Work is the Hobbybane
Back to another busy week at work. Lately things have been really crazy at the office, leaving me basically only the weekends to indulge myself in geekish pastimes, and unfortunately I didn't get a whole lot accomplished from a miniatures standpoint this weekend. I did take advantage of a nice day to prime up my remaining Chaos Space Marines in preparation for painting.
I first started paining miniatures for roleplaying games, where each individual piece of pewter is its own work of art. They each were very different, and each was painted one at a time, with no thought to coordinating color pallets, etc. Painting armies for wargames is a world different, and that difference is especially exaggerated by the large units you find in WH40K stuff. Now I find myself looking at 15 space marine models that are all basically going to get the same paint job.
Logic tells that I should production line paint them, painting the same color elements across all the models at once, and then moving on to the next element. Unfortunately, while I think that would certainly be the fastest way to get them all turned out, I just hate the idea of painting that way. To me, it makes painting feel like work rather than a creative endeavor, and takes the joy out of it. So, I've resigned myself to painting these guys one at a time. As a compromise, I may try getting the base color across all of them, and then individually shade and detail them. We'll see...
It does make me wonder how most folks approach painting large units for wargames. At some level, I think almost all miniatures gamers are split along a fundamental line - those who love the figures themselves and enjoy collecting and painting them as the primary hobby, and those who love to play the game as a primary hobby. I am clearly in the first "painter" camp: At this point I own 1,500 pts each of two different Warmachine armies, as well as all four rule books (and two Hordes books!), and I've never played a single game.
What I would be curious to understand is how these two camps approach their painting. Do the "painters" attack a unit lovingly, one figure at a time, while the "gamers" production line through them to get them on the table as soon as possible? Or does your “gamer alignment” matter at all when it comes to how you paint? If you are a wargamer/painter/player and happen to find my little page, drop me a comment and let me know which camp you belong to, and how you approach painting a unit of models. In the mean time, I’ll be starting to paint my third space marine. ;-)
I first started paining miniatures for roleplaying games, where each individual piece of pewter is its own work of art. They each were very different, and each was painted one at a time, with no thought to coordinating color pallets, etc. Painting armies for wargames is a world different, and that difference is especially exaggerated by the large units you find in WH40K stuff. Now I find myself looking at 15 space marine models that are all basically going to get the same paint job.
Logic tells that I should production line paint them, painting the same color elements across all the models at once, and then moving on to the next element. Unfortunately, while I think that would certainly be the fastest way to get them all turned out, I just hate the idea of painting that way. To me, it makes painting feel like work rather than a creative endeavor, and takes the joy out of it. So, I've resigned myself to painting these guys one at a time. As a compromise, I may try getting the base color across all of them, and then individually shade and detail them. We'll see...
It does make me wonder how most folks approach painting large units for wargames. At some level, I think almost all miniatures gamers are split along a fundamental line - those who love the figures themselves and enjoy collecting and painting them as the primary hobby, and those who love to play the game as a primary hobby. I am clearly in the first "painter" camp: At this point I own 1,500 pts each of two different Warmachine armies, as well as all four rule books (and two Hordes books!), and I've never played a single game.
What I would be curious to understand is how these two camps approach their painting. Do the "painters" attack a unit lovingly, one figure at a time, while the "gamers" production line through them to get them on the table as soon as possible? Or does your “gamer alignment” matter at all when it comes to how you paint? If you are a wargamer/painter/player and happen to find my little page, drop me a comment and let me know which camp you belong to, and how you approach painting a unit of models. In the mean time, I’ll be starting to paint my third space marine. ;-)
Labels: miniatures, wargaming, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine
