A Reasonable Dream part II

In our last installment, we heard about the beginning of my journey towards trying to get 100 points of my Cygnar army painted in 3 months, ending roughly at the halfway mark with a pitiful 5 models painted, out of 58 that I had planned to paint. Whoops.

Shortly after that point, a Warmachine/Hordes league was starting up. I decided that I wanted to try something new for this league. Specifically, I wanted to use Epic Stryker’s theme list. I wanted to do this for 2 main reasons. First, I’ve never actually used Epic Stryker before, mostly because I have a tendency to only play with casters who are painted. Second, I wanted to have an army with 2 units of Stormblades assaulting everything in front of me.

Based on that, I knew that the models that I would paint next would be Epic Stryker, and the unit of Stormblades plus officer and standard bearer. The fact that I had already begun the basecoat on the Stormblades sealed the deal. The fact that I hadn’t begun the basecoat on the unit’s weapon attachments, the Storm Gunners, meant that for now I wasn’t going to bother with them.

Before I continue, I’ll interject a quick word about my technique for painting Cygnar blue armor plates. I do this a lot, from the armor of the various Storm Knights (Stormblades, Stormguard, Storm Lances), warcaster armor, and warjack armor plates. I like to think I’ve gotten it down to a technique that looks pretty decent, without being too difficult or time-consuming.

Starting on a black undercoat, I do a basecoat of thinned-down P3 Cygnar Blue Base paint. I used to use Vallejo paints for this, but the entire P3 product line was introduced around the same time I was running out of the Vallejo blues that I used, so I switched over to P3 for this color, and I haven’t looked back. Next, I hit it up with an undiluted wash of Citadel Asurmen Blue Wash, which does a nice job of deepening the blue in recesses, and the lower parts of armor plates. Once that’s dry, I start mixing some P3 Cygnar Blue Base paint with some P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight (thinned down). I don’t have a magic formula of ratios for this – I just mix until I get a shade I’m happy with. I then apply highlights fairly liberally – around the edges of the armor plates, or on the high parts of the plates, or both, depending on what looks right for the model. I repeat this process 1-3 more times, adding more P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight to each batch, until the final highlight which is pure P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight. I generally do fewer layers of highlights for troops than for warcasters, solos, and warjacks.

Once Stryker and the Stormblades were painted (Stryker was fun to paint – especially that wrecked Menoth jack on his base), the league began. Wanting to get the most out of Stryker’s theme list, I was including Katherine Laddermore, a dragoon cavalry solo, and a unit of Storm Lances in my army. Unfortunately, these models weren’t yet painted. I resolved to correct that, starting with Laddermore.

I enjoyed painting Laddermore, but I found that I enjoyed painting her, in her mounted and dismounted versions, more than I enjoyed painting her horse. Strangely enough, the horse’s barding was pretty fun to paint (I just used my standard Cygnar blue armor plate technique), it was only the unarmored parts of the horse that I didn’t like painting. I think it’s because it was difficult to get my brush in underneath to get the inside of the horse’s legs, the horse’s belly, etc. Whatever the reason, I found that irritating enough that I really didn’t feel like tackling 5 more cavalry models right away. I even tried to get started on 3 of them, but I gave it up quickly.

Right here is a point in my journey where I made one of my classic painting mistakes. I tried to paint too many similar models all at once (Laddermore and the Storm Lances), got sick of it because of the lack of variety, and then ended up with no inspiration to paint for a few weeks. Yup, I stopped painting for 2-3 weeks. It was starting to look like I was going to lose this challenge badly.

But wait, I wasn’t going to give up that easily! With almost exactly 2 weeks left before the March 31st deadline, I decided I was going to go hardcore and try to get as close to completing my goal as possible. This was inspired in part by a slow grow league that I joined at a local store, in which the goal was to get a 15 point force painted by the end of the league. I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and I formed my 15 point force from elements of what I was trying to get painted for this 100 point challenge: Epic Nemo, the Thunderhead, and a Centurion.

I got home from joining the league, and got painting. Two days later, the Centurion and Thunderhead were done, and I was heartened. If I could keep this pace up, I could come really close to finishing my 100 points! I immediately stopped to take stock of what I had already done, and what still needed to see the attention of a paintbrush.

That’s when I discovered that something which I had been mentally counting in the “done” category, was not actually done. Remember that Storm Tower from part I? Yeah, the actual Storm Tower was painted, but I had neglected to paint either of the crew. Whoops.

Undeterred by this setback, I worked out a painting schedule for the remaining time before March 31st. I based this schedule on what I thought I could reasonably accomplish if I dedicated 2-4 hours a day to painting. Based on that schedule I figured I wouldn’t complete everything, but I’d come really close.

