I haven’t done any painting this week since I’ve been cleaning up and reorganising the desk. Yeah, this is cleaned up. It’s like, a million times better now. No exaggeration. There’s a lot more space for me to work, I can leave larger pieces on actual desk, and Marouda can even help me with basecoats or do some actual painting of her own if she likes/I can convince her to. She’s not exactly shit, either, so I don’t quite understand why she’s always so hesitant to do more painting. Hopefully the new, cleared up space is more enticing. (seriously, stuff was just piled atop of more piles of stuff and my actual painting space was about 5 inches deep and 12 inches wide at the edge of one side – pretty much where you see the blotting paper.
There’s also a new part of the plan in this pic “The Tray”. I’ve watched Dave Kay over at Scent of a Gamer (go check it out if you’re not familiar with his blog) develop and use his “The Tray” concept for a little over 2 years now, and so while I was clearing the desk, I asked Marouda to brave the post-apocalyptic landscape outside, armed only with a respirator, a crowbar, and a small chainsaw and pick me up a Tray and some more plastic tubs (for mini storage) from Big W on her Supermarket run so I could put this into action.
I’ll be keeping the “before” pics kinda vague (if I even show them at all) since I like to get some surprises into the stuff I post, and I probably won’t do after ones at all – the main purpose of the tray for me will be to give me a hard limit on what I allow myself to paint, with a bit of variety there but needing to finish it all before moving to other models (in the form of the next tray…) With that in mind, this one is mostly filled with “easy wins”, so hopefully it won’t take too long to work my way through…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Sure it might look cluttered, but I’m confident there is still room for a cat!
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Even when there’s no room for a cat, he manages to fit himself in!
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I consider that very tidy mate, my area always looks like organised chaos, but it’s what I’m happy with and always have lot’s of bits to hand to work on.
Great idea on having a tray to focus what your planning to work on
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I should have taken a proper “before” photo, because yeah – compared to that this is incredibly tidy! Credit to Dave for the tray idea. I just need to try to stay focused on these models and not be distracted by others…
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Good move forward! 🙂
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Yeah, a lot more space to work!
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If I had that many guys on my desk I would never finish anything.
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Heh. This is a fraction of what used to be on the desk… 🙂
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Good plan – though how will your free spirit handle these restrictions?
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I made sure to include a variety of models, and most are easy wins.
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Always good to have a sort out every now and then.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Agreed!
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Nice work! I kinda use “the tray” method as well. I have 3 narrow kitchen drawer organizers I use to hold the minis I’m currently painting, and those get tucked away into a locked filing drawer cabinet when I’m done for that session. It was a necessity when the little one was littler. The practice has just become routine, though I don’t bother to lock the drawer anymore.
I also started organizing the desk and such, after we moved. Right now, it’s a bit in ‘assembly hell’, as I try to get minis together.
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Yeah, the problem I was having was whenever I finished, say, a goblin, I would go and get another goblin or a couple of them and add them onto the table. Combine that with often getting interested in starting another new thing and.. well.. it gets messy and overwhelming.
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It is never fun to do that kind of work but it sounds and looks like it really paid off. Your paint collection is massive. I think I own too many and mine is a fair bit smaller! The tray sounds like an interesting approach. I don’t think I could do it but I’m curious to see how you get on with it!
Now for the real question, what are all the books you’ve got behind the desk? 😀 My books are in my closet directly behind where I paint so I can relate to having them nearby (even if I’d never crack one open during painting. It is cool seeing some of your figure collection in the case too! Those Iron Man busts(?) look awesome! 🙂
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Marouda read this comment earlier today and was laughing. This is only a fraction of my paint collection… I might have to take a pic of some more them at some point, though even then some are pretty inaccessable at the moment on a desk behind boxes under a pile of random crap.
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Seriously!? Are you sure some of that paint hasn’t dried up since you purchased it? I’m stunned by how much paint you own as I feel like I have too many and I’m nowhere close to you!
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Well, I *do* love paint!
Occasionally a pot of paint will go bad for one reason or another – metallics seperating where the pigment becomes a solid ball of gunk suspended in medium – or a current GW pot dries up because they don’t seal well (all my screw top GW paints are long gone) but I have some paints that date to the late 80’s-early 90’s that are still going strong.
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Always a good idea to have a system, to get you to paint stuff otherwise you just flit from one thing to another I created a “random painting generator” (basically a list and a 30 sided die) but whatever works for you.
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That works, but this way I have stuff in front of me while I work, so they’re easier to just pluck as needed. Especially when I have some leftover brown or silver or whatever and can do a quick scan and look for models that can use it so the paint doesn’t get wasted..
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