I feel like in April I got back on track after losing my way a little during March. This month was two things, mostly, the completion of Massive Darkness and the beginning of Marvel United X-Men.
Massive Darkness
Last month I finished off the mobs, which meant I only had the big stuff left, Bosses, Wandering Monsters and Heroes. We kicked things off with a truly gigantic miniature, the Archangel Michael.
This guy towers over the regular heroes. He was painted over three different nights and I estimate he clocked in at around 8.5 hours in total. After that I turned my attention to the heroes.
Very happy with the Heroes overall. They took between 3.5 and 5.5 hours a piece but I like how they all turned out. I'm not picking favourites, but I do really like that electric pink on Feydra. I also ended up slotting in time to do the Spirits of Frost and Flame for the Shaman Class.
After that we returned to the big bads with two more wandering monsters. Lyidan and Andras.
Lydian turned out better than I had hoped, I really liked the various red/pink fades and the non metallic metals. Andras turned out fine but just took forever, clocking it at around 7 hours and I painted him in a single sitting so was getting pretty burned out by the end.
Finally we closed out the set with another huge monstrosity, this is the Reaper.
This octopedal spectre of death was painted in two sessions and I feel like I could improve him by adding some texture to the tentacles and suckers, but I also feel like I would be adding another 4 hours of work for myself and I'm happy enough with him as is.
Imperial Assault
With Massive Darkness done I quickly dived in to a galaxy far far away to paint the Grand Inquisitor. This was last outstanding mini for Imperial Assault in my collection so I wanted to get him painted while I had a gap.
A fairly straightforward paint job overall, but nice and clean. That also brings me to 172 completed minis for Imperial Assault with only one available that I don't own, the Alliance Smuggler.
Marvel United X-Men
And with that little detour done it was time to dive into Marvel United. Having painted everything last year I was fully aware that this was not going to be a quick project to complete. There are over 100 new minis, some of them at nearly a foot tall. My average for a Marvel United mini last year was in the region of 4 hours so this was going to be a significant chunk of my painting time.
I decided to start with the Fantastic Four. My reasoning was two fold, firstly my little brother loves the F4 and Doom in particular. Secondly, I had already made the decision that I wasn't going to paint everything in one go, but rather spread it out across the year, so the F4 felt like a nice standalone project that I could start and finish in a week and get some closure on it, rather than the X-Men which are spread across multiple boxes.
I think they all turned out fabulously, but I am particularly happy with Surfer. With that box done, I jumped straight into Deadpool, with a similar reasoning that the characters in that box are nicely self contained. I didn't finish Deadpool in April but I did manage three of them.
We have Evil Deadpool, Hero Deadpool and Bob. With Evil Deadpool I deliberately went with a darker colour palette, with an almost washed out look to the base. Bob is my least favourite so far, I really struggled getting the greens to come together, my paints were being particularly awkward. Hero Deadpool was a return to form for me, much brighter and he really pops on the table.
And that's everything for April, the total for the month was 23, still down on where I need to be to meet my pledge goal, but there were several pieces that took multiple days to finish. The running total for the year stands at 92 and with one third of the year already gone, my aim of 350 in 2022 is looking less and less likely.
Join us next month for a look at what I painted in May including the conclusion of the Deadpool box and the arrival of a new clan in Kagejima.
Until then, have fun painting.
The Duke
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