Behind the wall of sleep - Part 1

Those of you who have read the novel form H.P. Lovecraft will understand this title at the end of the post and those who haven't could  read it and find themselves enjoying one of the best novels form the author (to my taste at least).

Having engaged myself in the oldhammer community a deep further recently and in my hobby since the beginning of this blog, I've come to the point I spend 2-3 hours a day on painting/modelling and not much on watching TV/video games. With the Monthly painting challenge on the oldhammer forum, I've also been slowing down a lot on photos and I've even halted on the khorne champions I was about to finish :

 My way of painting is simple and can be summed up in 1 word:TAYLORISM (prime everything, base colours on everything, shades on everything, highlightson everyting, metals on everythngs and so on...)

I only paint batches or groups, The only mini I've ever painted alone was the Brettonian Hypogriff. Apart from this one, whenever I want to paint a mini I always pick up a few I'll do alongside. Until a month ago I was even still imagining painting my whole chaos 40K army in one go (100+ marines and  5 vehicles...)

For this reason I always pushed the beginning of this army to later. This time I started painting only the Rogue trader part of it and starting a bit gave me the will to paint the rest but splitting it into more reasonable groups. When these are finished, there will be the 2nd edition part and so on...

The other drawback of painting huge batches like I do is that you never finish anything until you reach the final touch on every mini at the same time and you end up with loads of finished minis in little time.

I don't mean to change my way of painting much. I can't paint a mini after another, I like efficient techniques on rank and file minis to save time for more time consumming ones. That apart, I do want to get out of the confort zone to try new techniques and new colours to progress  bit.

Now where am I going if I keep my title in mind? (remember the Lovecraft theme...)

Well, as I was roaming through the lead treasure chest digging for trade fodder, I came across some special minis. I know you all have some like these, it's the ones you made for no reason, ones you had not planned or which were not designed for any particular army you owned.

What you are about to see is no level to be proud of but I loved them at the time and still do now. Amongst all this I found these :

 This one is quite special since it's the first one I ever painted. It's obviously the "battle master" ogre standing on its regular base (sawed like I could at the time). At the time (some 22 years ago) I was already collecting chaos champions and eldars but I couldn't get myself to painting them for I was terrified at the idea of ruining such beauties. One day though, my father told me he still had his Humbrol paint pots he used to paint his warship models with and got them from a closet.

I decided to use these on the ogre since I was less reluctant to ruin a plastic figure first. I got my hands on painting with enamels and using the solvents needed. This mini sealed my fate and my unlimited dedication to chaos... (that and the fact my mother decided that day she hated miniatures and RPG's because it had made her son a depraved and violent kid painting blood on his toys...)

This other one came out.I had completely forgotten it and how I had loved doing it, sculpting a world eater symbol on th ekneepad while listening to metal. (you can notice the blood is still present on the weapon). If I remember right, it must date back the release of the first ogre kingdom amry book for this was the weapon I had been waiting for at the time.

This last one is the best to me. It's a pile of junk and bits which were not meant to fit together and turned great (to me though). Sharp eyes will have spotted a tarentula and legs froms a spacecrusade dreadnought, heavy bolters from the 2nd predator version, guitar string and ork guns. It was not intended to be part of any army nor any game, just for the fun of using pieces.

Lost in so many projects and so much silly deadlines, I found very refreshing to see what had been hiding behind the wall of sleep and which I had long forgotten.

It reminds the progress I've made (though it's not spectacular given the time I've been into this...) and what made me love this. It's why in a close future I will let myself have hobby vacations in the form of small bands or single minis, just for the fun, just to have that special hero or special monster ready for a game I'll never play, just for the pleasure to have done it. I've found a lot of these and many more half finished. I'll pick them as they come and may finish some or let some be.

Anyway, my mind rigt now is centred on finishing this rogue trader renegade army and I'm having a very good time with the dread actually, whenever I finish a part of it, another idea pops into my mind. Let's hope everything will be to your liking and then I really want to turn my attention back to the Khornish and the doomed one...

That, and to the many rogue trader adventurers I've laid my hands on lately...

I still have got some Nurgle fellas to show but the pics are no good and I'm working on a better photo strategy, so pics of good stuff should come in a near future.