Raising the Bar

This year has proved to be an interesting one hobby-wise for me on many levels. A solid return to the hobby after too-long spent playing online in the World of Warcraft has been lots of fun.

I spent the first part of the year creating my ogres with Caius for the Team Tournament. At Adepticon, I got to handle most of the Rogue Demon entries and was both blown away and inspired by the talent evidenced on those minis. During the day, I browse tons of websites / blogs and I am in general inspired by the depth of talent in our hobby.

I have been planning on attending the Chicago Games Day and entering my Wood Elf army into Armies on Parade. I don't expect them to be the best painted army in the competition but I do expect them to be very competitive thematically.

I now think it's time I created some entries for the Golden Demon painting contest. I have wanted to enter for quite some time now but I am always very doubtful of my abilities. I think the only way I will ever progress to the next level is to seriously try and compete. So, I begin the process of raising the bar I set for myself and creating at least one entry for the Golden Demons.

I have been scouring the web over the last few days, reading tutorials, reviewing demon winning models, and bookmarking as many preparation-sculpting-painting-basing articles as I can.

I have some ideas of models I would like to use and will begin the selection process shortly. I am both nervous and excited about the prospects of starting down this path and look forward to painting out of my comfort zone. I am going to be fairly transparent on my first attempts and reaching out to as many great painters as I can for advice throughout this process. I will detail my choices and progress here. All comments / advice will be welcomed.

Couple this with a couple of other ongoing hobby projects (Touching up my WE, a New Base for my WE and starting my DE army), and a ton of HoneyDo's around the house and my plate will be quite full.