SidneyR - Painting Table and Challenge XIII Painting Plans

 

According to my desk calendar, dear fellow Challengers, we are now just five days away from the annual chaos of modelling, gluing, sanding, painting and varnishing that we all know and love as the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  Challenge number thirteen, in fact.  

To some a scary number, loaded with superstition and fear.  But not to any of us, I hope...

I think this is my tenth Painting Challenge - gosh, how many figures have I ended up painting in these Challenges?  A few, at least - though perhaps not as many as fellow-Challenger and all-round Statistics-God Miles might have (double-) counted!  

I've been looking forward to this Challenge in particular as last year's (Challenge XII) was blighted by a family bereavement, which made it very difficult to do any painting or stay motivated.

One year further on, and I'm hopeful that this Challenge will be a very enjoyable journey.  And as part of the pre-Challenge excitement, I have cleared my painting table a little and finished off a few projects in advance.

I always try hard to keep the painting table free from a lot of clutter, but over the years the paints, varnishes, inks and bottles of Acrylic Flow Improver, not to mention brushes and painting palettes, have encroached even further onto what should be the clean areas in which the magic (...coughs...) takes place.  I have a feeling that many of you have the same experience!

As for what I am hoping to paint in Challenge XIII, I'm expecting that my main theme will be painting Japanese (and Japanese-inspired) figures for use in the small skirmish game I've been working on for the past couple of years.  Here's a few of the next batch of figures being prepared, together with some eclectic terrain pieces.  

While we started the writing the "With Flashing Blades" skirmish rules for an Alexander Dumas-inspired "Three Musketeers" game, since those are just about finished we have moved the action to the same time-frame (the seventeenth century) but across the world to Japan.  I've loved that evolution, and I'm in the process of building some Japanese terrain pieces which will hopefully find a home in the Challenge at some point.

The details are, of course, a closely-guarded secret, concealed confidentially in one of my notebooks.  Which partly means I need to translate insane scribbles to sentences ... but you get the idea.

It'll be a great Challenge and looking forward to seeing all your entries very soon!

Very best regards.