Painting in an unfamiliar, regular setting

Got some more painting in this morning.  I've been a nomadic painter for the last couple weeks, having finally gotten my traveling painting kit working properly, but today I was at home.  It was strange, yet familiar, an altogether odd sensation.  I had originally intended to break my squads up into five marine chunks, but I was getting a bit antsy doing the pre-wash red the other day, so I decided to take the three marines I had base coated to completion before starting in on another batch.  No in-progress pics this time, just "final" shots of where I stopped for the day.

Group shot, engage!

I'm starting to wonder if I'm just making more work for myself by base coating, then washing, then re-base coating.  In theory I'm adding an extra layer of shading, as I don't just recover the entire original base coat after the wash but leave some of the post-wash red showing.  In practice I don't know that it's that noticeable or worth the extra time.  Most of the extra shading is on the underside of arms, deep in the taint, in the crevices of shoulder pad sides, or other generally unseen spots. 

See how the paint rubs off on the top?

My other concern of the moment is pictured above: I'm still rubbing the paint off by handling the mini that I'm painting.  I got some blu-tac what feels like months ago, but I have yet to use any.  I keep meaning to and I keep an eye out for handy things to attach the mini to, but not luck so far.  I have these plastic salt and pepper shakers that I may resort to.  I had a bunch of GW paint pots of various ages that I cleared out when I started getting Vallejo paints, thinking that I'd never need paint that was dried into a solid, unusable mass.  While I was right about the paint, turns out the pot would have been handy.  Alas for hindsight.

This is the one I'm happiest with thus far.

Back on washes, you can see that I did some of the white/bone/parchment bits today.  I started with the Vallejo version of Bleached Bone, then gave it a hearty wash of Devlan Mud while I was getting the red areas.  I should have taken a picture because the white(ish) areas looked really good after the wash.  I went back with the not-quite Bleached Bone, then did a 50/50 bone and white mix, then went back with pure white.  Despite the work I put in, I'm not sure that it looks better now.  Some of that is down to brushes.  On the chest eagles in particular I could see what I wanted to do, but my brush was too big to hit just the parts I wanted, a situation I may have to remedy in the near future.  More troubling is this apparent trend of me putting in more time for a worse result.  I may start letting the washes do the heavy lifting, especially when I get back to the orks, as they seem to a better job than I do, plus they do it quicker and easier. 

See that right shoulder?  More concern.

My final bit of hand-wringing is all the Xs found on many of the Death Company bits.  I planned on just ignoring them, neither shading nor highlighting them.  They're more pronounced than I expected though, especially the shoulder above.  I had considered painting them black, a sort of reverse Death Company marking.  Since the codex marking for assault squads is an X, this would be doubly applicable.  They'll probably stand out like a sore thumb if I do though, and I don't know that I want that.

In the end, I think I'm encouraged by these minor bouts of painting angst.  I'm rather embarrassed now by what was a "good" paint job on my older Blood Angels, where they're 3-4 colors at best with no shading or highlighting and a smattering of flock.  What I'm producing now is much better, so much so that I can look at these smallish details and wonder how to do them better.  At the same time, I'm starting to enter a dangerous zone: nearly complete.  When I'm almost done I start to worry about stray brush strokes and the like messing up what I've already done.  It often stops me from finishing the mini, but I don't think that'll be the case this time around.  I do plan on doing a post about the best minis I never finished though, but that is farther down the line.