Evolution of style

My first army was Dwarves for Fantasy. My first paint job was green, orange, blue, yellow, brown... this was a lot of colors to be putting on each mini and I soon became bored. Nobody played. The pieces were packed away. Years later they were dug out as we all became interested again.

I'm all about story when it comes to my armies. The story for my dwarves for that previous scheme was that they were warriors of light (think Children of the Light from the Wheel of Time book series). I was even going to paint sunbursts on their shields and helmets. I'd gotten some new minis since then and I no longer felt that this story reflected their look. My dwarves were gritty, dirty mercenaries who weren't afraid of embracing a little chaos in order to get the job done. I abandoned my idea of a Lawful Good type army for one of Chaotic Neutral, not necessarily good or bad. Just surviving. Around this time I was big into the Firefly tv series so chose my main color to be brown. Quick and easy. A little brown, a little metal and my dwarves were soon on there way.

My passion for converting came out around this time and I was snipping plastic and metal in order to achieve a certain look that I wanted for my force. As game after game was played and my storyline grew bigger, the conversion projects grew bigger as well. My 8 barrel organ gun/tank. My boar giant. My half dragon half flame cannon combo. My tree dwarves that would represent Longbeards. My zombie dwarves. I even had plans to make an all Lustria themed Slayer force at some point.



All of these projects still remain unfinished, unpainted, and in pieces. I jumped from one project to the next so fast and was only concerned with putting things together so that they all became difficult/impossible for me to paint without getting frustrated or getting a new idea and moving on.

Which I think brings us to the present. The only army I am currently working on are the High Elves that I bought off of a friend (with the exception to the Space Hulk pieces. I don't consider them to be an actual army.). I played the dwarves for so long and absolutely long to finish them but for now I've traded my beard and cannons for pointy ears and magic.

Trial and error has led me to now paint my pieces before gluing them together. Hopefully I've learned to be patient, and not just run from one project to the next. I completed a Lion Chariot last week doing this method and enjoyed it. I could hit all those hard to reach places that just can't be accessed with the paint brush once the model is put together.

I now paint the places you can't see. :P :P :P