Blog Intro and Current Project List

Hello and welcome to my blog, IRNewbPainter.  Just to give a quick background, I first attempted to paint miniatures in 2009 and I quickly found myself frustrated at both the cost and time it would take to get any good at it.  3 years later after deciding to try painting a few minis with my girlfriend (November 2012) and decided I was going to try to stick with it this time.  So far, I've been able to and I've now decided that it would be of benefit to blog about it.  This blog serves two purposes. One, it is a way for me to keep track of what I've done and how my skills have progressed.  Two, it serves as a way to share with the Internet community at large so that I can get feedback that could potentially advance my skills farther.

Here's my current project list.  This may get adjusted or added to as I go along.  I TRY to stay focused on one project at a time but sometimes I find myself in a lull while one project is in a bit of downtime (like waiting for epoxy to cure or a layer of paint to dry).  I also sometimes get bored with what I am working on and find it helpful to have one other project that I can jump to keep my interest from falling off.  But I try to limit this to just one other project so that I don't lose focus.

1. Starfire - Dragon from Super Dungeon Explore
   Treating this as a project separate from the rest of the SDE figures because of its size.  Since this is the main boss in the core game I will be spending extra time to get a good quality paint job on it.
2. Rexx x2 - Mini-bosses from Super Dungeon Explore
   These guys are also pretty big and will probably require additional time to complete.  I also want to try to put some freehand tattoos on them to make them a bit more interesting.
3. Remaining bad guys from Super Dungeon Explore
   I've tried speedpainting large numbers of figures before and it just hasn't worked well at all.  I will see if I can have better luck on these guys as I don't intend to spend more than 1-2 hours per figure.
4. Police Box version 2.0
   I had made a police box for a diorama that I put together as a gift for my girlfriend last Christmas.  It was primarily constructed from plastic with some miliput sculpted for some of the items that were difficult to fabricate with plastic (like the roof).  After it was painted I applied custom decals for the lettering.
   In this version I am going to do a number of things different that I think should yield a more impressive result.  First off I'm not going to attempt to sculpt in the windows.  I can probably get a much more impressive result if I freehand them in and imply a 3D effect instead.  Second, I don't plan on using any custom decals.  All lettering is to be done in freehand.  Third, there will be a lot more work done to add wood texture to the box.
5. Doctor Who themed diorama
   While I made one last year as a gift, this one will be mine.  I plan on using the police box from the above project.  Scene/story will be determined later but I want to make sure I have figures for both the Doctor and the Master.
6. Spells & Chrome (Shadowrun themed diorama)
   This was a project that I wanted to complete for ReaperCon but got shelved due to issues on the conversion figures that couldn't be fixed in time for the convention.  The conversions (a male elf street mage and a female ork street samurai) will be redone and this time I will NOT use a dremel to do any of the cutting.  That caused more problems than it solved so I will just have to invest in a decent jeweler's saw instead.

So that's what I'll be working on and writing about here.  My next entry I will be focusing on the dragon and what I've done up to this point on it.