Back again - with a teaser

Real life has been a bitch for some time but things seem to settle now, perhaps not the optimal way but at least with much more free time.
Nothing is more pathetic then apologize for your absence on your OWN blog, isn't it?
Anyway, I started a new project that pretty much grown on me. A lot of work, but hopefully a most rewarding result. Can you guess what this WIP part belong to?

More pictures and an in depth progress report is coming down the road later this week.

Coolest birthday present

I just turned 36 and see what I got from my stepdaughter Viki:

Cool, ain't it? I was wandering why she borrowed one of the little guys...

First entry

All stories must begin somewhere. My little affair with wargaming - or rather with miniature painting started in the mid eighties, when I gotten involved in serious roleplaying, and a I borrowed a copy of TSR's Battle System Rulebook. I was amazed. The problem was that metal miniatures were impossible to buy in my native Hungary, and we had to travel to Vienna even for a D20. (Fortunately we could at least travel, contrary to other countries in the Eastern Block...)

Since no suitable minis were available, I tried my best with 1:72 Revell plastic figures and awful enamel paints. Predictably the results were humiliating - I have them somewhere in the basement so I may show something to laugh at sometime.

Since my wargaming needs were not met with equal zeal by my friends, somehow the painter in me fell into a temporal stasis, where it stayed for the best part of the nineties and the early zeroes.

I fell back to business in 2000 when I painted some Blood Bowl teams. It was easier then, literature and the net was available, at least I had a basic concept of painting, and the results were pleasing at the time.

The real breakthrough came recently about a year ago. I work as a business consultant you see; and have 4 kids (2+2 technically, anyway) all girls. I think it is plain to all of you that obviously I need a hobby to kill stress... So, I paint, but I don't play, and it suits me right. My stuff usually gets assembled, converted, pimped up, painted, marveled by a forgiving wife, saved from eager two-year-olds, and carefully packed in boxes in the basement. May sound strange, but I love it this way.

Now of this blog. I'm the kind of the guy who likes to find the best method for everything; learn from other people, tutorials and the like. I thought, there might be others who think similarly, and I may have stuff that worth sharing.

In the days to come you will have tutorials and showcases in conversions, painting, decal and symbol design, magnetizing and resin casting. I do a lot of these, custom made shoulder pads, ornaments and the like, you will see.

I hope it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship... :-)