Monday, June 30, 2025

Saturnine Orogeny

I must credit Andreas Johansson with the title for this post.  Andreas sometimes pops in to leave a comment and his thread of the same name on the SoA forum inspired me to take on his terminology in my painting wrap up for the first half of 2025.  I know there is still part of the 30th remaining but I have essentially closed out the Painting Log for June.

What is Saturnine Orogeny?  Andreas defines it as a combination of "saturine" which alchemists
 associated lead to the planet Saturn, so an old meaning of "saturnine" is "of or relating to lead or lead poisoning."  "Orogeny" means "mountain-building."

Since my goal is to reduce the size of The Lead Pile, I really ought to focus on mountain erosion than building but I will stick with Andreas' terminology. 

In the first half of 2025, I managed to see 429 figures muster out from the painting desk while only purchasing 101 figures.  Without checking, I reckon almost all of the new figures brought in were to supply the 15mm FPW project with cavalry and commanders from 19th Century Miniatures.  Even given the figures purchased, the size of The Lead Pile fell by over 300 figures in the first half of 2025.  Good start to the year!

The leading pie chart illustrates that SYW dominated production, but Biblicals slotted into second place.  These two periods accounted for nearly 60% of all painting efforts. Still, at least eight different periods saw some additions so variety was quite balanced.

As for a breakdown by figure size (scale), painting efforts were evenly split between 15/18mm and 25/28mm figure sizes.  Size distribution in 2024 was lopsided with 15/18mm figures taking the largest percentage (63%) of effort.  With a more even split between the two figure sizes, a shift to the larger figures will help bump up the counts when adjusted for Painting Points are considered at year end.
How did your painting output fare during the first half of 2025?

14 comments:

  1. I’m always amazed by your painting output set against a background of how much remote gaming that you get involved with.

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    1. Thank you, Norm! Three games are on the schedule for this week with games on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The week will be busy.

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  2. Interesting post Jon, and you have done well in the first half of the year, good total and great lead reduction and as Norm says and all the games you manage to get in as well, kudos sir!

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    1. Much appreciated, Donnie! I do what I can to make some progress.

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  3. Like Norm, always amazed at output......unlike Norm I attribute it to overworked elves and/or witchcraft...☺
    I am deferring my expedition to the Mountains of Unfinished Projects until retirement.......so a full survey is lacking. The maps do show "here be monsters and other strange things.."
    As of today, this year so far, I have painted 26 mounted, 108 foot, 3 guns and 9 crew and a dog....☺
    Neil

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    1. You managed to keep yourself busy at the painting desk as well! Great totals for the YTD.

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  4. Congratulations, 300 figures in these parts is considered an army. Plus we have seen the quality. I will report back as to how many painted here. My wife always said subtracting is actually adding a negative number to the positive number, So adding in this case the number is -300. Math teachers.

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    1. Thanks! Notice that in my little "Reducing The Lead Pile" widget in the right sidebar that Net Change is a negative number demonstrating a reduction in the size of the Pile. Math teachers, indeed!

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  5. I'm not sure of the numbers, but I managed quite a few figures, mainly because of the Painting Challenge, and all in 25mm too!

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    1. Yes, you did! You have been a painting machine with your Retreat From Moscow project.

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  6. Sadly, between increasing hand shake/twitch, slow but ever ongoing deterioration of eyes, and an excess of figures compared to storage & game capacity, painting, while continuing, is a small fraction of my hobby these days.

    Happily, I'm still slowly adding to my 3 digit collection of molds so periodic same day recruitment is easy.

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    1. Wargaming has a lifecycle of activities. If passed the painting and accumulation stages, many more facets to enjoy. I can foresee figure painting winding down at some point but not quite yet! Besides, I have far too much unpainted lead to lay down the brushes.

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  7. That is a great result Jonathan, and even more in that you painted over 300 more than you purchased. Nowadays I find I'm gaining a lot of satisfaction from finally being able to throw away empty boxes that have been storing figures for years, without unduly adding to them.

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  8. My painting output has remained quite steady though the lead pile has only slightly reduced. If I get enthusiastic about a period/game the output goes up, my FPW is a prime example

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