Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition Painting Challenge Month Five & Six

Well folks, that's a rap. Six months of painting has yielded me a 1,000 point (in 1997) army of full-metal Aeldari warriors, ready to defend the yet-unnamed craft world. The paint scheme is still developing, though the fundamentals of an Incubi Darkness base and bone-colored accents are here to stay. Here's the wraithlord (née dreadnought), that I finally finished for the end "slice" of the challenge.

Not my finest work, but being constrained by temporal concerns had me focus less on improving my blending technique, and more on getting the thing photographed. The bone color was re-done entirely from my first attempt; a casualty of my ever-failing hex pot of Bleached Bone. I finally retired the old soldier, and quickly (emphasis on the quick) re-did all the bone with a more dependable blend of P3 paints (Menoth White Base, and Menoth White Highlight). Not exactly Oldhammer, but the paints were still designed by Mike McVey, so I think it still counts. Here's a final shot of the whole army:

So now that the challenge is two weeks ended, I can finally give my thoughts. I want to start off by saying that the organization was superb. Dr. The Viking (the organizer) ran a great challenge, and moderated a great community, that I wished I took more part in, but nonetheless was a great, and positive, scene. I have been in my fair share of paint challenges, and I can't think of a single thing I'd suggest to improve this one.

With all that said, I don't know if paint challenges are really for me, which is a shame, as there's a similarly-run one that deals with Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and every time it crosses my social media feed, I eye-up my box of bare-pewter high elves and think of what could be... The problem is that, while I try and fit fifteen minutes of painting a day into my schedule, I invariably get stymied by being on a schedule. The act of painting miniatures—which I desperately love—becomes another thing I need to do on my daily checklist. It's purely a mental thing, because I do work at the same desk I paint on, but the difference between "I'm done enough work, now I get to paint," and "I have to get this work done, so that I can put some time in to paint," is actually night and day for me. Every entry into a painting challenge is "good enough," and has a few things I'd do differently.

At this point, with no tournaments on the horizon, I'm back to painting for the sake of it. Right now on my table I have a unit of ten Vanari Auralan Wardens, and three old Target Games Warzone figures. I have no impetus to paint them, and I can pick away at them as I see fit. Right now I'm playing around with inks and glazes on the Warzone figures, which is a luxury I wouldn't have with a deadline looming over me.

In any event, I'm immensely glad I took part in this, and I'm proud of the results not only of my figures, but of everyone else's as well. Check out the whole challenge here, you won't be disappointed.

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