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-- Year 9 --

State of the Challenge

March 23 -- No Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Space Marine
April 23 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Doomsday
May 23 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Mistake Were Made
June 23 -- Discussion -- Challenge -- Vote -- Special 100th competition
July 23 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Renewal
August 23 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Some Like it Hot!
September -- No Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Sun’s Out, Guns Out
October 23 -- No Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Halloween Special
November 23 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Wrecking Ball
December 23 -- No Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- Open Round
January 24 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote -- From the Shadows
February 24 -- Poll -- Challenge -- Vote --

We have an extension for Feb, so are not quite done with this year yet, but I wanted to get a retrospective thread up if people want to start looking back on what we’ve all done.

--

This was my first year running things full time. I’d like to think it went well. Working up a list of topics to choose from, which was my main concern. Everyone is pretty well behaved, so not a lot of stress managing things. I’ll post more when I finish my Feb entry (I also need the extension) but wanted to once again thank everyone for another great year of painting together!

Appreciate the effort you and Midget Gems put in, Nev.

This was my first year in the hobby and this forum and the painting challenge have been an absolute highlight for me.

Thanks Nevelon for your work. It’s an absolute blast being a part of things.

So that’s a wrap on year 9.

Only 30 minis for the comp, which is low for me. Also, there were a number of month were I was planning on doing more, but just got one guy done. Lot of diversity though. I think I covered all of the alt paint schemes for my Ultras. Legion 30k black, forest and arctic camo, basic blue, and chaplain and librarian HQ variants. Even the Nids got their alt camo scheme in. April and November were my top voted months. Not my faves though.

March - Legion is pretty basic. Not a huge fan of these guys, but good to get them done.

April - 2 different flavors of cultists. Chaos and GSC. Fun to experiment with how to paint different armies. I might work up a GSC kill team at some point, or swear to the Dark Gods, but I’ve got enough irons in the fire right now. Not unhappy with how they ended up, and simple enough I could bang out some hordes if I wanted to.

May - I like how these guys fit the theme. Bunch of snipers with pistols out, getting mugged by one of the top end CC monsters in the universe. Mistake were made. The marines were put together with scraps from the full eliminator kit and extra phobos bodies. Fun little kitbash.

June - The 100th comp. I wanted to do something that echoed back the the first year, and the Eldar Rangers fit the bill. I’ve come a long way since I did the originals. Same camo, but a much refined technique.

July - For being an ETB kit, the dread is a nice model. Nothing fancy on the paint job, but vehicles alway try my patience. These guys are huge; towers above the old dreads. Scale creep is a real thing...

August - This was supposed to be a full squad. Only the sarge made it in time. He’s a basic blue marine, little extra weathering on the flamer, but we’ve seen hundreds like him cross my paintbench

September - I think I planned to do at least one more scout to join him, but he got done alone. Still playing catchup from the last month.

October - I had picked up Cursed City because it was absolutely packed with cool minis. Finally got around to painting some. Nothing fancy, but fun models. Push-fit nature is a little more evident, but fun dynamic poses.

November - So I was also supposed to to a gravis captain and some agressors to join the Nu-SK. Agressors are still WIP and just finished the captain this morning. The SK has some issues as ETB, but I’ve seen worse. Just some bad seems. Like the way he turned out.

December. I did not need another TDA captain, as I had the limited store opening one. So the one from the Lev box got a kitbash into a chaplain. Not a fan of the new one they recenly released, felt I could do better. And not to pat myself on the back, think I nailed it. My favorite thing from this cycle of the comp that I did, not contest.

January - My vanguard camo for the nids is kind of a PITA to do, but I do enjoy the results. Lt. is just more of my phobos camo. Still a fun little group shot.

February - Alpha and Omega here. One of the oldest and newest things in the primed pile. Sad that the old guy is unlikely to see much time on the table, as I like the new guy quite a bit more. But at the time I wanted a TDA librarian who wasn’t old, metal, and on a tiny base so I kitted him together. I tried to get some glow lines on the new guy, they the wash killed them, and I don’t have the hand (or time) to redo them and the endless cycles of clean up it would require.

As always, had a blast painting with everyone. Looking forward to year 10!

Here is my quartet of entries for the 2023-24 year of the Challenge.

August - Some Like It Hot : In this case, hot pink! This is actually the canonical colour scheme for the mecha this figure represents. Gunpla kits are usually big enough not to need as much highlighting and shading as minis, but this chibi one is only about the size of a Tau battlesuit, so I think it would have benefited from some. Though how to shade magenta without making it look dirty?

