How to surprise yourself

A few posts ago Jonathan asked me how I surprise myself with painting. Well, I do this by making plans. For instance, I've been planning to paint Star Wars Legion and Ancients for the next couple of months. All of my figures are undercoated and ready to go, and I have a vague idea of what I will paint when. As soon as my Marlburian generals were done I had a dozen Star Wars legion figures lined up to paint, with the second half of a Macedonian pike phalanx behind that. Three days ago I finished the Marlburian generals, so far so good.

French and Spanish generals for the Bourbons

English and Dutch generals for the Confederates

And then I figured I'd undercoat some of my other figures before winter set in and spray undercoat became a touch and go event. This included some of my fantasy armies. You know, just in case. And then I thought, 'what would happen if I undercoated the Beastmen with my $6 can from the cheap emporium'. And then I thought, 'I need to paint a few and see how they look'. Fast forward three days:

A Chaos Army for Dragon Rampant

The cheaply undercoated Beastmen

Rebased Chaos Warriors, although I didn't paint them.

I did paint these Chaos Knights though

And this Avatars of War Chaos Sorcerer, looking appropriately freaky!

And this Gant that I painted this morning

I love this model

Have dead sheep, will travel.

Now on a philosophical level, knowing that I get easily distracted, can you truly say I 've surprised myself? It was almost certain that I wouldn't stick to the plan for two whole months. But the point is, I never know what the distraction is going to be. Just like the WW2 Pacific campaign in the middle of everything, it was a 'one-day' project that somehow became a 'today' project.

Anyhow, I now have another Fantasy army ready to hit the table, which it will as soon as I've played out the WSS game I've set up on the games table. As the weather turns a bit colder getting a last couple of games in out in the shed would be a good idea.

Nate