Category Archives: Monthly Painting Round-Ups

Squad: March! + Gender-Ambiguous Model Painting Challenge 2019: Personal Round-Up

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The entirety of March’s completed models.

Yeap, it’s been awhile. I’ve almost forgotten how this stuff works, but as I find time, I’ll be catching up. Aside from Swordmaster’s “Monster March” paint challenge, my own two community challenges for the month were “Squads” and of course the “Gender-Ambiguous” one.

I say “partial”, because this model is an independent hero, but also works as the leader of the Plague Censer Bearers.

Interestingly, despite it not being entirely planned that way (because of course I wanted to hit the challenge goals a few times) it turns out that with the partial exception of a single model, they all fit into either one or the other – or both. And that’s aside from a bunch of them also working for Monster March. That one model, the Plague Censer Bearer hero is also the one model out of the entire month that is clearly and undoubtedly male.

The Gender-Ambiguous models from the month.

I mean, I’m not kidding myself – and neither should anyone else. We know that pretty much all of these models were sculpted as “male”, with the exception of the Beavers, as they came from Bad Squiddo and would have been sculpted as a “beaver family” of both genders. But we also know that “female” ghosts would have cleavage, as would mummies, werewolves, and so on. I’m sure that even the Dracoliche and Dragon and Centipede were called “he” or “him” by the sculptor and/or designers rather than “she”. So the point of the month’s exercise wasn’t to fool ourselves, but to just stop, think and consider.

The month’s “Squads”.

“Squads” on the other hand, are much more straightforward. The werewolves were originally going to be 2×3 as that’s how I painted them, though it hardly matters. Similarly, the Skaven work with or without the Censer Bearer hero.

I’ll get March (and April’s) Community Round-Ups done as I can, though in the meantime I’ll try to post up some of my own stuff painted last month (in April). After a recent death in the family (not Dad), there’s a whole lot of stuff there to be sorted out, so blogging and compiling will happen at its own pace at a priority appropriate until I catch up. Still, that doesn’t mean that I won’t be painting or that I’m not happy for others to be participating in the challenges during this time…

So time for numbers – Well, at end of February I was on 79. Above, I count 36 more models (37 if I count the sabot base for the Dracoliche) so that gives me 115 at end of March. Or 116.

Next, onto April!(?!)

#Monster March 3 – 2019 Personal Round-Up

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I usually don’t do these dedicated round-ups when I participate in other people’s monthly painting challenges as I usually only finish a single model, or a couple of models, but this year’s Monster March has been a little different. While my initial plans involved completing four models – a giant, a bone giant, a giant worm and a dracoloche only ended with me completing the last model from that list (with several additional unnamed models considered as mental “stretch goals”, the fact was that my father’s health issues put paid to my early month’s painting work on that angle – in fact he’s been in for over a week now with serious heart issues, and we’ve had a rollercoaster of different medical opinions that have included a multiple bypass open-heart surgery to the off-pump version of the same, to a stent possibly being possible after all, to the stent having too great a risk of exsanguination (it’s a real word, Blood Angels fans!)

So the last over-a-week has been one of the most fucked-up ones in my life. Cue slightly more aggro, more swearing in general and more specific use of the word “cunt” in this blog than usual. In any event, following a week of “surgery tomorrow” that hasn’t happened and “angiogram and stent tomorrow”, which also hasn’t happened – after a meeting this afternoon with a doctor who turned out to be one of Melbourne’s top cardiologists (I googled her name afterwards), the final verdict, in her words, is “do no harm”, so rather than fucking with pointy and sharp things, there’s a slight adjustment to medication and some observation, and we take him home (finally) in a few days so he can return to his garden and real food. (I’ll get some photos up at some stage for TUG – at least one person will appreciate it!)

That’s all well and good, Azazel. But what does that have to do with the important business of Toy Soldiers? I’m glad you asked. It’s because I’m exactly like a self-absorbed 16 year old girl with her diary. It’s also because the last week (off work, because obviously – and yes, they’ve been very supportive, though no-one from there follows this blog) has necessitated me diving heavily into distraction, occupying my mind as much as possible and trying to avoid additional stress. In this case, that’s been attempted largely by painting monster models like a motherfucker and playing The Division 2. I got one model done, then another, then another …and just kept going (until they leaked into April!)

It’s also the reason that I’m (once again) way behind in reading and commenting on other people’s blogs and haven’t even started on the Round-Ups for the dual-mode March Challenges. I’ll get to them of course, but I’m not going to go nuts rushing.

So to finish up, I’d like to thank Swordmaster for running the challenge again this year, as it’s given me something external and productive to distract myself and focus on over the last couple of weeks while things have been so …fucked up.

Here’s the models!

Shadows of Brimstone Dark Stone Hydra

Conan Kickstarter Dragon

The Others: 7 Sins – Avatar of Gluttony

Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawler (Giant Centipede)

Reaper Bones Dragon Plant

Castle Ravenloft Dracoliche

The Others: 7 Sins – Avatar of Wrath

Ice Elementals – Mantic Games

The next couple of posts will be my final models for my own March Challenges that haven’t gotten posted as I focused on getting the MM stuff up ASAP and as I completed them. After that, round-ups and April models.