Duelling Paintbrushes: It begins...

In wanting to start off this painting challenge on the right note, my first act was to cheat. Actually, it was accidental - I somehow thought the challenge started yesterday, so I have stolen a 1 day head-start on Owen. Were I a Skaven player, I would be especially proud of my duplicity, although I might not be publicly boasting about it on my blog. Not yet. Anyway, courtesy of my abuse of the rules and failure to read the calendar and challenge conditions properly, my victory now is assured. Surely.

Well, maybe not. I really didn't get all that much done. The bases on my models are now painted, but I haven't even gone through and touched up the undercoat on them yet. The fact that getting these bases done took me a couple of hours is an indication of how much I am probably going to struggle in this challenge, but hopefully my determination will see me through. I also wasted a bit of time trying to carve the big Bretonnian shield off the smaller standard bearer's flag, which I managed to neglect to do before undercoating (as would be conventional and sensible). I was partially successful - the curves of the flag make it a little bit difficult. Depending on how I paint the flag, my efforts should be adequate.

My "to do" list, with painted bases...

I have also included my Ogre unit filler in the wave of models to be painted, which is not technically within the parameters of the contest since it effectively pushes my quota up to 36 instead of 32. This is really just poor planning on my part, but I am keen to see what he looks like when he's painted. Below are a few shots of him before and after his undercoat.

It's funny how much more professional the whole thing looks when it's undercoated a uniform colour, instead of a Christmas-esque mix of white and green. Bit of red and he would have been well on his way to being an ugly Santa Claus...

A couple of people have commented to me about his pose, in particular his grip on the axe. He is hefting it a bit too high, giving him an unmaintainable posture. The rest of him looks relaxed, but his arms do not. I confess it hadn't even occurred to me when I was making him, but I can't argue now that it's been pointed out. It's slightly annoying given that I have copied the underlying arms for duplication. I may need to re-pose the copy and then copy that again. We'll see.

I used a piece of thick wire for his axe shaft because I was worried I wouldn't have enough plastic components to keep doing models like this (but I have a whole roll of the wire). It's come out OK, but it's a bit thinner than might be ideal. Anyway, all in all I am satisfied and I want to see him painted. So he's in the mix for the painting duel now...