Hello fellow princes. And princesses. And gender neutral royal offspring. Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. I am Mick, the one who hammers the backlog, and each week I bang my head against the wall of getting 30 years of hoarded minis painted in a systematic way. Let’s take a look at the project scorecard, this week’s models, and any other issues or bits and bobs that have come up.
SCORECARD
Wahey, all in the green this week. So as well as getting the final Dragon Prince painted (strictly speaking, worth 3 Hammer the Backlog points) I also dragged two neglected 90s plastic wood elf archers out of the pile of shame to make this week’s total up to 5.
There were other positive side effects to this. Painting the Dragon Princes has been a struggle. They are very detailed, very fiddly, fragile models with a complex, multi staged scheme. I have painted and thought about painting nothing but Dragon Prince for 5 whole weeks.
On the other hand, the monopose, low detail, chunky wood elves are about as far removed from that as it is possible to get. I painted up the first 6 of these a few years back, and I think these two were abandoned due to a looming deadline.
Funnily enough, having these simple to paint, fun models on the desk actually seems to have made getting the Dragon Prince done easier. Rather than walking away when the dragon prince’s details got annoying, I could pick these two up and finish their cloaks, start to finish, in the time it took a wash to dry on the prince’s base. Then, rather than having to work myself back up to get back to painting the prince, I just had to switch colours and away I went.
If I was clickbait inclined I would be making a Youtube short about how this one simple mental hack can improve your painting speed tenfold.
Just five seaguard and five shadow warriors left to go this quarter. And this year, come to think of it!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
Three elves and one horse. When you boil it down to the bottom line. Let’s look at the wood elves first.
So these were halfway painted and undercoated a couple of years back, by the Hammer the Backlog unpaid intern Fiona. They ended up languishing until this week, when I desperately needed a palate cleanser, both literally and metaphorically.
It seems like I didn’t write down the paint scheme I used for these back then, other than noting that I used five different recipes for all the greens. So I suppose, in that case, matching them didn’t really matter. Extra special bonus points if you can tell which two were added this week. I can, but only on close inspection.
The main bulk of the work this week was on the final Dragon Prince. Nothing really to report here.
He used the same paints in the same schemes as the last five weeks.
This was a heck of a project. Easily the most complex, intricate and involved unit I’ve painted. I could have done 25 whole Seaguard in the time it took me to paint these up.
Never again, let me tell you. If another box of dragon princes comes crawling out of the pile of shame, they are being painted in simple metallics and whites.
MICRO INFLUENCING
Having a small Youtube following paid off again this week at the good eggs over at Squidmar sent me both of their new paint brush sets to try out. They seem like a good bunch of eggs, with no expectation that I actually feature the brushes in videos. But, therein lies the rub of being a newly found micro influencer. Everyone loves being appreciated enough to get free stuff, so of course there is an unspoken desire to show things off in a positive light.
I haven’t even taken them out of the boxes yet, I want to give them a clean start on a fresh new project, so I think they are going to become my “Year 5” project brushes. My trusty W&N series 7s have really been getting a hammering (pardon the pun), so I’d like to relly look after these if they are of roughly the same quality. I really hope they are as good as the boxes they come in make them look, especially the synthetics. I would love to move fully away from sables, both from a cost and an ethical point of view. Maybe these will be the ones?
Well, thanks for reading all of that again! See you next week for five more elves.
Best eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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