Hey fellas,

well, it has really been a long time since I have written anything here on the blog. To be honest I was not in the mood to publish anything just because I thought I didn´t have anything to tell.

As some of you might know I have a very special relationship to my hobby. There are days on which I enjoy my hobby very much, but there are also those on which I don´t even want to think about all this. It might be caused by a lot of different effects, e.g. work or life, but in the meantime I don´t care a lot about this anymore. I got used to those ups and downs, I think of them as a natural thing. And I´m quite happy about this as it makes things a lot easier. Perhaps some of you might know of what I´m talking about. I´m sure I´m not alone in this ;-) the most important point of all this is: enjoy your hobbies as long as you can, but accept that there are times in which you need a break. Don´t panic in those moments. Most of us are not professionals and by this, we have the freedom to choose what we want to do in our free time. Do something else, get new experiences and when the time is right, get back to painting :-)

So, what have I done in the last months? Of course I was not completely off the painting table. I visited shows (like the Duke of Bavaria) or took part in some classes (e.g. Raffa´s sculpting class and Fernando´s painting class), but most of all I enjoyed my time. I had an awesome and relaxing holiday with Roman and Sanne in Hungary and here I was able to get rid of all the stress which pushed me down since Christmas.

During the last years I had invested a lot of energy in my work. I´m a manager in a publishing company and responsible for our online job board. So, my daily business is calling companies and taking part in important meetings. Don´t take me wrong, it´s a quite interesting job and I´m pretty good at it, but it consumes a lot of energy. You might know the questions: Is the customer happy? Are the calculations right? Are the contracts fixed? How much is the customer willing to pay? I think you get the point.

The vacation in Hungary helped me a lot. It was my first bigger time off in 3 1/2 years. I was able to reflect what I have done, what I have become and what I would like to do in the next few years. The result was to find a new job to get a new perspective and move to a bigger city in order to improve my social life. So, on October 15th I will start my new job in Stuttgart :-)

But enough of this. MV is a painting blog and because of this I´d like to show you some of my projects I´m working on recently. I finished only one project since my last posting and the rest are all in different WiP-phases. I will finish them, when  the time is right :-)

Sorry for the crappy pics, they are just quick shots off the table:

Thorag:





A very interesting paintjob. I was surprised how difficult Latorre´s sculpts are to paint. I switched the colors a few times because I was not really satisfied with the appearance. But finally I was able to finish him, right in time for Duke of Bavaria.

Roman Centurion:

This is a really huge bust from Castle Miniatures. I liked the idea of the battle-hardened veteran right in the middle of an epic carnage, fighting for his life. I would say that the face is pretty much done for the moment. Now I have to focus on the helmet and as soon as it´s done I can do the detailed work on the face (details, light situation, more colors). The rest of the bust has only recieved some basic colors, so all in all this bust will take a huge amount of time to get finished.

Pirate bust:

I started this bust during Fernando Ruiz´ painting class in Blumberg (July). It´s a really awesome bust and I can only recommend it to everybody. It´s challenging, but not too hard. It´s just right for having fun. As you see, I invested a lot of time on the face. I´m also pretty satisfied with it. But there is still a lot to do :-)

Gladiator:

Oh, this fella is real pain for me. It´s my sixth attempt to paint him and I have sworn to myself to get him done properly. It was my first non-gaming-miniature I bought some years ago. I also finished him in those days, but a few years later I decided that I could do better a better paintjob. So I stripped him and since then it was a real horror. I somehow never got into the right mood to paint him, but nevertheless forced myself. I learnt the hard way that this was the wrong attitude ;-) even if he does not look very challenging, it´s a pretty old sculpt from Pegaso and because of this you have to interpret a lot of things (= paint things that are not there, but have to be there). But at the moment I´m very happy with him and he will be finished for sure!

New Energies:



Only few of you might know that some years ago I had been very active in tabletop wargaming. I was a passionate 40k-gamer and pretty successful in those days. I stopped playing when I started investing more and more time into painting. But in the last two years I played a few times with Simon, a good friend of mine in Augsburg. He gave me one of his armies and it felt like being home. Brooding over army organisations and testing them gave me a good feeling and I learnt that I have not lost my skills in the last years. So, last week I decided that I will start a small 40k-army once again. As most of you guys are tabletop gamers, too, I´d like to share my experiences with you. I will write some small articles about how I build and paint my army: which shops are nice to get the important stuff (e.g. megabitzshop.com), how do I paint pre-heresy marines, how to I achieve a homogenous army while using different color schemes...

Hopefully some of you will find my tips useful. My army will be a small Chaos Space Marine warband which I will use with the Grey Knight rules (yes, I know this is heresy, deal with it ;-) ). The idea is to create a band of badass veteran-warriors from different Astartes legions which have arranged themselves with the chaotic situation after the defeat of Horus. So, I will paint the marines in different pre-heresy colors-schemes, but make the armours appear old and used. I like the idea :-) Death to the false Emperor!

Well guys, this have been a lot of blabla... I just want to tell you how much I appreciate it that you are reading this blog! We are a small, but precious community. So, if any of you guys are living in Stuttgart or somewhere near this ctiy, drop me a message. I´d like to get in touch and spend an awesome time with you :-) you can reach me via: baphomet[at]massivevoodoo[dot]com

Cheers,
Peter