Quarterly Review

I've been looking at how I use my hobby time this year, and trying a different approach. I'm choosing small, discreet mini projects and interspersing them with my 'Palette Cleansers', randomly selected Reaper Bones minis. I'm deliberately switching topics each time I start a mini project, there may be an overall theme, and I'll return to themes, often to paint another unit, but I'm never doing the same thing from mini project to mini project.

There are several reasons why I've chosen this approach, it stops me obsessing too much on one thing to the point of burn-out and the thought of a new project can sometimes give me the impetus to finish the current one. There's no room for part finished abandoned stuff in this system.

In many ways it's similar to the Five Box System I used previously, but it became too easy to leave a box, meaning to get back to it, but never quite doing so. Either something shinier came along, or I lacked the motivation to complete. The Trident Realm is a great example of this.

I hope to return to the Five Box system later this year but I'm not ready for it yet.

So how has my new approach worked? 

Ten 28mm Star Wars minis

Eleven Reaper Bones minis (some of which were completed rather than painted up from scratch)

Twenty nine 20mm Star Wars minis and three Tatooine style buildings

Twenty three Space Orcs

Whilst this isn't much compared to some (Bodvoc is churning out many more over on The War Crow, and the phenomenal Eric the Shed clearly has superhuman painting speed), it's pretty good for me. I've also kept a fairly constant pace, managing to get some painting done every week. Most importantly, I've been enjoying it again so I'm definitely sticking with this approach for now.

I've got another 20mm Tatooine building to finish, a bit fancier this time, along with more scatter terrain, and I've begun the next Palette Cleanser. After that I'm not sure. Perhaps some fantasy?