I'm painting again. I don't know where it goes from here.

 It's been a while!

About 6 weeks ago, I felt like painting again.  It's been about 10 years at this point since I stopped, but I've taken longer breaks than that before.

I wanted to wait before posting anything both because I'm a lot older, out of practice and I honestly wasn't sure if I'd pick up a brush and not be able to paint.  As documented previously, my eyesight and fine motor skills were never great to begin with, and I am absolutely racing towards the grave at this point.

It's hard to say what exactly gave me the itch again -- I've casually kept up with WH40k over the last decade, and my Google news feed occasionally features articles from the ever-delightful Bell of Lost Souls (as an aside, it's been incredible to watch the progress of that site over the years).  I think I just ticked over from seeing some beautiful models to realizing that I could go pick up something -- maybe just get some fresh paints and a couple of models and dip my toe in.  You know.

Within a couple of weeks, I had the 40k starter set, some extra Necrons, the Age of Sigmar Dominion box, and Cursed City.  As well as the big paint set from Army Painter, and a growing collection of Citadel contrast paints.  I guess the toe dip went a little sideways.

As an aside, I'm amused that this post of mine from December 2010  has become an entirely valid alternate way to paint models that we now call 'Contrast Method' or 'Speed Painting'.  We'll come back to that.

I'm now about a month and half into collecting, assembling and painting.  I'm really enjoying myself.  

The reason I'm posting tonight is that I wanted a place to put up some pictures of what I'm working on, and document for myself some of the progress I'm making.  Also it's a place to share photos where I'm not spamming my friends and family, who I'm sure are already tired of the daily random photos of weird little models that they don't really understand.

I can also see by the dashboard that somehow people still end up directed towards this site every once in a while.  I hope that these poor lost travelers can find something that inspires or helps them in their pursuit of the hobby, or at least reassures them that someone, somewhere, is also still trying to figure out how to paint after decades of doing it.  

I have a lot of thoughts about the hobby, Warhammers both 40k and AoS, and the enormous evolution of available tools to produce beautiful models and the huge increase in both cost and quality of Games Workshop miniatures.  

Right now I'm working on finishing the Cursed City miniatures before I actually play a game of it.  I'm about 17/60 minatures done, and I'm mostly pleased with how they've turned out.

I will be posting here occasionally with some updates and backlog photos of the stuff that I've been working on.  Forgive me in advance, the photos I've been taking are in no way staged for photography, just rough workdesk photos like the header above.  But in the meanwhile I thought I'd share the first model I painted after a 10+ year absence vs a model I painted a few days ago and the evolution over that 6 week period as I started to remember what was forgotten.  Both are WH40k Orks from the (5th edition?) starter set, Assault on Black Reach.

March 27th: 

How do paints work again?

May 1st:

I'll try to put up something new every few days or when the thoughts feel like going down in text.  In the meanwhile, I'll also try to find a better set up for taking pictures of miniatures, but bear with me for a while on that :)