A Painting Blitz - Paintkrieg?

I don't know what has possessed me, but as of Saturday morning I had a bee in my bonnet to add one more unit of Prussian infantry before the Big Game with only one week to go. What am I thinging??? The target unit will be IR25 Kalckstein and I will use the relatively new Elite Miniatures 28mm Prussian in march attack pose. The choice is somewhat influenced by the fact that this is the only unit that was already in primer, so that will save me some valuable time.

I figure that each figure takes about an hour of painting time, so that is 60 hours of work over the next 6 days. I have to have the unit completed by thursday, so as to have enough time to terrain the bases and make movement trays. I know that this is insane, but I'm going to give it a go. Wish me luck. Obviously, I can't spend 10 hours a day painting figures, so I will have to take some shortcuts and paint these guys to "tabletop standard" rather than to my usual highe standards. This means cutting back on details such as brass buttons on the gaiters, maybe less highlighting or less than good job painting the muskets. I really don't like to paint muskets.

I'm not going to post the ubiquitous photos or "here they are all lined up ready to paint" or "here they are with the white bits painted on", etc. I may post a picture of the samples that I previously painted at a later time this week, but blogging time takes away from my painting time.

Through Monday morning, I had spend about 9 hours total time on the 60 figures. I have the blue coats, red facings and white pants and crossbelts all blocked in . They look really cruddy so far. This morning I blocked in the brown bits: hair, muskets and packs and am currently taking a break from the gun metal on the musket and canteen. Once the muskets are done, then all of the tedious "blocking in of basic colors" will be completed and then I can get to the fun part of applying the highlights. This is what brings the figure to life and I find this part of the painting much, much more enjoyable. Well, that's all for now. I will update this post later today.

Monday Evening Update
I put about four hours of painting in so far today. Luckily I have the day off from work for Columbus Day, so this has given me more painting time. I find that it helps to paint for about an hour, and then take a 30 minute break before hitting the painting table again. I've made really good progress and there is a possibility that the battalion might be completed by tomorrow night. Today I finished the muskets and added some brown highlights on the musket stocks, hair and backpack. I also did the red highlights on the facings, the light blue drybrushing on the coat, and had just started on the eyes and the white highlights before dinner and bedtime stories with the little one. I took an hour break this afternoon to go grasshopper hunting with my daughter. It was a warm day and the bugs were aplenty in the nearby field, so we caught 4 grasshoppers. Not bad for a day's work. More later this evening.

Monday Evening - Part Two

It's nearly midnight and I am putting the brushes down for the evening. I logged about 6 hours of painting today, but no more than 90 minutes at any one time. So there were lots of breaks in between painting sessions. The 50 rank and file men are nearly completed. They still need some flesh highlights, the tricorn lace (not easy to paint on these particular Elite figures, IMHO), the brass and the musket strap. Then they will be done. The 10 officers, standard bearers and drummers, in aggregate, have a lot more work yet today. I've been sort of ignoring them after blocking in the basic colors. So far, I've invested 14 hours of painting over the last three days. Now I'm thinking that the total time will be closer to 24 - 30 hours rather than 60 hours. That is still a lot of time spent at the painting table. Will this burn me out on painting? Probably it will, but with the Big Game on Saturday, my guess is that the game itself will burn me out on painting more so than the work I'm doing now. There is always a bit of a let down after a big convention style game.