Well, it's probably about time to start a record of adventures in resuming the tedious, time consuming, and eye-straining art of miniature painting.

As is obvious, this is about getting back into painting; I'm not new to painting miniatures, though I haven't been without a paintbrush in my hands for several years. It originally started with Warhammer 40,000 (as these things often do). Well, technically it start with model aeroplanes, tanks, battleships and submarines, but that was more for colour and not about the actual painting. With W40K, it became apparent the playing with grey plastic models wasn't as much fun as fully painting ones, and so I started with a paintbrush on Orks and Space Marines.
Tamiya acrylic paints were those lying about the house at that time, so I started with them in a poorly ventilated area and a weak desk lamp. Cutting a long and thoroughly boring story short, I eventually bought some Citadel Miniature paints, using those and the Tamiya paints as appropriate (for subjective definitions of appropriate).

Then I moved continents and left all models and paints behind.

Fast forward several years, and the Citadel Ultimate Paint Set caught my eye. On impulse, I bought the set, paintbrushes, some tools, painting workspace, and some models to start with again. This introduces a problem of sorts: too many paints! It's sometimes far easier to use a small selection of paints - you get to know what effects you can achieve with them, how they'll turn out, what the colours will look like, how much water to mix in, etc. With a large paint set comes having to learn how to use the paints all over again, but it does mean access to a broader range of techniques, for example I'd never used glazes before.

This is where this little blog comes in. The main purpose is to keep track of how a model looks through the stages of painting, what paints are applied, and some thoughts on what works and what doesn't. At the time of writing, some models are finished and I'll post them up in the coming days, followed by a work in progress of Commander Dante.

  -- silly painter