Getting back on track

The last few months have seen a distinct lack of modelling productivity on my part, and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm ready to do something about it. Last time I gave an update, I was bravely preparing to paint 16 Reiksguard Knights to fill one of the remaining gaps in my Empire army. I figured I could knock them over relatively quickly. After all, I had painted zillions of knights in the past. This batch should be easy, right? Well, apparently that was optimistic.

The Reiksguard as they looked about 6 weeks ago.

It didn't take all that long for me to lose enthusiasm for the project. I started out with 16 models, however by the time I had painted armour and bases, some of the unit (half, in fact) had fallen by the wayside...

Half of the unit lies abandoned on the painting table. Hey, at least they didn't get properly put away somewhere - that would have been a really bad sign...

I persevered with the remaining 8 for a while, figuring that I'd just do the full 16 in 2 waves. But it was taking me ages, and I lost what momentum I had after painting all the red onto the first 8 guys.

Closer, and yet not that close. And to think that these are the lucky ones.

After that, I simply stopped painting. For weeks, the Reiksguard sat there sullenly in the prime position on my painting desk (ie the only bit not completely buried in several layers of crap). I knew I would get around to them eventually. Probably.

Eventually painting night came around and I sat down and looked at the half-painted knights. I even opened a paint pot and sat there with my brush about to dip into it. At that point I realised I had absolutely no desire to paint Reiksguard. I put the brush down, closed the paint pot, and swept the poor neglected knights to the side. Then, after a bit more procrastination, I pulled out the Empire Ogre bits.

Ogre body parts strewn across the painting table.

I've been gradually building up a stockpile of these bits using the Instant Mold that I still had made up for various components. Sometimes an arm or head gets made when I find I've mixed up too much putty and have some left over. It all went into a jar, and sat largely forgotten. I figured when I wanted to make some ogres, it should make things pretty quick and easy. Quick and easy was kind of what I felt I needed at this point, as I had lost all momentum in terms of modelling and painting. So, I grabbed some bits of Ogres and started to glue them together.

An Ogre Halberdier, just about ready to be based and undercoated. 

Here we have my second Ogre Halberdier (the first one was made many moons ago, and was the first Empire Ogre I made - before I had come up with the idea of copying components and generally making the whole process a lot more efficient). His head is one I made up ages ago (back when I was making the Ogre Swordsmen), but never got around to making a mould for. This has been addressed now, and I've already made a couple of copies. Unfortunately something odd seems to have happened to the nose, so this guy needed a green stuff nose-job. Hopefully I can address the problem without having to repeat the manual fix for every copy I make.

I will probably add a couple of random details to make this guy more interesting before I paint him, and I may well make up several more Halberdiers before painting the whole lot in one go. I can feel myself regaining my enthusiasm and looking forward to getting back to the painting table, so all-in-all I am pretty happy. Who knows, maybe I will even get up enough momentum to paint those Reiksguard...