Painting Thoughts

This post shall be a little different from the others posted on this blog so far. It is more of a thought piece on something that happened this evening. Recently I have been a little burnt out in regards to Ancient Greece, it having been my focus for the last few months. So to alleviate that I try and do some other periods/figures, hence the 15mm Romans seen recently. Tonight I felt like painting something radically different and a project that I started quite a long time ago, my Warhammer 40,000 Sisters of Battle army.

Now I am no 40k gamer. I haven't played a game, let alone on a regular basis, in years. I do however enjoy bits of the setting and aesthetic, the Sisters being part of this. When I started the army there was very little intention of it ever being used, it was for the joy of collecting and painting an army. So this evening I decided I would try and finish a few figures. I was quite happy with how the figures were going and that they were painted (for my skill level) to a high standard. When I pulled the figures from the case I was immediately surprised at my reaction to my own work. I wasn't at all happy with it. On a technical level it was passable. It was the nature of the colours I used, how could I have thought that those methods/palette looked good. It made me want to strip the figures and start all over from scratch.

On reflection I may have been a little hard on myself, they did not look THAT bad. More than reasonable but I still have the inclination to strip them and start again. This has not really happened to me before. I am normally accepting of the final state of my figures even if I know I could have done a better job. It merely left me wondering what had changed. Was I being picky? do other wargamers painters feel this way (I imagine everyone does at some point)? how do they cope/act on it? Is it the fact that the army is purely for my own painting pleasure so I feel the need for it to be the 'best'?

These are the questions I asked myself. I'm still unsure as why I reacted in such a way. Any comments about this from your own experiences, dear readers, would be much appreciated. I have posted a picture below of the unfinished St. Celestine figure. I am mostly dissatisfied with the armour. I believe that is the cause of my consternation.

In some more positive news I have worked on adding some examples to Aristeia. This is mostly in the areas of basic game mechanics such as Movement, Shooting and Close Combat. Hopefully I can get some diagrams to go along with these examples in the not too distant future. I'd also like to have the basic rules sorted for proper testing in a relatively short time. That means some battle reports can be posted and give a far better flavour as to the game than my mere descriptions can.