Hello fellow Warhammer mini painting, productivity and accountability enjoyers. Welcome back to week 8 of the final quarter of year 2 of Hammer the Backlog. Every week, at this exact time on a Thursday, I check in on the week’s progress and share with you, the lovely reader, images of this week’s models.
Let’s kick off the 4th from last week of the year with a check in on the scorecard.
SCORECARD
All green this week! Nice one. I decided to paint the 3 Space Marine Character models one at a time in the end. This gives me a little bit of time to work on them and really think about what I’m doing, and takes some of the pressure of the last few months of painting off me by only having a single model to worry about. I would say that this lets me paint these single character models to about 80% of the best of my ability. I have to say, I’m more than happy with this.
When you add in the fact that these days I have a brush in my hands practically every day, 80% of my best today is considerably better than 100% of my best a few years ago.
The funny thing about getting better at a particular style of painting is, though, the improvements start getting very incremental, and the diminishing returns start hitting.
I mean, look at this week’s model compared to a model I painted to the absolute best of my abilities 10-ish years ago. Sure, I can see the differences, but can the average warhammer enjoyer?
I take solace in the fact that the dark angel took less than half of the time to paint, too!
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
Speaking of being mostly in the green, this week’s model, Company Master Balthasar of the 5th company of the Dark Angels!
I hadn’t released that the characters in the Dark Vengeance box set were specifically named characters. And I suppose they don’t have to be if you don’t want them to, either. But since I ended up following the box schemes for the Dark Angels so closely this quarter, why not?
This also means that I have to go back over my tactical squad from a few weeks ago and give them the green and bone quartered knee pads of the fifth company.
I did quite enjoy painting this guy this week, really luxuriating into the extra time that having only a single model to do allowed me.
He has surprisingly little green on him, for a company master of the Dark Angels. Only his helm, gauntlets and the tippy tops of his booties peeking out from under the robes.
I went for a textured approach on the cream robe again, applying lots of tiny strokes rather than blended highlights, to try to add different textures to the model, especially compared to the silky smoothness of the purple and white cloth.
I left the powersword till last to give myself a little treat, something to look forward to. It took about two hours to do and was the real finishing touch on the model.the lazy side of me wishes I had stuck to metal for the dark angels swords, but I think the look pays off in the end.
If I’d wanted to push the quality on this guy a little further, I definitely could have done a little more blend on the cloak and robes, and maybe pushed the shadows a little darker overall. Having said that, for 5 Hammer the Backlog points, I am happy with him!
It has only just dawned on me how I went through a phase of wanting to paint all metal space marine characters to as close to wavy metal style as I could and have them in a display case. There are even some that have never been finished that were ruined by perfectionism procrastination.
How proud they would be of me for getting this guy done, without fuss or worry, in a week.
Well, that’s all from me this week. See you next week from some more mediaeval monks with biblical names and native american theming in power armour and linen robes in space.
Best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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