Bugman's Cart and re-evaluating my perspective on painting

It's taken me 10 years to finally paint one of these, which is far too long, but for such a favourite model of mine, I wanted to do a good job. Since getting back into painting with my Battletech miniatures, I've been thinking long and hard about my giant pile of unpainted 80s lead sitting in boxes that I had vowed 10 years ago to paint. I'm now realizing that it won't get painted if I don't actually put in the effort and time and work it takes to do so. 10 years... 10 years have already gone by and I've made such minimal progress. But I've learned a lot in these past 10 years. So much. 11 years ago I didn't even really know what Warhammer was! Now I have a large collection of 80s citadel paints and inks, have learned all the old painting techniques that they used back then and a feeling of determination to see my dwarfs fulfill whatever destiny they were created for.

Now I feel like my painting knowledge and experience is pretty decent, even if it's not great, but I know now that not every one of these miniatures needs to be perfect. They don't need to be at the extremely high standards I tried to hold myself to years ago. I would agonize for days or weeks over what to paint something. It was just so exhausting and not fun... but now I think I just want to make decisions and get shit done. I have over 600 dwarfs to paint, 200ish squats, at least 100 chaos warriors, a crapload of space orcs and a decent amount of space marines as well as blood bowl teams and heroquest miniatures and whatever else is in my closet needing a coat of paint. I can't be picky. I just have to limit myself to one basecoat, one or two washes and maybe a highlight and move on to the next thing.

I spent about 7 hours total on this cart, which while being longer than I wanted, was quite a bit less than I would have done it 5 years ago. If I spent my usual 8 hours a miniature on 600 miniatures... well, i'd never get finished. I did want to put in a bit of extra effort to make this look good though, as it's been one of my favourite warhammer models since I got into the game and acquired my army of dwarfs. It's something I've spent a long time staring at, thinking about, and imagining being painted. In only 7 hours of work (Maybe really 6 because I took a lunch break) I ended up with pretty much exactly what I had envisioned years ago. I want my miniatures to look like they could belong in the old 80s rulebooks and catalogues. I don't care about them being 2019 golden demon worthy. Today's standards are far beyond anything I can accomplish or even want to. I like the 80s aesthetic, the simplicity and style of it. Something about the look of swamp brown with an ink wash on wood just makes me happy.

I hope to make many more posts like this in the future, but with more results and less retrospective ponderings. Hope you like the cart.

Cheers!