At the finishing post

Ha!

Well, Challenge IX is over - an exhausting, rewarding, compelling and productive activity. I've done pretty much nothing else for three months, but I've enjoyed myself immensely. I also managed to paint much more than I'd expected, and climbed to top of the table, which was really pleasing.

A consequence of so much focus, though, has been that I gave no energy to this blog at all, even though the intent was to support work on the Challenge through this blog. Because the support activities associated with submission are themselves time consuming (taking photos, editing them, writing a post, commenting on other people's posts) there seemed no luxury time to pursue my own blog. Here's the summative photo, in any case:

Impressive for three months work, isn't it? However, a careful examination (which I don't recommend) will show that, despite my best intentions, not every figure laid out in my December post was actually completed. On the other hand, there's quite a few additional figures here which I hadn't contemplated at the start. Here's what I managed of what I planned:

In 28mm:
120 Imperial Romans: YES
48 Caesarean Romans: YES
120 Celts: Only 36
50 Zulus: YES
60 War of the Roses, foot and mounted: YES
100 HYW, foot and a few mounted: About 40 foot, and no mounted
500 Austrian Naps 15mm: YES
100 French SYW 15mm: YES
15 Sudanese: YES
6 British MTBs (1/300 from Warlord's new Cruel Seas): 5, in fact
Sarissa's Hougoumont: NO

Additionally, I completed
Frostgrave: 10 figs
SYW: 3 regiments of Reichsarmee and two Prussian cavalry regiments
Roman: cavalry unit, 2 scorpions, unit of auxiliaries, three commanders
Terrain: one terrace of houses, 20 palm trees, desert gaming board, cricket pavilion, three desert houses, 3 pill boxes
Walmington on Sea: 6 cricketers, 9 canal personnel
WW2: 1 armoured car, 6 italians, 6 SAS
Carthaginians: 1 unit of veterans, 1 of Libyans
LOTR: 90 Orcs, 4 barrow wights, 13 warg riders
Napoleonic: 6 officers, 4 Ottomans
Crusades: 7 arab archers
Animals: penguins and dinosaur for EMP, elephants, snowcat, gorilla, goat
Victorian gentlemen: 5
Curtgeld: 2 Afghan wounded
Natal Native Contingent: 9

I'm really pleased with what I've managed, even though the lead mountain still looms far too large. What I'm hoping, therefore, is that I can use this personal blog a little bit like my own AHPChallenge (in a much lower key way, of course) to keep me motivated in a similar way and get more figures completed.

At the starting blocks

This post is simply to record the figures I've prepared for the challenge. There's quite a few, though not as many as I envisaged:

Not a very good picture, but I'm just learning how to use this camera.

At the rear left is almost an army of 15mm Austrians. Ahead of them Caesarean Romans, and the massive black block at the front Imperial Romans - yes, I'll be building two Roman armies at the same time - possibly even three.

The centre column is the Sudanese unit of the Egyptian army that I'll probably paint first. The reddish figures to the rear at the right are Perries' zulus - beautiful figures. Next to them, five MTBs. Ahead of them a few War of the Roses foot and six cavalry, with a few small terrain pieces, too.

Then ECW cornets, a small group of arabs for Napoleon in Egypt, nine bargemen and a couple of Walmington characters for Sealion. Then various fantasy: barbarians for Frostgrave, a few orcs and undead, and some miscellaneous creatures, and finally Fallout figures from the starter set (there are other Fallout figures waiting in the wings, but I might not get to them).

Certainly this sets me up for the Squirrel challenge, to make a virtue of this one of my vices, at least.

And so it begins

Painting Challenge IX is underway.

I’ve now prepared about half the figures I think I may attempt during the forthcoming three months. Undoubtedly I’ll change my mind as I progress, but at least I have my starting points.

I’ve just noticed that the Lardies are sponsoring a “What a Tanker!” challenge, so that’s immediately adding a new consideration: have I a tank I’d like to paint up in the next three months? Well, I do have a Panther to make up – but it has no instructions, so it’ll probably be badly assembled. Then I’ve a Humber scout car, but that’s unlikely to qualify as a “tank”. I’ll have to search around in the jungle of unfinished projects and see what might be found.

I think I’ll begin with the Sudanese for the Egyptian army, as these have been waiting for years, and should give me what my boss used to call a “quick win”. Meanwhile, there are over 500 15mm Austrians waiting quietly in the wings. And, as it was recently my birthday, I’m now two boxes of Gripping Beast Romans, plus some Praetorians, that weren’t in the pile three days ago.

