And whither then? I cannot say

It's been quite a while since I last posted, this being largely due to work being incredibly busy and a house move, which whilst now completed leaves me with lots of 1:1 scale painting.  It was during this house move, that I decided to rescind my vehemently held embargo on varnishing models.

The catalyst for the original decision was one, I'm sure, familiar to many gamers.  Picture this scene if you will - a young gamer full of the quiet satisfaction of a job well done, having spent fifty or so hours painting eight of the older metal and plastic Ellyrian Reavers from Games Workshop, picking up a new tin of Purity Seal Matt varnish with the intent of protecting the hard won paint job, and then promptly stuffing it up by giving them a lovely frosted Yuletide effect.  When I had recovered my sensibilities enough to think coherently, I vowed never to spray varnish again - I'd just be careful with my models.

This worked quite well for a number of years, but no matter how careful I was (and I'm borderline neurotic when it comes to the welfare of my collection) some of the metal models invariably ended up chipped.  I have discovered a solution that, hopefully someone might find useful - though it is more time consuming than spray varnish.  I brush on two thin coats of GW's 'Ard coat (I have some Vallejo gloss varnish - the newer formulation), followed by one (two, if necessary) coats of Vallejo matt varnish.  The coats of gloss before the matt seem to preserve the lustre of the paint job - at least to my mind.  The first batch that I varnished in this manner survived being handled by a group of teenage D&D players for six months without so much a blemish.

At some point during the move, I decided to revisit all of my painted armies and give them a coat of varnish.  As this blog was, in part, designed to catalogue my painting efforts, it'll be nice to have pictures of them somewhere.  A lot of the models date back to around 2000 and are all GW models, so over the next few months I'll be posting pictures of stuff painted long ago amongst the new stuff.

Anyway, I digress...may I present my uncle Tommy.  This is the last in the BDD Dungeon Adventurers set from Citadel back in the 80s, and I've always thought that (apart from the muscles and loincloth) he bears a striking resemblance to my uncle.  In the eighties, my uncle sported a Lemmy style moustache and sideburns, later transforming into a moustache independent of his ears, both styles of face furniture accompanied by long hair.  The last time I saw my uncle, just two years ago, he had the same haircut - classics are classics for a reason!