October - Hallowe'en Special : These spooky slasher necrons were very on theme, but they were also a nightmare to put together. Difficult to assemble and difficult to paint once assembled. Plus my painting and basing really went awry. Bleh.

December - Open Round : I really enjoyed painting this animal guy, and I'm pleased overall how he came out. The eyes are a little wonky, but the base came together really well and you'd never know the sword is a novelty sandwich skewer.

February - Out With The Old, In With The New : The "new" in this case was painting these rather tiny Resi 2 zombies. They're not short, but they don't have the 'heroic' proportions of many miniatures, so their details are very small. Interesting to paint and it's nice to recreate the game characters in 3D.

So not much painting from me this year, hopefully I'll do more in the year to come.

++++++

@ Nevelon - Your productivity is impressive. I really like the deep, bold blue you do for your UMs, and you Termie Chaplain is great. He's grimdark without being too grungy and the head really suits the mini.

Here's my work for the year:


March Spehs Mehreens: The three kommandos in the bottom left. Jules and Vince providing cover for Bolta. That running ork conversion was a lot of fun to put together, just exudes a character that kept pushing me to get him done.
April Doomsday: GSC Neophyte w/ flamer. Been meaning to put paint to this squad for years now, painting comp is always a good excuse to start something new and this guy was my test for the squad color scheme.
May Mistakes were Made: GSC Neophyte w/ shotgun.
June 100th Comp Celebrate!: I brought the fireworks with the bomb squig. Still working on blends and I made the little brass shells on his base which are an easy trick I will probably reuse on other minis.
July Renewal: I can't remember what happened in July that prevented me from entering, may have to revisit the blog for that one.
August Some Like it Hot: Burna boy bottom right, 'nuff said.
September Sunz Out Gunz Out: GSC chucking dynamite. His head was a fun conversion, and I spent a lot of time trying to get the base to look like real wartime rubble.
October Spooky: Two more GSC (with the black background)
November Wrecking Ball and December Open Round I spent working on the CAD models for my four Gnot Tanks, so no painting. Got them printed in Jan/Feb of '24.
January From the Shadows: A chance to revisit the Octarius burna boy with a different approach. I tried to keep this guy mostly ash gray and leather with a just few highlights (like the flame). Simple and quick and I'm pleased with the result.
February Out with the Old, In with the New: Painted up my first 3D printed tank, looking forward to painting the other three in the months ahead!

Thanks as always to Nevelon and MG for putting in the work required to keep this thing running and up to date, it is the single greatest motivating factor that keeps me painting, and for years now has kept me on a roughly one mini a month pace (which isn't prolific by any stretch but still considerably better than no minis a month)!

Year 9 collage of my wee painted dudes

My first year, managed to get six entries in, think I missed one or two with being away from home sadly.

I can say for sure though that if it were not for this competition I would have painted far less, being a new painter it's been a great way to keep active when feeling lazy.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone has in store for this year.

Cheers for keeping the competition running

Roundup time. This was the first year I tried to take part every month, and I found it to be a lot of fun and a boon to motivation. Prior to this go-round I think I had only entered once, maybe twice. Sticking to it made it much better. So, pics!

Space Marine



Doomsday



Mistakes Were Made



Centennial Challenge



Renewal



Some Like It Hot



Sun's Out, Guns Out



Halloween Special



Wrecking Ball



Open Round



From The Shadows



Out With The Old, In With The New



Hopefully I can keep it up for this next year. Looking back I am happy with the entries, and I feel like they display the diversity in subjects and manufacturers I am sort of known for. That's a nice way to say I can't stick with anything. It also seems I am developing a taste for larger scale 3D prints. Have to look into that. Thanks for a great year, thanks for the votes and thanks for looking!

Year two for me - I really appreciate the effort in keeping this running, it's been a great motivator.



