Monday, May 3, 2010

Progress has ground to a halt...

I hate this time of the year...

Spring = pollen, LOTS and LOTS of pollen! Despite prescription strength medication (which seems to be doing nothing), my life has devolved into an endless cycle of sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose. At my current pace its one box of tissues per day! I tried painting a captain for my MM scout company. However, due to the above problems, it took close to an hour to just get a halfway decent base coat on the mini. At that point I put away the brushes & said 'to hell with it!'

As it is, I've got a few concerns regarding the Marines Malevolent. Despite great fluff & feel to the army, but the black and yellow scheme goes against my usual preference for armies. That preference being for nice and opaque colors so if a mistake is made, its easily corrected. One misstep with the black or even just boltgun metal (regardless of how steady my hand, its inevitable, a sudden sneeze yesterday wrought havoc on the captain's helmet with the black!) requires 1-2 coats of bleached bone followed by 2 separate shades of yellow. Kind of a laborious process, and has slowed things down considerably.

Another thing is, that my decals that I made for them look more brown than black once applied. I was trying to figure out why as that's never been an issue before, and I think its due to the yellow paint. The black isn't entirely opaque so I may have to paint over them with black after they dry, another setback.

Now, is that all un-doable? No. Realistically doable? Its debatable.

In the past, prior to sticking to just opaque colors, most of my armies consisted of just a few painted minis and the rest primed, before just getting shelved and sold off as just another unfinished side product...

I'm already seeing these 'black and yellow bastards' (which, when it comes to painting is oddly appropriate) running dangerously close to that fate. I dunno, until I can breathe normally again, the point is kinda moot. I'll just ponder it in the mean time I suppose.

5 comments:

RAZ said...

I hate allergies. I have suffered from severe allergies for most of my life. I've tried the sprays, the pills, the snake oil, the witch doctor, the inhalers, and pretty much everything else.

About the only thing that worked for me for whatever reason was a Kenalog shot. I think Kenalog is just the brand name. It's a steroid shot that gives me enough reflief to be functional during the worst parts of allergy season.

I tend to avoid certain colors when painting my armies as well. It is just a pain in the butt to paint 75 coats of a color and still have it turn out looking wonky or having to paint another 75 coats to fix a little mistake.

Anonymous said...

Brutal. Absolutely brutal. I think my head would explode in that circumstance. My sympathies.

Da Masta Cheef said...

With the sinus pressure, it kinda feels like its trying to explode actually... Having hid in the house since getting home from work, I just took the dog for a short walk, about 3 blocks. She seemed to be pleased to get out of the house, but once again I'm all a mess.

:-(

sonsoftaurus said...

I've been a long-time allergy sufferer myself. Aside from the regular medicine cocktails I've started flushing out my sinuses over the last couple of years and it's helped me a lot. If you don't already do it, I'd recommend trying it out.

http://www.webmd.com/allergies/sinus-pain-pressure-9/neti-pots

Hope you recover enough to work on the MM more. Could you maybe save the yellows for last, so it won't matter if the other colors spill over a bit? I've also found for yellow that instead of trying to build up from white or (horror) cover black, a coat of brown can be a good intermediate stage to help with coverage.

Good luck on both fronts!

Da Masta Cheef said...

I tried a neti pot 2 years ago when we had a drought & the pollen/dust didn't die out till everything died in the Fall, as as i recall I hated it. Thanks though for the concern guys. I think I just need to move out to the desert or something.