Busted

Johnson's Greens getting ready to cross the border for a raid on Portland in May. Huzzah! 

Well its official. I am no longer a "painter". This isn't news but I thought it might be just a phase. Its not that I used to do amazing work, its that I used to enjoy the process of trying to do the best, most interesting figures possible with just the right shading and highlighting colors and contrast,  sharp lines and detail  etc, now it all feels like a chore rather than relaxing fun. 

Probably this is partly physical as even with my special painting glasses I have issues,  for example I was dotting the eyes and found that my depth of field was so narrow that I could focus on the eye socket or the tip of the brush which was a mm away but not on both! Add in the occasional hand twitch at inconvenient moments and the frustration mounts. When you consider that once done, any subtleties are lost on me at arms length while harsh contrasts still look ugly and there is no after joy to compensate, especially since I don't really care if the figure is precisely accurate in every detail for a particular moment in history. 

Luckily I still enjoy painting bright,  cheery toy soldiers and this ties into the next two things I'm busted on. I haven't lost my interest in history despite not reading anywhere near as much as I used to and I  still play games set vaguely into an historical context and even the occasional historical refight but my interest in using wargames as a means to explore history continues to wain to the point where I'm not really comfortable calling myself an Historical Wargamer anymore despite not yet finding an appropriate label to replace it.

All of which brings me to the realization two weeks ago that I am off track on my hobby plans and heading farther off if I don't do something.  In particular my planned 40mm early mid19thC Atlantica collection has been badly neglected over the last year as I turned to other things  including later 19thC while I floundered on direction on the main collection. At times it seemed  I  was ready to  do anything except follow the plan. One side effect has been a splintering of  toy soldier eras and continued expansion of chunky non toy historical collections. Since time, space, money and energy are limited this has become a problem. 

After two weeks of pondering and exploration of possibilities I have decided that overall the plan was good and that I just need to tighten up. This will probably mean some retraction and limits on the other horse & musket eras and probably an effort to sell as many of the chunky 1812 40's as possible but I hope to get  going again on something other than yet more line units in incompatible uniforms from yet another period.

The 40mm AWI might just go as well,  but not until after I run a game at Huzzah!  Maybe right after if someone brings cash!