My painting's going very slowly at the moment, mainly due to real life commitments, and I've pretty much resigned myself to not getting the miniatures I want painted done by the time BOYL 2014 comes around.
However I did realise while painting my last batch of orcs that I struggle with enthusiasm at the base coating stage, so this time around I tried changing from my normal routine. Rather than basecoat everything then shade and highlight second, I tried with a couple of chaos warriors doing each main area fully from basecoat to finished, then moving on to the next. It does seem to help with the motivation side of things, even though I'm not sure it makes me any faster. So I think I'll stick with that approach for a while.
I'm not 100% happy with the way these two ended up. The shields especially I think are rather weak, after thinking with my last batch I had done a decent job on shields. And the green armoured guy has a rather heavy handed shading wash, amongst other things.
Other than doing the bases I need to move on to the next pieces now though. I'll come back these along with others of my recent efforts once I can field a useful amount of painted figures. Meanwhile the lesson learned is (surprise) preparation is key - although I'm loath to chop at the figure the green chap needs to lose his shield boss to give me a flat area to work on, whereas his compatriot needs some work to flatten out the join between his shield and the figure.
I've a battle looming in less than a week though, and at least 3 more figures (ideally 5) to get done by then...