First up, a pair of Hammersmith heavy warjacks. Right at the beginning of this challenge, I had experimented on one of these bad boys by seeing how quickly I could give it a basecoat. This was a mistake. It looked terrible, and almost from the moment I finished it I started thinking about whether it could be salvaged, or whether I would have to strip the model. Now I had run out of time to decide, and if I wanted to meet my schedule, I wouldn’t have time to strip it. Instead, I tried to fix it. I think it turned out OK, but I don’t think the paint job on it is as good as the paint job on the other Hammersmith. See if you can tell which Hammersmith had to be salvaged!

From there, I started on the Stormguard. When painting troops, I prefer to paint them in batches. That way I can paint one part of each model in the batch before moving on to the next part (it’s time to paint everyone’s boots!), which means you’re switching paints and brushes less often, spending less time waiting for paint to dry, and just generally saving a lot of time. This is where I made another of my classic painting mistakes. Batch painting is great, but experience has shown me over and over again that a batch of 5-8 models is ideal, and anything more than that gets boring a frustrating for me. Experience has also shown me that I never learn from this experience.

True to form, I painted all 10 Stormguard in one big batch, instead of breaking them up into 2 batches of 5, like I should have done. In doing so, I managed to turn a fun task into an onerous job. This had the potential to make me lose my painting vibe again. I only managed to avoid this burnout by throwing my 2 Firefly light warjacks into the mix, as I started work on them simultaneously with the Stormguard to break up the monotony. Working on 2 different painting projects at the same time is a good way to keep yourself interested. The key is to keep the number of painting projects down around 2, because if you start going to 3 or 4, then before you know it you’ve got 12 different projects on the go at the same time, and you’re never finishing anything. It’s a trap I’ve fallen into before.

With the Stormguard done, and the Fireflies begun, I started on Nemo. The Fireflies and Nemo both went pretty quickly (Nemo is a great-looking model with lots of character), and before I knew it, they were done and I was starting on my next batch of miniatures. This batch consisted of the 3 Stormsmiths, the unintentionally previously neglected crew of the Storm Tower, and the intentionally previously neglected Storm Gunner weapon attachments for the Stormblades.

I didn’t get too far on this batch before switching gears. This time the change wasn’t because I was getting bored with painting those models, it was because I was excited to paint other models. In chatting with some friends the previous night, I had discovered that Army Painter makes a metallic color primer called Platemail Metal. I had never used any Army Painter spray primers before, but my friends had good things to say about them, and I had 12 mostly-metallic Sword Knights to paint, so I decided to buy a can, and give it a shot. Anything to make the painting faster and easier!

My Sword Knights had already been primed black, but my friends had told me that they hadn’t had any problems with losing detail when using the Army Painter color primers on already-primed miniatures, so I didn’t bother stripping them. These Sword Knights would be an experiment in speed painting techniques. The newly-metallic models got all of their details painted, while leaving bare metallic primer for all of their armor plates. Washes of various colors were used to add depth. Done. They’re not exactly my best work, but considering how fast and easy they were to paint, I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

Once they were done, I moved back to the partially-painted Stormsmiths, Storm Tower crew, and Storm Gunners. Somehow finishing them off was a walk in the park, and I still had a full day to get started on the few remaining models in my 100 point army that hadn’t been done.

I knew that I wouldn’t actually finish anything else before the end though, so I decided to be happy with my progress of the last couple of weeks, and call it a day. All told, I ended up painting 98 points of models, consisting of 2 warcasters, 5 heavy warjacks, 2 light warjacks, 38 troops, and 4 solos. The only models I failed to paint were Epic Eiryss (she’s a mercenary anyway, so she’s lower priority than proper Cygnar troops) and my Storm Lances (stupid horsies).

All told, I’m glad I did it, and I’m looking forward to my next painting challenge!

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2 Responses to “A Reasonable Dream part II”

1. Subhedgehog says:

   2011/04/03 at 21:14

   Holy cow, what a marathon. When you said you’d been going at it straight for the last two weeks, I had kind of assumed that was hyperbole. I totally feel you on the monotony of painting similar models… But for me, I actually find that the whole basecoating stage is kind of daunting. As soon as I’m doing second coats, shading and highlighting, the perceived increase in quality vs time spent really gets me on a roll.

   Cygnar has some pretty sweet models – I find the jacks have a lot of character in their scultps. The storm tower is pretty awesome too. I’m digging Styker and Nemo, but I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to facing Darth Stryker. ;)

   Great job Ben! I guess we should organise another challenge, particularly if I want to have a force painted for hardcore at Lock and Load… I promise I’ll join in this time.
2. Ben says:

   2011/04/04 at 07:12

   I agree, basecoating can be daunting, but mentally I always tell myself “once this part is done I’m practically finished the model!” Even if it’s not really true…

   And yes, we need to organize another challenge! I’ve still got another 109 points of Cygnar waiting to be painted, let alone my Mercenaries and other armies…