Out of the Ashes

So it has been quite some time since I last posted here. Life has interfered a great deal in the last few years and I am now settled in in Germany. So I set up my paint table and dug out all of my things and prepared to set to work only to find that all of my paints had dried up. As I went to order new ones, I found that the entire citadel line had been redone. I thought this isn't so bad I'm sure they made equivalent paints somewhere, didn't they? So I set about researching. In my quest I uncovered this article by Rick Priestly in  an issue of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy  that discusses that very dilemma.

 I was disappointed to learn that while he found red and yellow to be fine the browns did not match up at all. Rather than re-invest myself in a line of paints I wasn't comfortable with, I decided I would take this moment to experiment with an entirely new line. There are a lot of people out there producing model paints so there was a lot of researching to do. Something everyone says is important is to paint from a palette and not directly from the pot. I have a very bad habit of painting directly from the pot and thought if I could adapt to a new paintline now would be the best chance to break some bad habits. To this end I purchased a starter kit from The Army Painter as I have found their other products to be more than I expected of them at every turn.

So when this arrived in the mail I was delighted! I set about cleaning and setting up my paint table right away. The end result looks quite nice if I do say so myself.

Not wanting to rush right in and start painting my army with paints I wasn't completely sure about, I started this test figure. While I had initially planned for him to be a champion of sorts in my swordsman unit I decided I would paint him up and let him run double-duty as my fighter for Dungeons & Dragons.  I have decided to go with a blue and white color scheme because white is one of the paints I have the most trouble with and blue is the one I use most commonly I will also include some brown and red or yellow to figure these out as well. I haven't finished the figure at teh time of writing but I have got a work in progress shot for you.

Cheers!