Journeyman Painting Log 10

The first redhead I've painted in too long.  

Normally I'd have some sort of "I'm surprised at how much I painted today" thing to kick this post off, but considering how fast I've been cranking the models out it's not a surprise anymore.  Quality is definitely slipping, as I'll cover when relevant below, but it's hard to argue with the pace.  The Eliminators are a fine case study of how my painting is going now.  My big problem with the pair is in the scheme, and the torso in particular.  There's too much green together, though to be fair there are leather belts that don't show up well in the picture.  Black or grey pants, like on the Assassins, would have broken up the green expanse.  The good news here is that the plan has always been to add another unit or two, up to whatever the FA is, so I'll have different schemes already in mind when I finally pull the trigger.

A legitimate control caster sounds fun.

As a change of pace, the Old Witch.  I'm actually happy with how she turned out.  It doesn't hurt that the majority of the model is a robe/cloak/whatever that has tons of folds and works well with the double wash technique that's sweeping my painting table by storm.  There's a lot of detail all over the model but it suffers the same problem that eVlad does, namely that much of the detail is obscured by the pose.  Some of the fault lies with me as I assembled the model, especially the left hand/claw, in this particular pose, but in my own defense I'm not sure that there's a way to put the mini together that would show off all the details.  Transitioning to particular details, the hands are a little odd.  I painted them up as metal, as did the studio, which seems like a reasonable idea.  The lack of sharp edges and abundance of bumpy, organic surfaces makes me wonder if this is what the sculptor had in mind.  The staff is another disappointment, though this is entirely my own doing.  It has a lot of Orgothesque detailing to it that all got painted up as wood.  This works well enough, but I may go back to it later and add some more color.

What is this "arc node" of which you speak?

Speaking of odd and disappointing models, how about Scrapjack?  This little guy was such a pain to assemble that it held up the Old Witch for a long while.  It can in far too many pieces, those pieces don't go together in an easily identifiable way, the bulk of the weight is at the top, and the whole stupid thing is perched on a single leg.  I had to pin most joints on this one including a nifty bit of work (don't mind my back patting) where I pinned the load-bearing leg through the "hip" and into the body.  This required a bit of "sculpting" (I'm using the term very loosely here) where I had to rebuild the screw interior of the hip that got destroyed while pinning.  I thought I took some pictures of the process, but now I see that I didn't, which is unfortunate.  The aesthetics of the jack are unfortunate as well.  The arc node is so gigantic I thought it was the head for a long time.  The saddlebags are an interesting idea but just make the arc node even bigger.  With a name like Scrapjack you have to expect that it'll be a mutt of different pieces and styles, so I suppose I can't complain too much about how it doesn't look remotely Khadoran or like any other jack in the game.  The stowage isn't horrible, but it would be more appropriate on a merc jack.  Scrappy and the Old Witch are fine as models on their own, but they just don't mesh with the Khadoran aesthetic.  I suppose that was the point.  As a parting shot, while arranging the amazing picture of Scrappy I noticed all the rivets and screws that I didn't paint.  This has been a common occurrence of late (see: trim on eVlad and Zerkova, Zerkova's hair [not pictured, but forgotten all the same], OW's staff) and is probably a result of my accelerated painting.  Considering the changes I've already made in how I paint it shouldn't be any worse to start going back and getting the details I missed/skipped at a later point.  While it's satisfying to varnish a model and be done with it, I won't mind bringing Scrappy back to the painting table in the coming days or weeks and adding some extra silver sparkles.

Up next is probably eButcher.  He caught a few strays paint splashes over the past couple days and I'd like to start figuring him out.  I love the (new) pButcher model, as shown by my header, and the epic version is nice too.  Beast 09 is another model that I feel like I should play more but never really put on the table.  I did a bit of cleaning on Conquest over the weekend.  Armed with that experience, I doubt it'll be ready for the Journeyman league.  This is quite the obstacle as I'd love to put it in just about any list, especially tournament lists if I decide to get off the fence and go to the Nova Open this year.  No new progress on the IFP means when I finish off the things currently on the table my gaze is likely to swing to the Demo Corps.  This means I'm running out of assembled and/or primed models, which is nice except that I'll have to start getting my act together on getting new models together.  If this is a problem, and I can certainly find the angle that makes it so, then at least it's a nice problem to have.