Quarter 2, Week 2 Update: Green With Envy

Hello fellow Lizard People, welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer painting and accountability blog. Week two of the second major target saw me finishing the first unit of 10 Saurus warriors and thinking a lot about deadlines and motivation. 

Let’s start, as ever, with a look at the weekly scorecard.

SCORECARD

Once again, things are looking healthy, at least from a pure numbers perspective! Five more models done and everything else rosey.

It was another close one this week, with real life struggling to make me fail, while score cards, late evenings and lunch break painting help me to actually get it done.

I have a little to-do to remind myself to buy a bright green tablecloth before I make the next Youtube video. I have a nice soft blue background in mind already. Gotta keep that 90’s aesthetic, dude! 

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

Five more lizardmen Saurus warriors join the first complete unit on the lizard side this week.

I decided to try to mix up the unit a little and make them look a little different by painting these five with a slightly different skin recipe, this time using the new Contrast Gutrippa Flesh paint. As well as creating a slightly different tone, this also has the advantage of being a good bit faster to do. I have now realised that given half a chance I will always prefer a contrast base coat over a base coat base coat. You probably need to be pretty deep into the citadel paint range to not read that last sentence as gibberish!

However! Having finished them…they look the same. I might be able to tell you which method produced which mini if I picked them up and inspected them, but no chance once they are in the mixed unit. This is nice to know, I can use the faster method on my green skinks in a few weeks, comfortable in the knowledge that once they get through the ugly basecoat stage they will look the same in the end.

PLANS

I think I have settled on a scheme for the army that will have a bit of variety, while still looking coherent.

Saurus unit one, which I have just finished, has light green skin and dark, rich scales.

Saurus unit two will have slightly darker skin, still green, and less saturated scales. They should look different enough to tell the units apart at glance, but similar enough that if I decide to mix them into a single unit of twenty it will make sense.

The first unit of skinks will be light green with orange crests. They will form up in ranks. Some people paint their skinks lighter than the saurus warriors, but the skin tone I am using for these guys is already very light, so they should look even lighter without the dark scales hiding the flesh tone. They are going to be green and ranked up so that if/when I ever get a Kroxigor I can paint him dark green and put him in with them. Or her? I imagine that lizardmen are actually about 50/50 sex wise, right?

The last unit will be the skirmishing skinks, with orange flesh, the same colour as the other guys’ crests, and red crests. They should stand out a little bit from the army, but all of the colours will be present in other units, so I’m hoping it will look somewhat coherent.

MOTIVATION AND THE LIZARD HIND BRAIN

This week has been a battle motivation wise. I think there are two factors at play causing this. One is my own internal attitudes, or ‘what motivates me’. I’d like to talk a little bit about that next week, I think I need a little bit more time to mull it over.

The second issue is the never ending battle between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is when the motivation to achieve something comes, as it were, from ‘within’ you. Examples, from the world of mini painting, of intrinsic motivation might include:

These new saurus warriors are so cool, I can’t wait to paint them.

I’m going to paint for a few hours to relax.

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is motivation from outside of yourself. In real life, work is the most obvious form of extrinsic motivation. In the world of mini painting it might be:

I really need to paint this model to the best standard to win the Golden Demon this year.

Hey Dave, if you don’t finish those Saurus Warriors by Thursday I’m going to chop off your hands.

Now obviously, to me at least, intrinsic motivation is by far the healthier and more productive form of motivation. The problem with intrinsic motivation is that it can be a fickle bitch. Intrinsic motivation failed me this week, I didn’t want to paint these minis just for the joy of the act itself. Extrinsic motivation, in this case provided by the blog and the scorecard in particular, had to step in and help out.

I am now, however, really excited about knocking 5 skinks out next week and getting a start on the Green Knight.

SOCIAL MEDIA

I know I have been harping on about it since practically the beginning, but there doesn’t seem to be as much love out there in social media land for 5th edition Lizardmen as there is for 5th edition Bretonnia. There are fewer facebook groups and less interest on Reddit, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s because they never exploded off the Old World, they were just quietly sidelined and replaced over the years.

Better to burn out than fade away?

On the other hand, they are much cheaper on eBay too! If I decide to expand this little force, it should be a lot easier!

Thanks for reading this far, you’re good eggs.

See you next week for 5 orange skinks and the assembly of the Green Knight.