There And Back Again - An OTTer's Journey

I thought I would try and get through the hobby funk that sets in after doing a lot of batch painting by working on single-character miniatures from the collection!

The idea, inspired by Eons Of Battle, was to paint one miniature every day from start to finish. No switching to another miniature, no other project, just one miniature from start to finish.

I started with seven miniatures that I didn’t think I would ever get around to without doing something like this. The list was…

• Imrahil
• Ghan-Buri-Ghan
• Sharkey
• Isildur
• Easterling Captain
• The Witch-King
• Haldir

I started off strong with the painting of Imrahil and Ghan-Buri-Ghan wh0 were quite easy to get finished since they were a lot of one colour essentially.

One of the things that was quite interesting about this process is that you have to do a lot of waiting. You need to wait for layers to dry, for washes to settle in and for basing materials to work!

It is a very different mode of painting where normally you’d move on and paint up something from another miniature. But, it was quite neat to be able to be satisfied with a breakpoint during the day and then come back after a cup of tea to do more on a miniature.

Even though you take breaks and such though, that’s the point of this. To show a different way of painting that is less intensive and has you being able to enjoy the process from beginning to end.

It also seems like a great way to get through your backlog of single miniatures that might not have a place in wider armies. This is especially good if your miniatures feature different textures, colours and themes as it means you get to step out of your comfort zone too!

Unfortunately, I didn’t complete my task over the 7 days. It got to day 6 and I made a boo-boo! I knew I was going to have to rush to get the final miniature done and instead of making it the easy-to-paint Witch-King (above), I decided to paint up him on day 6 and leave Haldir for day 7.

That meant I had a complicated miniature to finish things off with and I just didn’t have the time. Adulting got in the way and I ended up not being able to complete the challenge. But, it’s better to explore the realities of something like this than lie about the end result!

Currently, this is where I’ve got Haldir too (below) and I will be finishing him off this week alongside some other miniatures from my collection.

This was a fun challenge though and I will certainly try it again to get more characters painted from my collection!