Genestealer Cult - The Plot Thickens...

Some progress on the cult over the weekend - below is a near-finished purestrain. Once I've finished this one I'll have to put up the paint recipe, mostly as an aide-memoire for myself. I also found some great anatomical study pictures from the book Xenology, a couple of which I've included below. The rather achievable task / pipe dream for June is to finish all the purestrains along with the ten hybrids and ten cultists. 

Here Come The Beastie Boys (And Girls)

It looks as if this will be the month of the Brayherd. I've been farting around doing bits and pieces for rather too long so it's about time I put together some kind of concerted effort to actually finish something. To this end, here's my workload for the next four weeks:

The Brayherd: Part The First

This is partly a painting challenge - now I've got a method for painting fleshy and furry bits I'm really happy with I'm keen to plough on and refine several approaches - but it's also an opportunity to get the backbone of a force together to try out my developing home cooked ruleset (outlined in theory here). In sum this is my Pipe Dream for the month of May. 

This isn't the complete Brayherd, obviously. I have some plans for a chariot, some cunningly converted harpies (deamonettes with tyranid wings) and spider mutated centigors (hmmm, foul beasts...). I'm also on the lookout for ungor type proxies (skirmishers essentially) that are female, in order to complete this frenzied rabble.

Happy Game Of Thrones Day! (Plus April Pipe Dream)

April? Already!? A quarter of 2012 is gone and hobby-wise I'm pretty happy with progress. Loads of projects underway and a great feeling of creativity - plus, longer hours of natural daylight ahead for painting. Happy days. April Pipe Dream is simply... More of the same please!

But hold on...! It's also Game of Thrones Day. And in the spirit of the online marketing push by HBO (which has been pretty smart), I hereby pledge my allegiance to...

Warhammer Giant - Stage Three WIP (Plus March Pipe Dream)

With March already upon us it's time for some progress and some wishful planning. In that vein, here are some new WIP shots of my giant. This chap is likely (although by no means certainly) to be the first model I complete in my 'canvas' style of painting (i.e. the slow approach - yes, yes, I know everything I paint is done slowly, but like my marriage, I have to fit my hobby into about 45 minutes most evenings...). So the March Pipe Dream is - to finish the giant and crack on with the Jabberslythe.

So far I'm really happy with how this paint job is developing. This evening I picked up some more of the Daler Rowney inks - a white, a cyan, and a scarlet (all lighter colours for highlights and/or some blending) - I've only had time to dabble with them so far, but as with the other DR inks they are superb. I hope you'll be able to see the influence of the artists I looked at in my short 'artistic inspirations' series coming through in my work here.

February Pipe Dream - To Understand Painting (Properly)

Ah, February. It's like the feeble, underdeveloped and sickly cousin of the other months. I'm also away for over a week of it, so what to do, what to do...? At the beginning of the year I decided that annual to-do lists simply weren't for me - instead I'm going to have monthly 'pipe dreams' that will represent the current my whimsies will be flowing with for the next few weeks. It's a very loose structure and it suits my sensibilities. In that spirit, the February pipe dream is: to understand painting (properly).

By that I mean a few things really. First off I'm going to have a ponder on the artists that inspire me - primarily not miniature painters because I find most of the current fashions for mini-painting leave me unmoved (despite the fact that some people are insanely talented artists). The other thing I'm going to focus on is conceptualising my painting into two distinct but related approaches - a little like John Blanche's 'slow' and 'fast' techniques, but with my own twist. Oh, and as the picture below from this evening shows, in order to do this I'll be making my homeward journey to Marienburg.

Marienburg Greatsword WIP

The Best Laid Pipe Dreams of Monsters and Men, Or, Screw ‘To-Do’ Lists

Every hobbyist seems capable of knocking out a ‘to-do’ list in the beginning of the New Year… sometimes close on the heals of a ‘didn’t-quite-manage-to-do’ list that sums up the almost-happenings and near-completions of the previous twelve months. Knowing my own flirtatious and fanciful nature it seems utterly ridiculous that I would present my own version of such a list - in fact, surely the whole point of a hobby is that one can indulge in diversions, spontaneity, and flights of desire? Every time I’ve set myself a challenge before I’ve always fallen at the first hurdle because it all began to feel a little too much like… work. And I have enough of that to do in my parallel life for it not to infect ‘hobbyland’. 

I don’t need to read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hobbyists. 

A year is far too long to commit to something that is supposed to amount to a leisurely distraction: albeit one that amounts to a great pile of hours spent lovingly completing the utterly insignificant. This very post in an act of escapism as I drift away from planning the next few weeks of graft in ‘workland’. 

Don’t get me wrong. I actually admire people who can concoct a list and then work through it to completion, even near-completion. My ire is simply at my own failings of character. But, somewhat reluctantly, I must accept who I am. Through a combination of self-reflection, quasi-personality analysis and the kindly yet unbaiting chastisement supplied by my wife, I realize that I’m hopeless at planning even a few minutes beyond the present. 

I’m bloody annoying (apparently). 

Deadlines and commitments mean that I have to uphold the pretense of being organized in workland, so I’m damned if I’m going to do it in hobbyland too. I’m not going to feel guilty about indulging myself. After all, that’s the entire point of the 95% of time I spend modeling and painting bits of plastic, metal and resin, and the 5% I spend rolling dice as I move them around a table. (I’m aware that this makes me a dream customer for the evil GW marketing people, but hey-ho…). 

Therefore there will be nothing more list-shaped from me than a Monthly Pipe Dream - something I might commit to but in all likelihood will abandon when diverted by fancy. And to inaugurate this non-system of disorganization I hereby announce that the January Pipe Dream is… Monsters!

Bring. It. On.