Did quite a bit.  Finished up the Elmore piece I started an absolute age ago.  Looks ok real-size, looks terrible photographed, I have to work out if there’s a better way (been saying that for 10 years).  Made a start on three Rackham miniatures, did a tiny bit on a vampire and kept going with the 20 zombies.  Doing the zombies is kinda cool, don’t have to be too careful, slap a lot of random colours on that no self respecting heroic single miniature would wear, try out different things to see what works.  The contrast with working on hugely detailed pieces like the Rackham miniatures is incredible, everything takes longer, everything has to be planned out carefully.

The hardest part is seeing what you want to do with the miniature – once you’ve got that in your head it’s just a matter of making it happen.  I’m struggling with the vampire because I don’t know how I want it to look, blacks? purples? oranges? reds? some mixture?  Greys?  Not sure.  Once I have that sorted it’ll be a lot easier.

So I spent the evening going through my collection of miniatures, re-photographing them and uploading those pictures to Picasa.

A disclaimer before you go look (if you were thinking of looking).  Yes, there are far too many half-naked nubile unfeasibly dressed female miniatures, so sue me.  Yes, I suck at painting eyes.  In fact, yes, in general, the painting sucks.  These things are designed to look ok from about 3 feet away and are 1-2 inches high usually, so when you photograph them from 7 inches away and blow them up, they look pretty cruddy (well, mine do).

First up, a collection of my oldest miniatures.

Next, some of my more recent butcher paint jobs.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I’ve not started yet.

Click the images to link to the Picasa albums.  I’ll sort out some photo’s and post some stuff I’m half way done on at some stage.

Edit: In-progress album now up.

Looks like just keeping the images smaller helps, they look more like they would if you were holding them or looking at them on a table.

One of those (left) is a macro shot from earlier, and the other is just a regular shot from distance.

So it turns out painting is pretty therapeutic, and I’m still pleased with what I’m able to achieve.  So, good news about the paints, and I don’t seem to have backtracked too far since I last picked up a brush.  I’ve started on some cannon-fodder zombies so that I don’t have to worry too much about the fine detail, the whole point is they’re supposed to be gore splattered and broad-stroked.

Here’s the one I just did.

Click on the images for the full size shots.  One of the major problems I have with macro mode on digital cameras is that they really do bring out the worst in the painting 🙂 I need to get a good shot, with good lighting at range, so the figures look more like that do when you’re holding them in your hands.  I’ll play with that I guess.