Signs of life...

 

What does one do when they are on the road with no kids to take care of, no hobby materials, and waiting for a meeting to start? Well, in this case one begins to resuscitate his blog. 8 months is a long time of silence...but I have noticed some other folks getting a kick in the shorts at the beginning of the year to restart their blogging.

I have been making more of an effort to comment on blog posts which I read lately. I really do believe this is the glue that makes up the social web of blogging. Much digital ink has been cast on this topic but the latest post is here (Somewhere the Tea's getting cold.....State of the Blogosphere). Thanks to Thantsants for prompting me to do more. 

In the interests of not being boring I'll throw up some photos of various works in progress while I babble. Notably the lack of noise on the blog is not lack of hobby work. I'm very lucky to have cultivated a few nerds to meet and paint weekly....on a discord channel. There are two rules, you need to work on something nerdy (lego assembly meets the criteria) and you need to post a picture by the end of the sessions showing what you were working on. 

This fellow channels 2023 very well. What a terrible year. I'm convinced lots of things were dying in 2023 and it's going to be 2024 when we see it finally happen. In related news I had a friend get diagnosed with ALS and pass away 7 months later in January.

This non proprietary demon of no particular denomination is from satyr studios. It was a limited release like 3 others. I managed to get 4....unfortunately due to a screw up I have a duplicate and a missing lobster claw demon. Le sigh.

 

 

more after the jump break....

 

 Another release of 15mm star wars stuff. These are meant to be imperial army folks. Like general Veers who drives an AT-AT and informs Lord Vader he can start his assault now. Where the hell were the rest of this guys command?

In strange synchronicity one blog I follow (solo, pen, paper and dice) has been releasing photos of the same figs. Honest, I finished mine before he posted. I'm just lazy/disorganized/unmotivated to blog right now.

 

 Not to be catty about it.....I like my paint selection better. Am I a total thrall to the canon and tried to do the best matching job.....uh yes. Does that mean I'm better at copying/emulation....no comment.

 

 So blogging typical dies off for me in the summer and returns in the fall. Unfortunately summer and fall got busy and shitty....my wife and I have finally pulled the plug on counseling and our relationship. Decision was made at the beginning of the fall and the sequalae of that has eaten lots of time/effort/money/cognitive power/etc. Remember that theme of 2023 things starting to die and it not being until 2024 that it actually happens.

So blogging did not resume. Did I mention I'm really lucky I have a paint group to hang out with weekly? Bless those guys.

 

 One of the local gamers, Garret, eggs me on to paint stuff. We played a blades in the dark derivative RPG. You end up with 'clocks' with a certain number of pie pieces that fill in as you pass or fail things. It's an excellent way to build tension and see the outcomes of your efforts. 

Garrets sends me gifs of him filling in a clock for finished an opposing force. It worked for my frostgrave warband. Now he's doing it for Stargrave. The bastard. The well meaning, clever, fun, valuable friend.....bastard. Hi Garret. 

Figures are mostly Reaper Bones IMET. There are 2 astropolis (engineer and scribe) figs in there as well.

 Who can say what motivates one to paint any given fig? I can't. But smaller than normal figs, with a lot of character, limited numbers, and seeing pictures of pygmies for oldhammer are probably actual reasons for these folks. 

Intended for a congo project they came together pretty fast. Their colours ended up informing the rest of my 'forest tribe'...though those guys took longer. 

Lately I've been living through furniture tetris and renovations. My wife and I are lucky enough to be on reasonable terms still we are trying to split the house upstairs/downstairs. Renovations are disruptive. And expensive. Upgrading your electrical service because you've run out of space for new circuits is not a sexy renovation. It costs a lot and the only indication anything happened is a larger metal door on your wall surrounded by unpainted plaster and more drafts to try and chase down.

 

 Rebel minis. 15mm Saheeden rebels. I'm not sure when I got these guys so that means 2013 or earlier. Yikes. I know they sat half painted for a few years. Sometimes you get paint blocked with color selection. Move on. 

Happily they are done now. I think I was going to use them as generic resistors for an xcom project. Lets be honest though, vague armed hooded figures are useful so SO MUCH MORE.

I imagine I'll have a number of posts that should belong from 2023. If I'm on the ball I'll probably label them as a retrospective or something. I hope to get back onto the blogging horse. I also am contemplating posting my work in progress shots to instragram. It's fast and easy, but it's annoying to find anything on that platform when I'm hunting. Even hashtags are hit and miss. That's basically the benefit and curse of social media in a sentence. Also, the connection between instragram and blogging seems.......weak/hard/annoying. So there's that too.