Day 1 & 2

The first day of painting was delayed by watching the Monday Night Football doubleheader at Graham's. I had hoped he had a can of gray primer so I could prime trolls, but he didn't. Upon further review, aside from being able to watch the game with friends, I would've been better off painting instead of watching the Broncos embarrass the Raiders. But oh well.

To recap the plan here, I'm trying to finish Wade's Legion box plus four additional Shredders, two Harriers and Epic Lylyth. I'm going to paint my Gorten box and my Troll starter box. All by the 20th. An ambitious plan? Yeah. Realistic? That's the test.

So I got home and grabbed the models I was going to paint.

Yeah, that's a lot of dust.

And it's another angle of more dust.

The Gorten battlebox has been sitting on my entertainment center since I got it. It was primed when I bought it. The only paint I had thrown on it was some Brass Balls on the Driller for last year's P3 painting challenge. I never finished it and never bothered to dip it. But there was an amazing amount of dust on everything.

I almost bought another Driller because I didn't think I'd be able to paint over what I had painted metallic, but in the interest of saving money to buy Fire of Salvation on Wednesday, I opted for the more common sense, economical choice.

Mmmmm, bare metal. Bleh.

I bought my Troll Warpack from a friend and assembled them a month or two ago. They're quite shiny.

A long time ago, I decided I wanted my Rhulics to be painted Cat yellow (you know, like the big earth movers). The idea of painting yellow over black primer didn't excite me, but I've got some of the Citadel foundation paints and thought I'd be OK. Iyanden Darksun hasn't failed me when using it as a base for Cygnar Yellow, so I should be good to go with Heartfire. Right?

We made sure the Brass Balls disappeared.


And then there were more metallics.

Well, I'm used to using the foundation in a smaller area; I've never tried to cover a whole model with it. It did a decent enough job, at least I thought it did. Then I starting slinging Heartfire. The coverage was not what I expected.

This particular pot of Hearfire seems to be a little thin, so I don't think it would've matter what I used to base coat. I did the best I could. I figured maybe I could just ink it and call it good. I decided to think on it. I got the metallics done on the Driller, then it was time for bed.

The Driller knew I was displeased with the Heartfire.

Day 2

The first order of business for painting on Tuesday was to get the Gorten set base coated. I was not encouraged with my adventures with Heartfire the night before, but pressed on. More Pig Iron and some Brass Balls and the crew was good to go.

Scott helped me come up with names for the gun bunnies and the Driller. Since they're "Cats" we've got: Gato, Neko, Cait and Kitteh. Their names will appear in runes with some of the other ricockulous freehand I'm planning -- caution stripes, that sorta thing. But while he was at work, Scott came up with the idea of numbering the jacks with actual Cat model numbers (gotta love a construction site, right?).

We checked out the Cat web site and got models and numbers. The bunnies will be compact loaders:

• 279C ~ Gato
• 289C ~ Neko 
• 299C ~ Cait

Kitteh the Driller will be a Harvester, 501HD. Yeah, we need a hobby. Oh wait...

After the excitement of base coating died down, I primed trolls.

The pink shows up much better over gray. Yes, I said pink.

At about 2:45, I realized I needed to finish a mini for Lance. Well, finish, or start a new one. I've got two in progress, I don't like what I done with either of them. And I've got two that I haven't touched. So I grabbed one of those. And after about an hour and 10 minutes, I came up with this:

Not too horrible for just a bit over an hour.

I think the D&D mini was a good test. I've gotten better with what I can do in an hour. I'm hoping that translates well with my challenge.

Now off to paint. Dog knows I've spent way too much time working on this blog tonight...