Paint it or Punt it

Now then, what’s this, a post? On a sprawling, painfully slow to load project? Aye, I know, I didn’t think I was coming back here either. Honestly after January I thought I’d just break down the remainder of the paint queue and make separate projects for each of them.

Sometimes though I don’t sleep at night and that tends to play havoc with the strange little things I set my mind on. Thinking about the hobby plans for the rest of the year, I realised that this project need to finished before I can take those on guilt-free.

If only there was some sort of challenge that would help gamers with clearing out old projects

One of my main hobby goals for 2020 was to take back control of my collection. I felt a weird sense of guilt about the number of unpainted models I owned. Not a pile of opportunity or a heap of hope or whatever positive spin we are meant to put on it. Mine was most definitely a pile of shame. I frequently felt like I didn’t know where to start and would just not paint instead of having to face it all.

In January 2020, I had 1281 unpainted models in the pile. Over the 15 months I’ve painted 243 and sold or given away 850 or so. Heading into 2021, the push was towards 100% painted for everything that was on the spreadsheet… don’t worry about the actual maths, I’m a librarian not an accountant.

So let’s set out parameters shall we? It’s 30 days until the end of the Spring Clean Challenge and I have in my head a rough idea of what remains to be painted in the cupboard. Updating the spreadsheet gives us this wonderful looking set of totals

81.7% painted and 79 models either unpainted or unassembled. This includes all the changes brought by painting up Frostgrave, which I thought was going to be my SCC this year. What remains to be done for it is terrain based so I’m not bothered about that right now.

30 days and 79 models. That’s doable.

The breakdown:

Burrows and Badgers – 7

Judge Dredd – 17

Napoleonic French – 24

Romans – 4

Fellowship of the Ring – 9

Frostgrave – 18 (FG numbers actually a pain in the arse because I apparently wasn’t as good at tracking them as I thought I was being. I’ve definitely added to it this year but this is what is sitting to be painted, so that’s what I’m going with)

There are other models in the house that are unpainted right now. They’ve all been bought in the last couple of months as projects for once this was over. Am I saying I’ve got a wonderfully balanced relationship with my desire to buy models and actually getting them painted? Not in the slightest. I still have four separate projects I want to start but I’m being better about not buying things immediately and then sticking them in a darkened corner to waste.

There’s also a set of minis that I stripped for a painting challenge this month and then lost the energy for. If I manage them too then fantastic but it’s not something I’m going to beat myself up about it.