Space Marine: Captain Octavia (back row left). In hindsight I got carried away with the gloss finish - my old marines have a bit of gloss to them owing to wanton abuse of the old ink washes that didn't entirely dry matte, but not much, I probably should've left it off and concentrated on highlighting instead.
Doomsday: Sister Verity (centre front, behind her daemonette lectern). First of several Chaos Sister characters this year, in-contest and out-, and also (by accident, but it stuck) contributed using flesh as a colour for cloth elements, which since I'd gotten a bit tired of 'random purples' has shown up a lot on Legionary loincloths of late.
Mistakes Were Made: Formerly Sister Misericordia (far right). I didn't actually have a lot of boobs out this year, but Missy's full-frontal anatomy makes up for it.
100th (Celebration): Sister Julienne (back row right). Largely inspired by Verity turning out well, another 'make a Sororitas special model evil' concept. Painting her book as Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness was an early step on the path to freehanding all sorts of junk all over minis later on.
Renewal: The Salvation Engine (not exactly difficult to spot). Didn't realise how ambitious I was being when I was assembling Saint Valerie, and it's just as well, if I had I probably wouldn't have. It had been bugging me that I had a whole (minus parts donated to conversions) Venomcrawler that I just wasn't using, so it was a relief to finally feel like that wasn't a waste.
Some Like It Hot: Juan Diaz Daemonette on Steed (right, just in front of Julienne). Sweet and simple - I really needed a break after Valerie.
Sun's Out, Guns Out: Cultist with looted plasma gun (right front). I dug her out of my old miniatures case for Some Like It Hot, but with Sun's Out doing the round I put a pause on her, since I had other options for sexiness but not a lot else for plasma weapons.
Halloween: Sister Superior of the Martyred Order (centre left, with the skull). Weapons could've been better - should've darkened them more - but very satisfying as a one-off 'character' unrelated to the warband, which is something I'm getting more into of late.
Wrecking Ball: Lord Obsidia (centre right, half-tank). The proceeds of spotting a random issue of Warhammer Imperium at a newsagent. Obsidia's 'Birth of Venus' shoulder pad cemented the 'put random art on shoulders' thing that's now a standing rule any time I have a shoulder pad without sculpted detail on it.
Open Round: Dambo Kweltz (left rear). I'm very nostalgic about the old days, so it was very satisfying to finally give this chap a paint job I wasn't embarrassed about.
From the Shadows Shadow Weaver (she's not displayed with the 40k miniatures, I forgot to detour and pick her up while I was gathering up all the others). Fit the theme, but a small and fairly low-detail miniature (which is accurate to her appearance, that's not a criticism), so not a lot of opportunity to use techniques other than painting very very carefully, which isn't quite my strong suit.
Out with the Old, In with the New: ...okay I got my wires crossed because I'd already finished Brother Quiff and thought that was the most recent finished contest, so I last month was actually the Chaos Outrider. The bike conversion turned out well, another random Imperium issue find. Quiff would've qualified for the theme as well though since he's a recreation of a Rogue Trader mini.

So like I was saying with Missy, not actually a lot of gratuitous nudity this year - hope I'm not losing my touch.

It's also my second year in the challenge, and so far I've been able to keep up getting an entry in each month.

March:

For Marine month I had a generic sci-fi Marine. Mostly the fun in it was that I sculpted Tomboy in record time, but for painting the camo pattern was also interesting to wrap my head around. It's part of an ongoing effort to figure out a good way to get depth and highlights on something that is supposed to look muted.



April:

That was mostly catch up month for me. I had Anakin waiting for a paintjob for a while and he went well with the theme on account of the, umm, mining disaster at the Jedi temple. I didn't do anything new and exciting, really, but it was good to get him done. I am quite happy with how the laser sword turned out, though.



May:

Another sculpt to go with what I started for March, Ms. Alba's clothing gave me a chance to paint different materials. It was also an opportunity to paint darker skin, for which I lack practice in a big way.



June:

More different skin colors for the celebratory month. Not much of particular note on the painting front, although I struggled with single color, especially blue suits in the past. With a bit of a dirtier approach and light zenithal highlighting, I'm reasonably happy with the president's suit.



July:

Bernardo is a return to a grittier style which I like for 40k models. A fun change of pace since I don't paint many GW models of late.



August:

Back to the cleaner style of Star Wars, I finished a sculpt for a Jablogian that I'd worked on and off for over a year. I had some fun with composition here. I don't often use this shade of orange, or vivid greens. I wanted an overall very warm look for the model with just a few bits of color for contrast.



September:

The sniper to go with the spotter. A good opportunity to have different gear to show the same uniform in a different way. I slightly changed the beige of the camo pattern to better fit my preferences. I've also been sloppy with the black spots that could have been more jagged. Also another opportunity to have another skin color. I'm pretty happy with how the black hair turned out. That's always been tricky to get right so as not to look grey due to the highlights. I think I got the mix right on her.



October:

I had a lot of fun with this one. Grey has a way of looking dull and I tried to avoid it by blending into beige for the brightest parts. It's subtle but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I also found that I didn't have any teal or turquoise in my otherwise extensive collection of paints, so I had to mix my own against my usual habits. The black highlights also turned out pretty well overall. Combined with having a lot of fun sculpting her, she's one of my highlights of the year.



