OK, so he's not quite  finished, but I'm calling it. I've already spent far too long on what was supposed to be a bit of a practice model. The cloak isn't complete (especially at the back) and I've left the face as just base-coat plus shade and that will do for now. I'm really happy with the red and the yellow and the gold looks OK. I've learned a lot and tried out some techniques I'd never tried before so all in all I think this has been a positive experience. But it's a shame I didn't get him done to the level I wanted him to. That cloak just killed me. Turns out blending is really hard! Definitely something I'm going to have to practice in isolation. I've spent so long fiddling with it and adding new layers that it's got to the point now that brush strokes and paint crumbs are starting to show and if I keep going I'm just going to ruin the whole thing. I think my problem is that before this guy, the vast majority of mo...

When I decided to start this blog, I made conscious decision that it was just for me. If people find it and enjoy it then great. I would share new posts on Twitter and Instagram but I wrote each one of them under the assumption that the only person who would read them was me. If I'm honest, I'm not sure how much I was enjoying it. I wanted to try and get a post out once a week and hoped that this would motivate me to sit down and paint some miniatures but very quickly I started to feel a bit pressured. I've had this blog for a couple of months now and so far all I've been able to paint is this: My Instagram follower count has been growing steadily and I have been taking much more enjoyment posting photos and connecting with people on there. I hadn't had any comments on any of my blog posts so I was starting to think 'if no-one's reading these, and I'm not particularly enjoying posting them, why am I bothering?' Then this happened... Ho...