I don’t love painting as much as I’d like to. I enjoy the act itself, mind.

I’m extremely proud of that fella, for instance. I was simply setting out to paint a white wolf, because Darif’s Winter Beast is a white, wolf-like creature. Rather than using a wolf proper I used a LotR warg. I’m most proud, though, of the way I layered grays and blue washes to create a brilliant white wolf that looks like he was washed in nuln oil. A year ago I would have just painted him white, then washed him in oil, then painted him white again, then felt small and sad when that looked like ass. You want to use blues, though, for the same reason that whitening detergents have blue dye; it makes the white pop to the human eye by counteracting yellows. Hard to tell from the picture, but I even gave his teeth a pearlescent gleam with hard coat. When painting plays out like that–when it’s about having a vision, executing on that vision, and creating something unique and suited to my style–I’m pumped. However, when paint projects don’t work out, like with my mantis-armed Hysiminai (the daemonettes I built to compliment the Igbo- and Fula-inspired Androktasiai daemonettes) or when I’m required to paint seemingly endless droves of figures in roughly the exact same way (like with my Typhonic beastmen), that’s when my interest flags. I’ll lay down a few layers and a wash on a couple of models then they’ll sit on a table, waiting, while I putter around elsewhere or decide I just don’t have the time/energy to tackle them on this particular day.

Creating things, on the other hand, constantly draws me back. This is my basement desk right now:

We’re knee-deep in the campaign I mentioned earlier, and my team is proudly in second place–my primary in-game contribution has been losing to my buddy Curtis’s Tyranids three times, because I can’t kill an armor 3 flyer, or even ground it. Outside of the game, of course, I’m an encouraging, supportive presence and I’ve assembled a crew of eager, bloodthirsty players who are on damn near every table at the store every open game night. So very proud. Anyway, I finally picked up the Vampire Counts Zombie Dragon/Terrorgheist kit. I’ve been eyeing this for quite a while, in part because the 7th edition nerfs to Heldrakes mean I’m actually happy to run one now. My recent games with the forge fiend have also shown me that I think I’d rather have a go at a mauler, and the conversion options for one or both were pretty exciting. I was also hoping to pull a couple of Heralds out of the kit’s riders, though I hadn’t anticipated the Strigoi Ghoul King being so…tiny. Especially when they don’t have any other model for him. Folks just don’t love ghouls as much as I do, apparently. Anyway, I’m currently in-process using the kit–which is an incredible wealth of goodies–to build both a heldrake and a maulerfiend. The drake’s employing the zombie dragon head, though I’d originally aimed to use the gheist’s; the fit for the zombie neck, though, is exactly the posture I want for my fiend. I’m using the gheist to make the ghast, then, with a tail made from the main head of the kharybdiss who donated my razorgor heads. For wings I’ll employ the kit’s wings, but that still leaves me without a proper body. I’m experimenting right now with building one out of greenstuff and plasticard, making it the most involved sculpting project I’ve had to undertake yet. There’s a lot of great negative space in the model, and I’ve already capped the neck of the beast with the gnarly side jaws/pedipalps of the kharybdiss. So, yeah, painting’s not where my heart is. I still haven’t painted my forgefiend or heldrake, despite putting them together ages ago. Hell, I haven’t painted my rhinos, and how long does it even take to paint one of those? I don’t know, because I’m making a dragon over here. A metal death dragon with a shriveled, screaming pilot poking out of its guts.