The first post to a blog is usually a pretty tedious affair, introducing the blogger and maybe discussing some plans for what the blog will be about. I suppose I could buck the trend and jump right into a post with some substance, but why break with tradition?
My introduction to painting miniatures came at an early age. I was about five years old when my parents bought me a set of lead dinosaurs, which puts it at around 1980. The set came with a starter paint set and brushes, so I dutifully followed the instruction sheet that came in the box and painted them up. As I recall, I followed the suggested colors for the bulk of the models, but got creative with the tyrannosaur and gave it a brown and gray mottled pattern. I still have a couple of those models today, although most of the paint has long since worn off.
I had a few Dungeons and Dragons books then, although it would be a few years before I was able to grasp the concepts of the game. By the time I was eight or nine, though, I was a D&D junkie, a condition that worsened and persisted until my late teens, with a few recurrences through my twenties. Along with the One True Game, I played lots of other fantasy and SF games, most of them of the role-playing variety but several miniature wargames as well.
I've only recently come back to the hobby, if one discounts the occasional figure painted for kicks. Some of my musings may seem hopelessly out of date to younger hobbyists or to those who never left - The only edition of Warhammer 40K I'm familiar with is the first, for example - but hopefully you'll find something of interest here.
My main areas of interest are fantasy and SF miniatures, and I'm most drawn to older figures (pre-1990 in the main). I have a couple of projects in the works right now, including building a few different fantasy and SF armies which range in size from modest warbands for skirmish games to huge armies which will ultimately consist of hundreds of models. I'm also working on painting all of my old, unpainted figures, touching up and basing those models which are salvageable, and stripping and repainting those that are not. So there should be lots of stuff to read on here as these progress, assuming I can maintain the energy to document and write about all of this while I'm doing it!
