Hello folks – just like Arnie, I’m back! Yey!! Man… I can’t believe it has been almost 2 months since I posted my completed Techno-Barbarian village – our house has been upside down in all that time, making painting, modelling etc. practically impossible. I have really missed painting and blogging in that time, though luckily, I have been able to closely follow a number of excellent blogs out in the Noosphere, (yes… you know who you are), and so I have been getting my kicks second hand. I have also managed to get in a fair few games of Frostgrave these last months, (my techno-barbarian warband is now up to level 16!), but nothing to really satisfy my creative urges.

Anyhow, I am really pleased to report that a) the house is finished, and we have a cracking new kitchen & downstairs layout to enjoy, and b) I have picked up the brushes again. You know, it’s weird, but I am feeling incredibly rusty on the painting front, and strangely timid about ‘getting back into it’. I don’t know if anyone else has had a similar situation, but it definitely feels a bit uncomfortable… Ah well, got to start somewhere, right?

So… I’ve been pondering what to work on for my return, and (as you can imagine) I have a number of options. For starters, I have the Silver Tower game to sort out, plus several lovely Kickstarters that shipped recently. Also, I want to expand on the techno-barbarians, I have some Frostgrave creatures to sort out, and I have a number of small Confrontation collections to tackle as well… Such decisions! In the end, I decided to finish up my pit slave conversion, just to get my eye in, so to speak. He’s based on the AoS Slaughter Priest, and we last saw him in this state:

Now he’s finished, and he looks more like this:

And a little diorama to show just how big this guy is!

I worked really hard on getting a nicely weathered look to the armour, and even harder on the blending & washing on the flesh… it did not feel like a very graceful or natural process at first, in fact, I found it to be quite mechanical and robotic at times… kind of ‘painting by numbers’ so to speak. Happily, the process has blown out a few cobwebs for me, and I’m pretty happy with how he turned out in the end. So what next? I have a few Oldhammerish odds and sods lying around in their undercoats, so I’m going to work through them just to sharpen up my brushwork a little bit more… I’m not sure after that, but the main thing is that normal service is resumed at Leadballoony – thank you all for your patience, it’s good to be back.