In creating a dedicated
video channel for boardgames and roleplaying games on the YouTube, where the
interwebs live, I added boardgames to the bookshelves, true, true. And that
should’ve remained the limit of my limit. For a year, though, the first year of
video production, I contemplated the unthinkable.
A return to painting figures.
I still paint figures. But I considered
returning to painting with a major investment in materials. To paint, I needed
a place to paint and all the tools that go with the activity of slapping
overpriced coloured wetness on overpriced metal miniatures. The video studio,
which sits to my right as I type, has an alcove in it.
A large echoing vault.
That vault is padded with sound-management
foam, to reduce the echo. Painting at the video table would disrupt video
production unless video production magically becomes all about videos on
painting.
I’d rather watch paint dry than make
painting videos. That’s why I’ll be editing my painting videos to within a
hair’s-breadth of their non-existent lives.
The problem, as
ever, was of space elsewhere. I’d need a painting table. The solution was to
remove a bulky chest of drawers from a cluttered elsewhere and dump it in the
alcove right here.
Though the alcove was an empty echo-chamber
of a place…it wasn’t exactly empty as
I stared over at it, and I had to move stuff out to make way for the incoming
monolith.
And so, I danced the dainty dance of
shifting stuff from one room to a second room to make room for the stuff that
would leave the third room, giving me room to move through halls from room to
room. Or something. Those rooms have no room in them. It was all a blur – and
anything but dainty.
I started by measuring all the things, real
and imagined: the things that existed and the things that would exist in
fresh-cleared measured spaces. In a movie-like dream-sequence, I planned what
would happen if I removed the bulky set of drawers. Bookcases danced before my
eyes, Disneyed up and singing their hearts out.
When the music stopped, the bookcases left an
illusory space for a table. I was in business. Make your dreams real, even if
they are merely dreams of tables.
And so things went, day after day, long into
the night and the beyondness of beyond, with yours very truly shuffling
bookcases around to make room for a path. The chest of drawers huffed and it
puffed and it trudged the path down. I measured and I ordered equipment and I
hunted for bargains.
My idea of a bargain is not buying a thing
for £10 at the cheap and cheerful cost of £5. No. Life is more complex than
that if you are creating a miniature workshop. I’ll spend £200 to save £100.
Harsh, I know. I budgeted for the workshop itself, tools, paints, and storage
for figures. There was a budget for figures, too. But buying figures is all
about buying storage for figures. An old song.
At the end of my eye-watering
fiscal study, I knew I’d spent GASP
money and saved EVEN GASPER GASP
money on top of that. The cost was ridiculous, but the saving was even more
ludicrous. I told everyone about the ridiculous ludicrous luminous saving, and
then took a flight to the moon by wet-air balloon. Yes. That mad.
Then the work began. The unpackaging.
Recycling of cardboard. Assembly of tools. Mostly, this meant reaching for a
large bottle of glue and something to wipe the glue away with. Occasionally,
I’d hammer a bit of wood with another bit of wood.
Where are we now?
I dare not relate the fable of the table, a tale too terrible to put in print.
I may arrange spaghetti letters on a plate spelling it out, but that’s as far
as I dare venture. Let the record show only that I based my purchases on a
certain size of table. And that I had to move to a larger table-size for
reasons of bullshit and mayhem.
Luckily, that improved the situation and
adjusted the weather for ten minutes. All was right with a small part of the
world for a time.
Upshot. Done with
huffing glue and peeling myself off the ceiling at night, I set the glue bottle
aside until such time as the kingdom required its return. And, inside a week,
that time arrived.
An arm rose up from out the bosom of the Glue Lake Glue Lake
Remember that the key to using glue is
ventilation. So unlock those doors and windows. No need to turn teary-eyed or
all clogged up with nowhere to go.
With a larger table installed, I knew I
could fit a few more wooden modules in place. Those are on the way. A fabled
messenger bleep told me. Pigeons are so last millennium. And the millennium
before that...and that.
