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I have posted this elsewhere on the web, but thought that I would share here as it might help with motivating others. To start with a bit of background: 2019 saw a lot of changes in my life. After living away from my home for nearly a year for work, I was promoted and able to move back home. It took a while to unpack, and as we neared the finish line, my wife and I learned that we would become a family of 3 in March of 2020. Once again, the house was thrown into chaos as the house was rearranged. My new job kept me busy with travel, and I spent a lot of time on the road. This fall, I was finally able to undergo a much needed but often delayed surgery. During the recovery, we had new windows installed. This forced me to pack up my painting desk as it was located under a window. And It almost stayed packed up for good. Since I started painting, I have never had a year as unproductive as 2019. How many models did I complete? 6. Everything going on in my life made it difficult to find the time or energy. Painting is what I do to relax, and I have found it beneficial to my mental health. I feel so much better after spending time painting. The fact that I could not find the time to paint and had to pack up my set up for a 2nd time that year was frustrating, and I found myself rage quitting the hobby. I packed everything up and had no intention of painting for the foreseeable future. So what changed? While visiting over Christmas Break, my nephew asked if he could come over and paint with me. He is 13 years old, and for the most part, other family members have forced their interests on him. When he was 8, he took an interest in painting after seeing my work on several models. I have given him models from time to time and have tried to encourage his enthusiasm, but as he has gotten older, he no longer paints. But this year he wanted to, and we had a great time. And I decided that I need to get back into the habit of painting. My Nephew's work: So I have re-stablished my painting table. I found all of the projects that I started over the past year, but did not finish and packed away. The goal of this project is to re-establish my painting habits and complete the plethora of unfinished figures. I started last night by picking out two of the miniatures that I thought would be good starting pieces. Reaper Miniatures Hill Troll (02421) and Brother Hammond (44007). I started the Hill Troll while painting with my Nephew, and I like how it is turning out so far. The metal is close to done, and everything else is a rough base coat. I have just put a basecoat on Brother Hammond as I did not have time to do much more than that. It is not much, but it is a start, and that is all that matters.

How do you best follow up a post featuring a Dwarven Slayer? With Trolls, of course! I've shown two of these trolls before, just two weeks past a year ago now, as it happens. Last week, while stuck for something to paint I asked Marouda to choose some models for me to finish and as a result, I finally got a third finished for them. Hill troll suffered a broken wrist many years ago, and with my meager skills of the day I "repaired" it by pinning and then wrapping wire around the join, as though it were bound with rope. Not the neatest of jobs, but it works passably, and I've not got the desire to destroy his wrist again in an attempt to repair it. The two that have already been shown were painted Blue, as GW-style "Stone Trolls" probably sometime during the period of 4th Edition of WHFB. Most likely the one with the boulder overhead "Cave Troll" was painted as he was a pretty good approximation of a Stone Troll. "Warrior Troll" was no doubt painted to match, and the "new" guy, "Hill Troll" was definitely started with the other two in mind. He just took a lot longer before I got around to completing him! These three together will make up a regiment-sized unit for my eventual Kings of War (Orc and) Goblin Army, made up of (mostly) older Citadel figures. Not to be confused with the Moria Goblins who I've been working on a fair bit this year. In the short-to-medium-term, there might be some crossover between the two, but only until I manage to get both playable. As it happens, I've just found that these three comprise 3/4 of the entire original C20 Troll range... queue a week-long delay in publishing this post to do a bit more BTS work... ...and also as it happens, I've also got their fourth, here, who just needed a little touching up and a rebasing from his old, 90's-style green-flocked base. I'll share Swamp Troll again sometime soonish with a bit of luck when I sort him out a pair of proper mates. And the final shot - all four of the C20 Troll Class of '87. Finally completed!

I had this little fellow primed and in a box for over two decades now. So finally I decided to paint him. I had a real nostalgic feeling with this one. He is a Hill Troll from Ral Partha, but nowadays he would be as big as a goblin or small orc. Anyway: Hope you enjoy him.

Finally got some painting done this weekend and finished up this fellow. I was initially going to go with something a bit more human looking, where he was going to have Mediterranean skin tones, so I started off with dusky skin. About partway through, I decided to go with a more rocky looking appearance, so I shaded with some agrax earthshade. Since I was making him look more like rock and soil, I thought grass for body hair might be an interesting choice. It doesn't look so great here, but the effect's a bit better in person. The rocky protrusions were based with walnut brown, then shaded up with grey rock and finally to rainy gray as the highlight, done with successive drybrushes. The metals were all done with vallejo model colors, with some of the new technicals from Games Workshop. The blue on the arm shield is nihilakh oxide. Took a bit to get it down to an effect that was noticeable, but not too strong. Fun guy to get painted up. My players have already had their fun with him once, and I expect to find more uses as time goes on.