Monday, May 26, 2014

Spring Cleaning, Fritz Style








My cleaning, prepping and terraining desk. Before clean up.


When you are in a painting funk, such as the likes that I have not seen in a long while, what can one do to further the hobby and be productive in some fashion? The answer is to look for alternative things to do such as terraining the bases of figures that you have ignored for too long, or cleaning and priming some figures to have on hand for the inevitable day when you break out of your painting funk, work on some terrain pieces, or....

Clean up your work area! The dreaded "before" picture is shown at the top of the page, while the "after" picture is shown below.

The "after" picture. It looks much better.
Actually, the above "after" picture still requires a little more work on the left hand side of the work area, but for all practicle purposes, the table is cleared of the clutter and is ready for some serious work. Note, I paint at a different table, but more on that at another time.

Now I finally feel like actually doing some work, now that my work area is picked up. It is kind of depressing to work in a 12-square inches space, surrounded by mangled castings with arms and heads chopped off, or half assembled cannon and limbers. When Burnham Wood is closing in on you, you don't feel like working, but rather, you feel like running away to hide.


I doubt that I will have much more time over the remainder of this Memorial Day weekend, but the painting area, reading area and game table area will be next on my list of things to clean up.

The painting table, as shown a year or two ago. Things are back to this state again.


It seems like the game table looks nice about 30% of the time and then it looks more like a repository for junk the other 70% of the time. I half expect the crew from the American Pickers television show to show up at my door asking if they can "pick" through all of my junk. When that happens, well... you know that it is a sad day in your wargaming life.

There must be some irrefutible law of physics that says that junk and clutter will always seek to fill the vacuum of an empty game table. You KNOW that this is true.

The gaming area and table are a disaster. Again, an older picture, but this gives you an idea of how things look today. Not a good thing.
This is how it should look, when I am on top of my game.

My reading area, in better times.
Now having looked at the last two pictures above, I feel a little bit of inspiration coming on to clean up the rest of the basement game room. The painting can wait for another day. I suspect that part of my painting funk is due to all of the clutter, so once I clean up the rest of the room, just watch battalion after battalion of figures come flying off of my brushes.

I hope that you are all having a happy Memorial Day weekend. Do pause for a moment and give thanks to all of those who served in any country so that the rest of us can lead peaceful, normal and happy lives.


10 comments:

  1. Now correct me if I am wrong, Fritz, but I was not aware that Neiman-Marcus carried the Woodland Scenics line of terrain materials. ;-)

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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  2. Indeed! The laws of physics DO hold on the gaming table.

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  3. Fritz:

    If you have any spare time, you might want to hang the pictures too!

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  4. I like the before pictures. How are supposed to find anything now, when it's all put up? Your just going to have to pull it all out again.

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  5. Mal: look at the second picture from the bottom. You will see that all of the pictures have been hung in that one (hint: it was shot later than the picture at the end :) )

    Fritz

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  7. I like the map of Virginia you have on the wall.

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  8. Entropy, it's not just a good idea, it's the LAW.

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  9. A tiday workspace, an excellent gaming area and a comfy chair for reading.
    What more to whish?
    ;-)

    Cheers
    Stefan

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  10. Very nice game room. I can see your painting area. Mike Schundler who now lives in San Clemente California just sold me a lot of RSM SYW Russian infantry and guns which used to belong to you and were painted by you. We had our first battle today using Black Powder rules. I am happy to say your Russians acquitted themselves very well.

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