Clearing the Backlog, Part 13 – Hobby Problems

I've mentioned in a previous blog post how dealing with burnout can be a challenge for hobbyists. Well, recently I've been dealing with another problem that hobbyists can also face from time to time, and that’s procrastination.

I've been working on my Men of Dale since the start of the year, and for the last few… weeks… alright, months, they've been nearly finished. And now all I had left to paint was some Knights of Dale, and here's where we run into the problems. The Knights of Dale are some of the nicest models in the range, simply because of the sheer amount of detail they have. However, this also means that they can be a bit of a chore to paint. I took six Knights to the Warhammer World Grand Tournament back in February, and it took me so long to paint them that I ended up finishing them in the hotel room at 1:45am the night before the tournament, so you might start to see why I was a bit hesitant to paint some more of them…

I made a start on painting the Knights, working on them using the batch painting method, with the idea being that it would make it quicker to paint them all. And that idea turned out to be… completely wrong. The problem with there being so much detail on the models is that painting the same details over and over again quickly got unbearable – to the point where I started painting other models to avoid painting them – I would literally dive into my pile of shame and pull out random models – I would happily paint anything other than the Knights!

However, I didn’t want them to be sitting half painted on my desk for ages, so I picked one up and just focused on painting that single Knight, and as I did, my enjoyment of painting them came back – by focusing on the one model, I could appreciate all the details, rather than painting it and then thinking I still had to paint the same details five more times. Using the one by one method, I quickly got through the remaining Knights, and my Dale army was done!

Well, actually, not quite done. There was one last model I needed to paint, and that was Girion, the Lord of Dale himself – he was much easier to paint than the Knights, and with him done the Army of Dale was finally, finally finished! It has been a bit of a slog getting through them, but I'm very happy with them – from an aesthetic point, the Men of Dale are in my opinion the best looking models in the range. They have lots of lovely details, but they are a pain to paint, although at the same time painting the cloak trim was good practice for my freehanding skills.

So, what else did I paint around the Knights of Dale and Girion? Well, one of the things I'd been working my way through were the Middle Earth hobby bingo challenges. I'd been getting through these at quite a brisk pace, although one box I'd not yet ticked off was "Paint a Monster / Siege Engine". Fortunately, I had an Ent sitting in my backlog – I used Cygor Brown contrast over Wraithbone spray, before applying drybrushes of Steel Legion Drab and Baneblade Brown. I then picked out the leaves with green paints, and the Ent was done in just a few hours. For the base, I wanted to make it look like an overgrown forest, like Fangorn appears in the film, so I added grass tufts, clump foliage and static grass, and was really pleased with the results. 

I also had a number of Ringwraiths sitting on my desk – I painted these up several years ago but recently decided I wanted to give them a better paint job, so I stripped them down and re-primed them. For the metal parts, I used two different metallic shades on their gauntlets and swords, before applying a wash and drybrush. For the robes, I used a black basecoat and then applied progressive highlights using various shades of grey. Given that their robes have multiple layers, I tried to give them zenithal highlights, meaning that each layer got more highlights than the previous one – so, the lowest layer of the robes only got highlighted in my darkest grey colour, and then I added an extra highlight of a lighter grey on each layer of the robes – the end result turned out great. As I had a few duplicate poses, one got based to match my Mordor forces, whilst the models that would form my Black Riders force got a different basing scheme.

Next up was one of the named Ringwraiths – The Dark Marshal. I painted the armour and robes in the same way as my regular wraiths, but added a green glaze, given that in the official paint scheme the armour does appear to have a greenish tinge to it. He was then based to match the Mordor force. Ringwraiths are models that can be painted up fairly quickly, so they worked as a nice interlude in between Knights of Dale. 

In between wraiths and knights, I also tuned in to the latest Battle Streams in Middle Earth episodes, and this time the models in the backlog were Gollum and Eomer. Gollum is an unusual model to paint, given that he's so small. In this case, the majority of the model is the large rock he's climbing down. I painted this grey, before giving it a brown wash and then various grey drybrushes. For Gollum himself, I used mostly pale flesh colours, before picking out his hair with thinned down black – I was quite pleased with how he came out. Given that the model is supposed to represent Gollum in Mordor, I based him to match my Mordor force. 

For Eomer, I'd already painted up the plastic model to go in my Pelennor Fields force, but I still had the old metal mounted model sitting in my backlog. Given I had plans to collect the Eomer's Riders Legendary Legion at some point, I decided to make a start by painting up the leader of the force. Eomer is also a particularly tricky model to paint due to the intricacy of his red armour, but after being both patient and careful, he was soon ready to come to the relief of Helm's Deep – I then re-based the metal foot model to match my Helm's Deep forces. 

Next up were my usual "dive into the backlog and pull one out at random" models, and this time it was Erkenbrand and Lindir. Erkenbrand is covered with lots of lovely little details – I think the shield was my favourite thing to paint, although I did enjoy painting up the cloak too, as I was able to use various different highlights to make it stand out from regular warriors of Rohan – he’ll go into my planned Theodred's Guard Legion – as you can see, I've got a few Rohan lists planned for the future! Lindir was a much more simple paint job, but I was still pleased with how he came out - he goes into my growing Rivendell force.

So, with all of those models painted, I'd now passed the 100 mark for models painted this year, with the actual count at 103. It feels good to pass the 100 model mark, although I'm still not trying to beat last year's total. The best way to look at it is that it's still progress, and it's more models taken out of the backlog. Next up is my Army of Thror project – stay tuned to see how I got on with those!