Start of May Sea Elves and Looking Ahead

I've just finished the first week of what will be about two weeks of a heavy work schedule. There will be much travelling coming up soon, too. May will be the make-or-break month for me in the OWAC. Since there are only two months left, I'm going to do the best to not fail.

My goal for May exceeds the 200 pt requirement quite a bit, but the figure count is still pretty reasonable and I've already started on the higher point value models:

• Sea Elf Witch
• 10 Spear elves
• 1 Champion (lv. 5) (for the spear unit) 
• 1 Standard bearer (also for the spear unit)

That will leave June's goal as:

• 10 Wardancers
• 1 Chariot

Looking further into the future, I also prepped the last few Mirliton half-orcs I need for the unit, now 24 strong. Because I enjoy painting these theme challenges, I may wait until October for them. Between those figures, and the recent Bones KS4 delivery, I've started thinking about how the painting challenges fill out part of the rest of the year, and what other figures I'm looking forward to painting.

• May: OWAC2 Sea Elves
• June: OWAC2 Sea ELves
• July:
• August:
• September:
• October: Half-orcs
• November:
• December: Undead

One of the top candidates for filling in those "empty" months is getting back to the (mostly) hobbits & (some) humans of the JTC, I've also still got more Marienburgers, giants, and assorted fantasy critters to paint. Or more undead. And that then there's that robot project that still hasn't launched. Not really going to plan everything out, I'll just paint whatever I feel like at the time. But the hobbits are on my mind...

Giants to Sea Elves

Richard aka "Orclord" of Stuff of Legends posted an updated photo of some of his giant collection on a few Oldhammer FB groups and it got me thinking about the fact that I've been meaning to do the same thing. End of "Big April" seems like a good time to do it. My own collection is not nearly as large, and I don't have any where good to photograph them all, but for what it's worth...

(click to enlarge)

FWIW, the unpainted giants I still need to work on are: the Mantic giant, the Otherworld giant, and three Reaper Bones giants.



Also, following up on a request for a close-ups of the victim who is about to become lunch for the Heresy giant:

Speaking of giants... not getting any more painted this April, but prepping the next giant(s). I'm debating a head-swap on the Mantic giant -- still undecided.

I've also started prepping minis for the last two months of the Old World Army Challenge. The next two months are going to be horribly busy at work, and I will be doing a bit of travel. So finding time for painting will be challenging.

Since this photo a couple days ago, I've got the separ unit, champion, and the rest of the chariot prepped & primed. Plus I sculpted a new top for the wand on the elf witch, and primed here as well. Just the wardancers to clean & prime now.

Here's the broken wand, with a bit of wire on top to give me something to sculpt on. The idea will be to give it an oyster shell, with the globe in the other hand being a pearl.

GoTaW

Looking forward to tonight's episode of GoTaW (Game of Tits and Wine). I'll be disappointed if it's not a bloodbath.

Big April '19

Mucklegeet the Giant, from Heresy Miniatures.

Troll by Artizan Designs from Northstar Military Figures.

Comparison w/ Satyr Art Studio & Marauder trolls.

Trolls 3

The three most recent Satyr Art Studio (Drew Williams) trolls have been painted. 

Here they are with the previous sets.

That makes nine. Two of the most recent came with alternate heads. I'm contemplating a few different options to bring the immediate numbers up to ten.

A Little More

Been working on these three figures since the tail end of Deadcember. Snail's pace given that they're a speed-painting dream, but they're finally done.

My Deadcemnber '19 dream is to get a bunch more old '80s lead skeletons to paint. I have a few more, but not many.

OWAC - March

My March entry for the OWAC is up. Read all about it...

https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2019/03/zerotwentythrees-march-sea-elves-212-pts.html

Almost April - Something BIG on the Horizon

I'm currently wrapping up my OWAC2 entry for March. (No peeks until it's up on the OWAC site.) But I'm also looking ahead to April. Although I will continue to prep minis for the OWAC, I will probably take April as my month off for the challenge. (We get one Mulligan.) Why?

Well, after joining in on different monthly challenges (Deadcember, Orctober, etc.) I've been doing my own thing every April. Big April as I call it. No puns or wordplay. Just painting giants in April because I like giants and one year it was April and I wanted to paint a few giants, so the idea of doing it every year stuck. Last year I got off half-way through painting the Heresy Miniatures giant, Mucklegeet at the end of the month. An awesome and imposing miniature (and I have Shadespyre to thank for mine.) Here's where I left off...

I don't expect that it will take all of April to finish him. So the question currently in my head is what to do with the rest of the time? I have a coupe of ideas:

• Get a head start on some OWAC minis so I'm not stressed out trying to finish them the next few months. Bwahahahaa. (Not likely. Where's the fun in that?)
• Paint more trolls. While not giants, they are relatively big when compared to humans.
• Paint more giants. Makes sense, right? I've still got a few:
• Otherworld Giant
• Mantic Giant
• 3 Reaper Bones giants from the last Kickstarter
• Goremaw. Also from Reaper. It's big.
• Sculpt my own giant. I've really been wanting to sculpt more, and the idea of sculpting my own Big April giant has been in my mind for at least a couple of years.

I've got about a week before April, and obviously the above giant will be on my table while I sort it out.

New Trolls, Old Trolls

Reunited at last! I owned and painted a set of these six Marauder Miniatures MM40 trolls (sculpted by Trish Carden) when the first came out. A little while later, I traded off two of them to a friend, but kept the other four because I had written Mike, Vyv, Neal, and (P)Rick and did some (very) minor conversions appropriate to the names thereon.

A little while ago, inspired by the more recently released Satyr Art Studio trolls (sculpted by Drew Williams) I decided to strip the four trolls and remove the converted bits (which fell apart in the stripper anyway) with the idea of giving them a better paint job than I had back in my early years. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it until I got the other two again and had a full set.

So, once I finally tracked down the missing two a month or so ago, I finally got to painting. They're some of my favorite trolls ever made!

Here are the TrishTrolls alongside the DrewTrolls.

Old World Army Challenge - February

The February entries are rolling in: https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/

I will eventually pull all of my OWAC sea elf entries together in a single page here on my own site. But if you'd like to read about my entries as they come in, what the OWAC is all about, and check out some of the other awesome projects, I encourage you to check out the link above.

A couple of pics: