Was listening to the latest episode of Pointhammered on the way home tonight and the Bear was saying he found the Dreadstone Blight (and its sister kit the Witchfate Tor) pains to put together, so I'm glad it's not just my, sadly lacking, hobby skills at fault here.

ok, with Polish Sausage coming up in a couple of weeks time I'm now into repair the damage mode. So for the time being I've stopped work on the Archers. There's not a massive amount more that needs doing to them barring the bases - some of the armour needs a bit of tidying up but the only real issues are updating the faces and hands on some to the current scheme and also sorting out the leather (turns out I've been painting two different leather colours...)

Aside from the usual pre-tournament touch up work I do need to make myself a couple of horde trays (they're actually only for my Archer units but I'm not making up two eight wide trays when I'm not sure if I'll be running units in that size in the future. Oh, also need to undercoat and paint the bases for my Eagles.

Finally managed to sit down and go through the models I need for Polish Sausage tonight. Fortunately not as much touch-up work required as I was fearing so I'm actually all done bar the bases for my eagles.

Hopefully that'll mean a less stressful Friday...

Grr... Second attempt at posting this after the first apparentl disappeared into the ether...

Right, so, just a quick update after the usual forgetting and not feeling up to updating, never mind painting, due to a bout of tonsilitis that left me so lethargic that, when I didn't have the shakes so bad I couldn't hold a paintbrush, I was struggling to find the enthusiasm to turn over in bed, never mind paint.

Anyway, of late I've been plugging away at the Archers. Having finished doing a shade on them I'm now working on the leather, having put a wash on the leather on all the ones I've been using and now working on highlighting it. I've realised I'm about four or five Archers short of the number I'm current planning on taking to the Summer Incursion this year so I'm going to need to prep and paint those.

Other than the Archers I did take a big of a break from them to paint up some 50mm bases I've got for use as and when needed. My main intent in painting these was to practice painting stone for when I get my Dreadstone Blight and Arcane Ruins build and undercoated but also the plan was to practice painting earth for when I'm finally ready to finish off the bases on my army (although I'm probably a year or two early at my current pace). Anyway, I finally got round to taking a couple of pictures tonight, although they're not great.





Anyway, aside from the painting I have also managed to do a teensy bit more on assembling my Dreadstone Blight, which basically consisted of making up some pins to fix the stairs to the lower wall. Had hoped to sort out fixing the first floor in to the model as well but haven't found time yet.

Woohoo! Found my cutting board. Now I can finally get around to cutting out modular movement tray to make up trays for my archer units. When/if I find the time to do so.

Ok folks, update time again.

Found three Archers that I was in the middle of updating to the current scheme but put to one side as I needed to fix or otherwise sort out the bases. These are now in my painting tin at work where I'm trying to get them up to scratch ASAP as I need them for the current lists I'm considering running at Summer Incursion. I've also started clean-up and prep on another handful of Archers as I think I may need a few more for the Incursion - I keep forgetting to make a note of how many I'm having to proxy with Spearmen on club nights and can't be bothered to dig my army box out and check.

On the home front I've finally got on with making some movement trays for my Archers to use. As I'm most definitely note making eight-wide trays just to accommodate how I'm running the Archers in my current list (at the moment I've got two lots of 17) I've made up two four deep horde trays. They just need magnets on the bottom now so the trays will stick to the base of my army box.

Tonight I remembered to also look for my Island of Blood High Elf mage model which I'll need if I do decide to use my current three Mage build. Unfortunately doing so brought me to the realisation that a) the work I've done on the swirly bit underneath the mage doesn't show up very well and b) that there's quite a lot still needing to be painted on this model and I'm not sure how many of the paints I need for the job are at home and how many are at work, which means having to dig through stuff at home to find those that are here.

Anyway, other than the hobbying aspects and actually working on army lists, I'm also looking forward to a 1000 point mini-tournament I should be having this weekend with a couple of friends. At the moment I'm trying to decide whether to go High Elves or try running Skaven again since I've only played the one game using the rats so far.

Look out, it's an update less than a month after the last main one!

So, with the bank holiday just gone I was hoping to get some work done on my Island of Blood Mage and some more assembly done on my Dreadstone Blight.

This got off to a good start when I went to paint the Mage only to realise that the non-empty pot of foundation paint I use to base wood at the moment was in fact back at work (from where I'd just brought the empty pot), so I couldn't do the bit of work I needed to to get make sure all areas had had at least one layer of paint. I then also didn't get any work done on my Dreadstone Blight.

This week so far at work I've concentrated on the Mage adding on and trying to improve the gold parts as well as more work on the hair. By the time it gets taken to Summer Incursion this year it's probably not going to be far off finished finished (or as close to the "finished" standard of a decent painter as I'm ever likely to get). I do wish that I'd actually not assembled it first before painting it as it is quite tricky to get into some of the features.

As usual I do keep meaning to take some pictures to upload, and one of these days I may do.

Ok you lucky/unlucky folks, here's a couple of pictures for you of my Island of Blood Mage.


Wide


Close-up


I only realised today that the bit in the circular gap of the crown thingy is actually hair, not metal, so have only just got my base hair colour plus a wash on it today. I've also washed and layered the flesh today and was trying to put white on the eyeballs but made a bit of a mess of it so have gone back to my flesh colour base.

Oh, and I've noticed on the model's left arm piece that there's something, probably a hair, that's gotten onto it and is raised up. Will probably have to file it off with care and try and patch up the paint.

If you have some sort of HE bit you could fill that circle with, that might be cool too.

So, it's bank holiday and I've foolishly brought all the models I've been working on at work back home in the expectation of getting some work done on them.

Actually, it's more because I'm repainting the wing pattern on the quiver of the Archers and I really need to use my magnifying lamp to see what I'm doing with them (and try not to end up getting Chainmail on the leather bits of the quiver I've just finished going over). I got five models done last night affter finding somewhere to clamp the lamp to (the table I used to sit at at home is no longer in a position where I can work at it and glance up at the TV so I had to try a couple of places to clamp), leaving 27 more to do. Hopefully I can get some done when the little one goes down for her morning nap over the next few days, plus the evenings, so that I'm done by the end of the bank holiday.

Once that's done it's just going to be the faces that need redoing and a teensy bit more on the hair and then the Archers will be done as far as I'm likely to take them barring the bases, which I'm planning to do once I've got the rest of my current army list painted to the same standard as the Archers (just so it doesn't look odd with two units having finished bases and the rest still being just Scorched Brown).

I'm not going to have time between now and the Summer Incursion to do the faces on the Archers so that'll probably be July/August before they're done. Then it'll be onto the Spearmen unit followed by the Sword Masters (although as I'm planning on phasing out the metal ones I have in favour of the plastic Island of Blood ones I may have to paint quite a few from scratch to get a units worth - at the moment the Sword Master unit I'm running is 50-50 metal and plastic).

Anyway, will try and get some pictures of the Archers up at some point this week.