Joan of Arc – Avoiding Burn Out

I bloody love them so far but I am not sure if you can paint with contrast alone.

The below two bulidings (foreground) and the four trees (you can just see them in the background) took just around an hour… or one episode of “American Dad”, Jerry’s overview of “Saga – Age of Magic” on the Site and sorting out my wife’s dinner.

Now please ignore the white, this will be painted brown as this is the timber frame and how shiny the roof is as they are still wet but i have to say I am very impressed so far.

So far the biggest lesson I have learnt is that loading the brush for one thick coat really does depend on what area you are covering and I am wondering how the  contrast will work on the fiddly bits like the door handles and window frames without running too much.

I also notice that on the trees there seems to be small white patches that have somehow avoided all paint – maybe  due to bubbles? Will go back and sort them.

All in all though I am impressed and to get to this stage would have normally taken me a lot longer.

Excellent, with these paints I am automatically a better painter and will never have an unpainted model again… that’s the promise, right? What do you mean I still require basic brush control?

In all seriousness I am thoroughly looking forward to trying these out. I loathe painting and also loathe playing with unpainted models but too further complicate matters I hate my own badly painted models. So, it is my hope that these will help me develop my own very basic skills while providing some quick win results with the “contrast method”.

I dread undercoating. I think it is because I have never quite developed the right technique and have frosted too many models or not shaken the spray for long enough, so the paint is either too thick or too thin. Obviously, the Gods of Gaming insist that such things only happen on expensive models!

But I digress.

So I decided to break down my painting of scenario one into four sections:

1. The French
2. The Scenery
3. The English
4. The Peasants

I then decided to undercoat in batches so that when my paints arrive, I can get cracking while not having a huge pile of undercoated models to distract me with the new shiny colours to “quickly try out”.

So that’s that. Now to wait for my contrast paints to arrive. Though let’s be honest if they don’t, I will crack on and undercoat the remaining scenario models… Idle hands and all that…

I have to say this is really sparking an interest in the 100 Year war for me and have just finished my first Osprey Men-at-Arms book: French Armies of the Hundred Years War by David Nicolle. A really good resource… almost like they planned it. 

Also would recommended giving the Wiki entry about Bertrand_du_Guesclin “The Black Dog of Broceliande” a read.

Warzan is painting? One thick coat? The shop with 10% off contrast? Surely this is the quick win share the wealth trapazoid (simarlar but legally distinct from a pyramid scheme) I’m looking for to paint 100’s of models. So they’re ordered then.

Brother Jerry talking about mini saga. I find myself with lots of small scale “wee fighting men” and associated less wee monsters. What’s all this then? Focus is a fickle mistress.

So I’ve decided to approach this sensibly. Actually sensibly is a bit of a strong word.

The plan is as follows:

Paint a scenario at a time.

As plans go its certainly a plan…

So I got all the minis for scenario one together:

A direction!

That’s a lot of minis.

Let’s put them in a bag.

And that moment of existential dread when you realise reducing scale increases the number of models to paint!

So much to my wife’s chagrin the above arrived… “more board games?” Well yes and I can see her point (though have thus far not informed her that what she is seeing is only Wave 1).

Now I went all in and am feeling the hobby burn out just taking off the shrink wrap and checking content. I need a plan.