The Final Push - Lawnor approaches 100% painted

Every year I set myself some hobby goals I try to achieve (2023, 2024).  Foremost amongst these goals is to paint at least as many models as I gain within the year.  I’ve exceeded this every year since I’ve been keeping track.  I was on target for this.  I should have just one more model left to go to break even.  Everything changed when the Black Friday attacked.  I got a bunch of stuff for half price I never expected to so now I’ve got an extra 32 models that I wasn’t expecting, and less than a month to get back on track.

This year I’ve completed 137 models, which works out at 2.8 days per model.  around 5 out of every 7 of those days is a work day though.  I’ve 24 days left to do this in, and 14 of those are not at work.  I’ve gone through my backlog and and picked out groups of models that work well for batch painting (Units, and models with similar paint schemes).  I painted a little under 100 Godtear models in a month when the KS landed and 20 of these models are from Godtear, so there is a precedent for this going well.  Lets see.

Here we see 35 models I’ve picked out, all built and primed and ready to go on Thursday evening.

By Saturday lunchtime they had all been airbrushed with at least a base colour, sometimes with near-full shading and highlighting.

By the end of Sunday I had “finished” the 3 dogs and their master, and the 3 dragons.  I’d finished adding extra pin washes, and extra highlights to the models I’d airbrushed gold on, and made solid progress on the samurai goblins.

By finished, I don’t actually mean finished.  My plan is to do all the basing and lanterns together at the end, and follow up with a mass varnishing.  It’ll be more efficient this way.

I’ve done some maths.  I have 14 days at home to do 33 models.  If we ignore workday evenings, I’ll need to do 2.4 models per day.  After 2 days I’ve got 7 of 33 models done, which puts me 2.2 models ahead of schedule, with a lot more progress done on others.  I’m starting with the easy wins for now, as I think some of the Kingdom Death models will go a lot slower.

I’ll try and come back with regular updates, but don’t expect anything Christmas week.  Time spent writing updates is time better spent painting.  Updates are best done at the office when I can’t get to my paint brushes.