield's Wargames Emporium. Its kind of an Inn with a Tower/Minnaret in roughly 10mm scale, and apparantly cast in plaster - but its been fun to paint so far, and is nearly finished, so I'll definately post a pic of it when it is complete.

Finally I've got quite a few old, old minis that I've never finished the bases on properly - gluing on just brown sand was de rigeur when I was younger! So I'm also working on the bases of a few of the old citadel halfling that have spent abotu 15 years being incompletely based. They're not coming out great compared to my new stuff, but they fit in just fine with my old style of painting.

Right that is it for now. Comments and questions, if you have any and are still awake, are more than welcome :)