Everything settles. Eventually, you reach a
point at which you’ll no longer move bookcases around. And I’ve reached that
point many a time. It’s like déjà vu all over again. Well, I was finished with it again again.
Definitely done.
Except, of course, I went after something
different this time. I wasn’t moving bookcases around to make room for more
bookcases. That saga ended a long time ago, back in November of 2019. Yes, I
write this in December, 2019. What of it?
This time around around, I moved things around as recently as last night. The
table is in position. Most of the modules are locked in place aboard the Good Ship Painterly. I’ve glued units,
hammered magnets into wooden panels, avoided cutting off my fingers, and pledged
not to move any furniture ever again.
Truly, I’ve run out of space.
All to give myself space in which to paint.
Painting used to be done in a well-ventilated kitchen on a folding table that
went against one wall, down the side of the room and out of the way.
Or painting took place in other venues, with
varying degrees of space, lighting, and ventilation. Now, consistently, there’s
a painting table. It’s also a preparatory table, with room for tools that I’ll
hack away with. I mean…I’ll prepare figures for painting using surgical skill
and precision moves akin to the dance of the bullfighter.
No bulls will be hurt in the process, though
one or two minotaurs may require assembly.
This is a return
to the world of trimming flash and lines, drybrushing armour and fur, applying
glue and mixing up clay, and – horror of horrors – pinning. In the Olden Times,
I’d find inventive ways to avoid pinning…
Now,
frankly, I just can’t be arsed and I’ll have to get on with it. Welcome to the fiddly
world of cyanoacrylate and epoxy. Glue only takes you so far in fixing one part
of a model to another. With metal miniatures, there’s little to no realistic bearing
of a load on a rough join. Always accept that the join is rough, no matter how
great the manufacturing process is.
I have to fill in the flawed areas with
model putty and/or epoxy resin, possibly throwing in superglue when
appropriate. Moderately rough handling knocks all that work into the bin.
Superglue is great for a quick fix, but one sharp tap shatters your dreams.
The only way to be sure your dragon’s wing
will stay attached to your dragon’s body is by drilling into the metal and
fixing pins to the pieces. Then you finish the job with glue. And a prayer to a
satanic god.
It’s a super-fiddly world. Can’t wait to get
back into it. What I’ve lost in terms of reflexes down the centuries can and
should be made up for by the wealth of experience garnered down in the
modelling trenches.
I’d put that wealth at a £ or two.
Buying material
in meant staring long and hard at the material that remained. War-torn paint
pots and battle-scarred brushes. To replenish supplies, I started with a budget
of no money and stuck that budget in a rocket to the moon.
If I thought painting materials were
expensive before, I thought right. Oh, to return to those “expensive” days. My
budget for a painting station was about right. Paints and tools consumed the
money they consumed. I planned that part of the operation in two stages.
First, update, replenish, buy in – and save
money by purchasing a paint set. Stage two is about buying individual paint
bottles. Memory tells me we bought paints that way in the Olden Times.
I stare at the enamel paints, those
high-flying chemicals and their magic carpet fumes. Individual pots.
Specialised metallic pots. And the multiple purchases. Black, for everything.
Flesh tones. White paint, utterly absent. I culled the dead pots, and the
multiple white paint pots had died a death. They were truly most sincerely
dead.
Moving from one size of table to a proper
size of table, I could go back in and order a few more wooden storage modules.
With the painting bottles now camped out at the paint station, it’s time to
consider going back in and buying multiple pots of black, white, flesh-tones,
strong primary colours, and as much metallic variety as I can lay a brush to.
We don’t need figures and floorplans to
enact roleplaying games. They are handy, though. For video purposes, figures on
maps go a long way to aiding description. And so, a-painting I must go.
*
The photos in this article depict unfinished HobbyZone modules, sitting at all sorts of rough angles without the connecting magnets fitted. I assembled modules, left the glue to cure, slapped those boxes on the table to see how I'd organise them in the end, and then...
Went back much later, sure of the glue, and hammered the magnets into position.
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