Friday, December 12, 2014

State of the Painting Desk - Black Friday

No, not that Black Friday but a few days spent black priming figures.

With warmer but wetter weather hovering overhead and year-end looming, time to restock the painting queue for the final painting push of 2015.  Often in mid-December it becomes too cold to prime even in the garage but this week temperatures have remained in the low 40s (F).

These moderate temperatures allow for a few good sessions of figure priming.  I pulled a number of unit equivalents from The Lead Pile and set to work with the black priming. 
Hit with the primer were a variety of figures in various sizes and periods.  A couple of 28mm Napoleonics units are ready for paint as are 28mm AWI, 28mm ACW, and 28mm Ancients.  For 15mm, the SYW and 1859 projects have figures in waiting. Perhaps some of these will see the brush before year-end. 
On the painting desk, two 28mm units are nearing completion with only base work to complete.  One of these units is a 24 man British battalion for the 1st Afghan War.  Just behind the Brits in the photo is an Impetvs stand of Celt warriors.  These are the first Celts painted for the Punic Wars project.  A second group of Celt warrior figures are in the painting queue.  In the background is a SYW Prussian musketeer battalion of Blue Moon figures with only their flesh and coats finished.  In the foreground, two battalions' worth of 1859 Austrians wait in queue.  The Austrians are the first of the Lancashire Miniatures I picked up a few weeks ago.  Looking forward to giving these fellows a slap with the paint brush and then seeing how they look alongside their Old Glory brethren.

On the 15mm AWI Chadd's Ford battle, the opportunity to make progress on this rules' test did not materialize over the Thanksgiving holiday.  I did manage to churn through the first three turns but little contact of note yet.  The British are driving towards the Brandywine but Maxwell's light infantry are doing a good job in delaying the British right column from making timely progress.  The British left column is pushing towards the creek with no opposition. 

Looking at my painting log over the last 20 (!) years, I noticed a bit of seasonality to my painting output.  Is that perceived seasonality significant in a statistical sense or merely notional?  Expect a deeper analysis in the coming weeks.  Does your painting production exhibit any seasonal tendencies?  If so, what is the pattern?

8 comments:

  1. warmer?...what about us poor citizens of kitsap county suffering 6 black outs during last 3 days! :o)

    anyway...yes indeed winter is a good time (well sort of) to work over time painting miniatures and projects (I manage to complete 3 DBA armies so far:o)....looking forward viewing your work Jonathan!
    cheers,

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    1. Hey, Phil! Yes, too bad about your power outages. My home office in Renton lost power one last week. I think they sent non-essential people home.

      Winter looks to be my high water mark too. We will see if it significantly different from the remainder of the year once I do the analysis.

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  2. Great to hear a little more about your plans for 2015. They shall be a source for inspiration to keep my own projects up to pace, as I'll be doing a few similar things myself, mainly when it comes to Napoleonics, ACW and also it seems we share a passion for 19th century wargaming when it comes to the post 1848 revolutions and the subsequent unification wars in the case of Italy and later Germany. My conclusions are not backed by the same resource of documentation as yours, but I'd say my production level is stable with tendencies to jump around in projects and scale following the interest of the day. In other words, 2015 will be a year of focus on getting some core project collections more expanded and thus reaching a playable mass.

    Kind regards from a cold Stockholm,
    Sören

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    1. I do enjoy the Italian and German unification period, for sure. The mid-19th Century is a great transition of weaponry and tactics and they did not always advance at the same pace (so to speak).

      I look forward to your project progressions in 2015 and reaching a critical mass for gaming is important.

      I wish you the best of luck and hopefully Stockholm warms soon. I am sure the more mild weather we have had will not last long.

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  3. This should be interesting... I suspect I paint more over the winter then the summer.

    Christopher

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  4. If variety is the spice of life, your painting table is very spicy!

    Being shut and snowed in for the winter means more opportunities to paint here in MN. I make an effort to get up from the painting table in the summer as its much too brief.

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    1. Yeah, it seems like it is never the same thing twice although three Reconquista units did hit the painting table recently.

      Quite right about the short days of winter and the long, glorious days of summer. In the summer, we should be outdoors soaking up the sun!

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