Holiday Painting Plans

Despite adding a massive amount of work to my schedule, I've managed to get a little painting in. Mostly because I'm so busy and doing so much that painting is easier than writing at the moment. It's easy to fill the pots with water, paint for 15-20 minutes while I listen to the news or just turn my brain off and relax. It's much harder to stop work, have a short break before the next task, and do some writing.

This is good because I have large amount of unpainted minis. The Bones I Kickstarter, some old TSR minis, a few straggling Chainmail minis, that dragon my school kids keep asking to see, some Sathar and UPF starships, lots of GW plastics I need as henchmen and hirelings, Foundry Street Violence minis, pirates . . .

That even leaves aside the Ogre minis I've got in boxes of boxes. It doesn't help that I picked up a lot and then someone with a nearly-complete collection of one of each gave me his.

Then add in the new stuff I got on sale, the incoming Bones II Kickstarter minis, and who knows what else I'm forgetting now.

So I've come up with a plan for how to approach my painting to maximize the minis I get painted and ready over the next few months. We'll see how it holds up.

Maximum Painted Minis Plan

Quick Paint Jobs - I'm trying to get as many of the "no special paintjob" minis done as quickly as I can. This generally means generic soldier-types, repeat versions of previously painted minis, and minis I have no special plans for.

If I don't have any particular reasons why the mini needs to be carefully painted or put to a specific use, I'm going to try and get it done as a quick paint job.

This also means the minis I don't particularly like - but which I can use - are moving up to high priority. A good example is one of the Chainmail gnolls I have. It's done, primed, and ready - but really ugly. Bizarrely wasped-waisted, overly froo-froo triangular shield, and overly-elatorate armor. Too bad. It's getting done ASAP, even if it doesn't come out so well. Why not? Better a tabletop-ready mini than junk in a drawer.

Prep or put paint on at least one mini a day - even if I'm painting the base or just touching up a figure, something needs to get some paint on it. Obviously, some days are going to fall by the wayside - or maybe not. I am pretty good at "do it every day no matter what" plans (like my daily exercises or Japanese practice). This is totally non-portable, though, which impacts my ability to do it greatly - when I'm away from home, this simply won't happen.

So yeah, every day something gets some paint - a quick coating on a tank, ship, base, monster, whatever. Maybe dot some eyes. Put a wash on a figure that needs it.

Rotate the pile - I often start minis, and then lose inspiration to finish them (or they require more work than I have time for.) So if I have something in my "to finish ASAP" pile and I don't touch it for about a week, it goes back into storage. I want to only keep after the minis that I am making progress on.

So no matter why the mini popped to the "finish this" or "paint this" pile, it's got a week to sit idle.

My reasoning here is that I know myself - I won't just finish the mini if I feel like it's not going well. So if I rotate in new stuff, the new minis out on the desk will have time to catch my eye and get done.

I will make exceptions for a couple - I have some very fiddly detailed minis I really need to get done, and they take little bits of work for a long time. That's fine, even if they sit there, because I want them done for game.

Also, every day I'll try to take a quick look through my mini trays and pull a new one out of deep storage and get rolling on it. That's how I got that Sathar done, for example.


We'll see how this plan works.

Incidentally, I'm going to sell off some more of the minis I just don't like on eBay early next year. I'll post about that when it happens. Some figures I have no liking for and no use for, and that's a bad combo. Those need to go to someone who has one or both.