Television is rather a frightening business. But I get all the relaxation I want from my collection of model soldiers.
Peter Cushing

Sunday 28 February 2016

I done nearly lost my nerve, Bill...

Painting mojo is a mysterious thing. One thing I've learned from reading other people's blogs and hanging around on the LA forum is that your drive to actually get stuff painted needs to be nurtured and protected.

So imagine my disquiet when a batch of figures more or less wiped out my mojo at a stroke.

The guilty parties are these Mantic Orcs.


They were cheap enough but when I came to paint them there were some horrific blanks where detail should've been behind the legs and under the arms. Obviously this is the price you pay for cheap, one piece body plastics but dear god it was a struggle to get anything out of them.

So what now? I was disheartened and depressed and really didn't want to pick up the brush again.

A change is as good as a rest. So I did the one thing guaranteed to bring a sense of wellbeing; stuck on a western and painted some cowboys.





In this case it was starting over with the Deadwood series and finishing off the last few Black Scorpion resin miniatures I had left. 

A world of difference; full of character and detail and fun to paint. 




I'll take some proper pictures next week if I can get some decent light. 

This also means that I have more or less enough figures for a decent western skirmish. Although... is more or less actually enough? After all, I get paid tomorrow...

10 comments:

  1. Those cowboys look superb, sir!

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    1. Thanks Gordon. Time to crack out A Fistful of Lead, I reckon.

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  2. I painted up one of those Mantic orcs back in 2014. Not the most enjoyable things to work with. I didn't like the sculpt either, but slogged my way through the job.
    Lovely cowboys.

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    1. Put me off any more mantic sculpts, that's for sure.

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  3. It is funny how the old mojo ebbs and flows, but a shot in the arm from a cowboy seems to have done the trick nicely.

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  4. Mantic's Orcs are perhaps the worst plastic sculpts in history. They're just awful. Mantic has improved, but are still super hit and miss. Some are awful and some are OK, and without a bit of knowledge of their range, you won't know what you're getting.

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    1. I pretty much think I'm going to avoid their stuff for the forseeable.

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    2. I am yet to buy anything of theirs. I painted up one of their Deadzone figures because one of their demo guys overheard me saying mean things about their model quality (in my defence, someone who shall remain anonymous set me up without telling me who they were) and kindly gave me a model to show how it's improved. I feel obliged to say "some of it isn't as bad as their 'Orx' models" because of that, but when they're bad, they're very very bad. I would be reticent to invest my money on that sort of gamble!

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    3. Amen, bother. I'll stick with those I know I can trust.

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