November:

Mighty Thor was a good fit for the theme and I hadn't painted a Crisis Protocol model in a while. After I wasn't all that happy with how Skurge turned out the previous year, I tried a more comic book look with more excessive highlights than I usually do. It's not my usual style, but I think it's the way forward for comic book characters.



December:

While I try not to overdo it in any given month, I was quite thrilled by the idea of painting this billboard and might have taken on more work than is reasonable for a single month. I followed a strict painting schedule in December so as to finish on time, which I did with little time to spare, and it's an interesting experience to see the limits of what I can do in that time. I've painted a handful of similar things before, but none as large. The composition is entirely my own, which is that much extra work to figure out and implement. It shows in a few places where I did not correct dodgy things for fear or running out of time if I allowed myself to go over the same thing again. Lots of work, but a great experience during which I learned a lot. It's also a bit of a state of the union thing as far as my 2D painting skills are concerned that only developed as a byproduct of painting 3D miniatures. It's nice to see how far that has come along.



January:

Like Anakin, I painted Ahsoka after I let her sit unpainted so long that I felt guilty enough to do something about it. The model was a bit maddening to paint but came out decently.



February:

My first foray into Star Wars Shatterpoint and a bit like December in that I made sure I'd be spending all my hobby time on a single thing. I resolved early on to buy the royal court just to paint and pulled the trigger when the right theme came around. I got a good bit of experience out of blending the handmaidens' dresses. I'm also quite happy that I got to try brown based highlights on the black parts of Sabe's outfit. I've looked into it before but usually defaulted to grey. As I'm not happy with blue highlights for black, this opens some options for me.



So, that was another fun and productive year for me.

I'll see if I can find the time to make a small collage of my year too, just wanted to say; I know I can seem to be a bit strict on rules and all but I'm not, I just want clarity'.. and accept all the resolutions.

Hope this year will improve us all even more.
-Helveine.

I am happy and blessed to be able to participate in the challenge with your guys.

Told you guys I would do it, so here's my retrospective collage:
It looks like so much when it's all put together :O
(Had to rephotograph a few of these too heh)

The results are in!



youwashock takes the win with a total score of a nice 69. Second place goes to Midget Gems at 62. Right behind with 61points, third is shared by Captain Brown and JoshinJapan. Amazing work and well deserved spots at the top of the chart!

Biggest month was June, which is not surprising sing that it was our 100th competition.

A dozen of us entered every month this year. I applaud your dedication and consistency. Some of us might not have made it to the podium this year, but we are all winners in the long war against the Pile of Shame.

One entry or 12, thank you to everyone for participating with us on another year of painting in the completion. We would not be here without all of you.

Congratulations to youwashock, Midget Gems, and Captain Brown, and thanks to everyone who entered. You are all sources of inspiration to me!

My Year in Review

March:


Rogue Trader marines painted in Rogue Trader-era colors.

April:


Dr. Johan and his Doomray. I got these in a KS years ago, and was glad to have a reason to paint them up.

May:


I made the mistake of selling off my oldhammer Chaos Dwarves and have been re-collecting them on and off ever since.

June:


The Paradigm of Corruption. I don't have a lot of Slaaneshi models, being more of an Undivided man. That said, I love this model.

July:


Oldhammer skeletons. I used these guys to practice painting rust. I think it worked.

August:


Burning Men, made from Frostgrave Barbarians and flaming skulls from GSW. These were an opportunity to practice putty work and lighting effects.

September:


Ogre Chieftains from Atlantis. Lots of little details on these guys.

October:


Candlejacks for Frostgrave. Another try at lighting, with some additional sculpted details on the bases.

November:


Oldhammer Minotaurs. The photos were a little washed out...

December:


Freya, from Bad Squiddo. Annie's models are all traditional hand sculpts, lending them an endearing funk value.

January:


The Thin Man and Black-eyed Children, for Blackwater Gulch. I have painted more resin models for this past year's challenges than my entire hobby career to this point. I still prefer metal, but at least I'm no longer intimidated by the medium.

February:


Usagi and Gen, along with the other models in this set, had been sitting in their box, unpainted and unloved, since my very first month here over two decades ago. It's nice to see them finished.

February:

Congrats to the winners, I'm proud of myself that I didn't miss a single month this year.

W00t w00t!

Thank you, everyone! Congrats to the other winners and big thanks to the showrunners!