Painting Challenge 2020

Another year of painting

     I took part in another monthly painting challenge with fellow gamers.  It's a way to get us motivated to get stuff done and encourage the others.  Anything is game and any stage of completeness is fine.  This month of January I focused on finishing stuff taking up painting room space along with pushing on with mini painting.  Here's what I got done (all 28mm this time):
Orthodox church
2 middle eastern houses
4 watch towers from the Wild Geese kick starter
Minis:
      2 Inuits
      6 goblins
      4 African tribesmen
      4 vikings
      2 warthogs
      1 beaver
      1 dinosaur
      2 rpg figures for D&D
      10 Syrians
      10 GW fantasy minis for a friend.

     For February I'm looking at a Russian house, the terminal from the Wild Geese set, more Syrians and African tribesmen.  More GW figures for my buddy will be in the mix and maybe some Gaslands cars.  Even if there's no challenge for February I still plan on getting through these at least.  I'm still managing to avoid making game purchases, and that's OK.  There are still a lot of minis I'd love to get but the idea of clearing a tote worth of minis is starting to become more appealing than adding another tote to the pile. 
    My next update will be an exploration of DIY grass tufts, and they are self-adhesive!

2020: The year of living without deliveries

Now that's a pile!

     The year 2019 ended with me searching through my lead/plastic/resin/mdf pile in search of parts of a project that has pushed it's way to the front of my mind (1/600 pt boats, fyi).  Searching leads to organizing which leads to the fish to the face: I have A LOT of stuff!  Stuff is being polite.  I like to store my unfinished inventory in plastic totes and I'm up to eight of them now, one is just mdf terrain and 2 ships that have to be built.  This isn't counting three totes of bits and pieces that I plan on using for scratchbuilding, the "junk pile".  So the big fish that hit me in the face is that I shouldn't be buying anything, at least until I get this stuff painted, and even then I'll probably not live long enough to get it painted.  Add to this my model kit hobby and playing 5E D&D and I have quite a collection built up of things to fill my free time.
    There are a lot of reasons why I've ended up with a large closet worth of stuff and almost any wargamer or model builder can relate to how it gets to this stage.  At least now that I've recognized the problem it's the first step to healing, right?  I've made it through the end-of-year sales and various tempting emails that come in with a discount code. In an effort to start reducing this pile I'm going to try a strategy that I haven't used in the past: finishing one type of mini before starting on something else.  I'm a painting magpie so I have lots of opened bags and various minis laying around, all in various stages of completion.  I'll still have some odds and ends on my desk but I'm going to make an effort to eliminate groups of minis, first up Mongrel 1980s Syrians.  I picked those up years ago and it's a big enough group that I feel like I'm doing something but not so big that it will take a year or more to complete, unlike my darkest africa stuff.  I'm still painting a friend's GW collection on top of this, about 200 minis.  Buildings and vehicles are a separate category.  For those I'll be finishing one before starting on another, not normal for me.  I have four 28mm watchtowers nearly done and I'm going to do the final weathering on a Puppet's War tractor trailer.
     To get this herculean task complete I plan on posting updates as I get stuff done.  Very little has been completed for 2020 but here's a shot of what's "close" to getting done.

Waiting for nature to take it's course.

     The towers and figures have been painted and my brown house paint has been applied for the base.  When I get enough done, usually a full cookie sheet, I take a day to do all the grass work, so I'm about halfway there.

Finally something is done!

     I did manage to finish Mantic 28mm plastic walls that took a lot longer than they should have.  The Mantic terrain crates are really nice but some of the pieces are bent and I had my first experience using boiling water to straighten them and it worked nicely.  I play skirmish games normally so things like walls are always in demand and these are nice modular pieces.  I still have random things on my desk, minis, a 25mm GZG vehicle I'm jazzing up, repairing the roof of a 28mm Armorcast building, and some 1/300 Skuas.

     So here's to 2020 being the year when I clean out a tote and hopefully more!