I’m also using the Challenge as an excuse to buy a new camera. Not much of a photographer, I need a simple device, but it has to give me the best chance of decent photos of all the beautiful miniatures I’ll hopefully be creating.

So, no time for posting - got to undercoat Austrians, sort out Sudanese, assemble Romans, find a tank, visit the camera shop. Fortunately, it's not one of those busy times of year, is it?

Maybe I'll be posting more often now

I set up this blog to log my progress in the Eighth Analogue Painting Challenge. This was my first time taking part, though I've watched from the sidelines in the past.

In the event, I spent so much energy on the Challenge itself, I didn't find any time for this blog. So it's just as well I have no readers! But, now the Challenge is over, I may feel there's a gap in my life, so I think I'll try to use this as a substitute, and post irregular images of my wargaming work, as it occurs. 

I finished second in the Challenge, which was amazing, given that I only intended to provide a small regular stimulus to my work. I was really bitten by the bug - both the desire to move projects on (I painted at least four times as much as in the same period last year) and, once I began to move up the table, my competitive desire to get to the top. I didn't make that, not even temporarily, mainly because there's one brilliant painter taking part - well, actually, there are lots of them, but there's one in particular, Kent, who not only consistently delivers some of the best painting you'll see on a wargames table, but also does it with apparent ease. Units of Napoleonic French (that's "Napoleonic" and "French"!!) appeared just about every week. Large units, too. I did a couple, but neither was close to his standard.

In fact, I found that to keep producing, regularly and consistently, I had to drop my painting standards somewhat. This suits me, really, as I think I spend too much time per figure, with relatively little value as a result - a few beautiful pieces, perhaps, but most of them end up in run-of-the-mill contexts. So it was a useful exercise in "can I deliver passable figures I'd want to play with, in a minimal timescale?" The answer is: more or less. I developed a couple of techniques that gave satisfactory results, such as using only two shades rather than three, or settling for washes without highlights on darker materials, and limiting the colour schemes in many cases.

The return to 15mm also helped with this. I bought part of a very large 15mm collection in January, following the death of someone who must have been a very keen 15mm gamer. I was excessively pleased with this - in fact, I've still not got over the delight of doing so. I've absolutely no complaint about it, despite the imperfections which every collection has. These actually give it character, even charm, and speak of a particular gamer with particular preoccupations, rather than some "manufactured" game. But it does mean that there are oddities.

For example, there's a massive amount of 15mm Austrian Napoleonics, unpainted, which I'll never paint up - probably more than 1000 pieces. On the other hand, there's a box of Revolutionary French (presumably intended to fight the Austrians) which fit squarely with my idea of gaming the French in Egypt, from the first landing to their exit. I've already a decent collection of the Perry figs in 28mm, but these are in the Kleber clobber. So I can fight the early months in 15mm and the later in 28mm. 

Similarly, the bulk of my purchase was painted SYW figs. I'm overjoyed with this. But the problem is that it's a rather one-sided collection. Lots of British, but no French. An excellent Prussian collection, but the Austrians have almost no cavalry. I'm assuming that there was more to this collection, but that it's gone elsewhere. 

So that's created a "fill the gaps" agenda - basically, to "complete" the Austrian army, and to develop a French one, almost from scratch. I know very little about the French in the SYW, so this is quite an exciting idea. And the Analogue challenge gave me to incentive to paint such a thing, so I've gone from a few token figures to an army of 5 guns, 150 infantry and around 90 cavalry. Moreover, I want to go on till it's a size close to the Brits (around 500 figures). Here's a sample:

You can see that this is not the highest quality painting, but it's not too bad. I'm aiming to keep the style reasonably close to that of the figures already painted, which is relatively simple, but also quite detailed in places. Essentially this gives me leeway to keep it simple where I want to, but indulge some of the finer detail when that suits me.

At the same time, my project for the year was supposed to be ECW. I was given two of the Warlord Battalia boxes, and I also bought a few more ECW figures in Wargames Emporium's sale. Nearly all the infantry, and something like 64 cavalry are now complete, thanks to the Challange, and I was moved to buy some Perry Scots, too.

The plan is to work towards Marston Moor (at least, a version of it), but also to include enough Scots to separate out as a Covenanter army, and to paint as decent number of Redcoats, so a version of the New Model Army can be extracted from the collection, too. Obviously, creaming off units like this means that the remainder might be a slightly odd rump, but my thinking is, as always, to aim for as many possibilities as feasible from a relatively limited collection. So far, so good. Here's a few of these: