Fighting the Gray Tide (Miniature Painting)

[MGibster]

Just trying to say you can see the gray tide as a positive ("Wow, I have so many minis") rather than a negative ("Wow, I have so many unpainted minis"). And painting being an enjoyable extra thing you get to do when you feel like it, rather than a chore.

You bring up something very important, your hobby shouldn't be a chore. There are parts of miniature painting that can get a bit tedious, but if you're working on a project and it just feels like a grind you get no joy from, it's probably time to switch to another project or take a break. If someone has their own grey tide and they're perfectly happy with that, I'm sure as heck not going to rain on their parade.

For me, I just want to put a large dent in my grey tide, but I wouldn't say it's bothering me in the sense that it's keeping me awake at night or stressing me out. I've got plenty of space (for now), I'm not spending more than I can afford, I don't have a compulsive need to buy every miniature that looks good, though, since money isn't really an issue, I often purchase more than I can get to in a reasonable amount of time. I've got a friend who has tons of unpainted miniatures, and he's perfectly happy with that.

And actually, having a ton of stuff isn't really a uniqe aspect of miniature painting hobbiest. The knitters and woodworkers I know have tons of tools, projects they've never started, and projects that are half-finished lying around their work area.

 

[MGibster]

Okay, so for all the talk about the grey tide, there's also the bright, well, tide might not fit, how about tide pool? Yes, the color tide pool. These are the miniatures someone has started, but, for whatever reason, they lost interest before the project was complete. The miniatures below are the Space Marine Terminators from the Space Hulk board game. I purchased the game in 2017, I painted them in 2020, and left them unfinished for the last two years. You might be thinking they're finished based on the photo, but they're not, though some of them are close. A lot of them still need the detail work completed, and those lightning claws really need some work for that one guy there.

I tried something new with these, I applied a base coat of aluminium and followed that up with some Tamiya transparent red which gave these guys an interesting look. I had a hard time completing the detail work, because the paint didn't want to stick to the coat of Tamiya I laid down. So I've applied some varnish to the miniatures in the hopes that I'll have an easier time completing the details.

For most of my projects, the vast majority of the painting is completed in a very short period of time. But when you start adding the little details, highlighting chains, weathering, etc., etc., that's where you end up sinking most of your time.

 

[MGibster]

I'm going to call this poor bastard done. All I did was add a few more details, applied an oil wash, let dry, and removed some of the oil and I'm happy with the results. The first time you apply an oil wash it's a scary thing because you think you've ruined the paint job you worked so long on. But once it starts to dry, just use a brush damp with thinner (I used odorless turpenoid), and you can wipe off most of it revealing the acrylic paint underneath. It really helps the mini pop. This dude is supposed to have been sitting around on a space hulk for a few centuries, so he's the only one who will get an oil wash. I want the others to look bright and shiny.

U

 

[MGibster]

I'm very happy I didn't place an embargo on model purchases as part of my effort to fight the grey tide. Truthfully, I knew an embargo couldn't last so there was no point in trying. My local game store has a big sale at the end of every year and all sorts of things were 50%. I purchased the following:

Ork Battleforce for Warhammer 40k, the Killdakka Warband - +40 miniatures
Mega-Gargant for Age of Sigmar - 1 miniature (but it's a big one)
Ogor Mawtribes Tyrant for Age of Sigmar - 1 Miniature - regular sized

The Tyrang and the Mega-Gargant are two armies I'm slowly building up, but the ork purchase was on a whim. It was so cheap, $105, and it came with an ork plane. Do you understand? An ork plane! I couldn't not buy it. But I'm probably not going to even open the box until third or fourth quarter of 2023. It's entirely possible I might just trade the boxed set away for something I want more.

 

[trappedslider]

 

[MGibster]

I've finished all of the regular zombies from Zombicide Undead or Alive. Well, all the zombies in the base boxed set, because I'm nowhere close to completing all of them from the Kickstarter. The only downside is that I had to eat my sausage and biscuits this morning sans sausage.

Because this was a large batch of miniatures, I went with the so called slap chop method of painting. Black undercoat, light colored dry brush, and then transparent colors on top of that. Individually, these miniatures look terrible, but when you have a hoard of them all painted up they look pretty good. Sometimes you want to look at the forrest and not the trees.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I'm old school - I've never actually tried "slapchop" before. On the other hand, I mainly paint for display instead of gaming.

Since I haven't been painting in quite some time, due to lack of inspiration for most of the year and currently due to it being too cold in the house to paint, this is my particular mini-related project at the mo...

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as too many miniatures, just not enough storage, lol.

This is the original shadowbox that's been hanging on my bedroom wall for decades.... (Hell, this picture of it is twenty years old, lol.) Obviously, it's a generic shadowbox, clearly not originally meant to display minis.

It's about 20-in. tall, 18-in. wide, and has basically nine shelves on it. And it's currently packed to the gills with figures - I have essentially the entire run of the old Ral Partha AD&D 11-xxx Adventurers series on it as well as the Grenadier box sets 6003 Elves of the Sylvan Brotherhood, 2018 Female Adventurers (2 complete sets, although they're lined up behind the other) and half of 5002 Monsters, plus about two dozen other random figures.

So, I'm making a new one. It's going to be 28-in. tall, 22-in. wide, in a cherry finish, and have eleven functional shelves on it with 2 inches of space in between them. Rather than split the shelves into individual boxes I'm just going to have two evenly spaced interior vertical dividers/supports, so the shelves will be divided into thirds which will let me position the figures any way I want them.

Currently, I've got the wood cut for the shelves, and am in the process of cutting the back piece out of plywood.

It's going to take a while to finish, since I'm doing it entirely with hand tools, and rather than cutting the two interior supports into little pieces, I'm going to notch both them and the horizontal shelves so that they're interlaced. I'm also currently job-hunting at the moment, so I don't have a lot of free time during the hours when it's warm enough in my basement to work on it (I'm currently without heat in the house). But I'm planning to try to post WIP updates as I complete steps or at least once a week in order to try to keep motivated on it.

 

[MGibster]

So, I'm making a new one. It's going to be 28-in. tall, 22-in. wide, in a cherry finish, and have eleven functional shelves on it with 2 inches of space in between them. Rather than split the shelves into individual boxes I'm just going to have two evenly spaced interior vertical dividers/supports, so the shelves will be divided into thirds which will let me position the figures any way I want them.

Nice. I went the Ikea route to display my miniatures. I'll likely haver to start seeking long term storage options and rotate my display. Like a museum. Maybe I can rotate my collection with the season?

 

[MGibster]

Back in late 2020, or perhaps early 2021, I purchased the Dominion boxed set for Age of Sigmar, I traded the orks that came in the set for more Stormcast Eternals, and then I traded some other miniatures I had for even more Stormcast Eternals. I painted a good number of them, and then just stop midded project. These little guys have been sittng around for almost two years unfinished. They're still not finished, I need to do something with their bases, but that's basically it.

Guys like this are cluttering up my work area. Clearing things in my work are is currently a priority as that will allow me to be a bit better organized and plan how to tackle the rest of my collection.

 

[Mannahnin]

I've finished all of the regular zombies from Zombicide Undead or Alive. Well, all the zombies in the base boxed set, because I'm nowhere close to completing all of them from the Kickstarter. The only downside is that I had to eat my sausage and biscuits this morning sans sausage.

Because this was a large batch of miniatures, I went with the so called slap chop method of painting. Black undercoat, light colored dry brush, and then transparent colors on top of that. Individually, these miniatures look terrible, but when you have a hoard of them all painted up they look pretty good. Sometimes you want to look at the forrest and not the trees.



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These may be an excellent example of models which would look way more finished with a bit of basing material and color. Maybe a little static grass. I know you just wanted to bang these out, but that could be worth an extra hour.