STILL ALIVE!

Hello to all who have followed my blog in the past - and apologies for my prolonged absence.

I just wanted to announce that I intend to return to blogging soon (in about a month or so) and explain my absence.  When I last posted in late May of last year, I was about to embark upon painting my Dark Angels army.  I expected to have it finished by the end of the summer - but no plan survives contact with the enemy, so to speak, and  Life Happened.

First major change was leaving my old job.  I planned to take the summer off to spend time with the family and catch up on my painting.  My savings were sufficient to allow for that, but after an unexpected family medical emergency, I was left with no choice but to sell my Space Wolf and Dark Angels armies (and most of my gaming books) to cover those expenses.

As you can imagine, this left me with little to paint - but more significantly, it kind of really crushed my desire to do any painting.  Even looking at my work area reminded me of what I had to give up, and that was very sad and hard to face.

I begin a new job next week - and I'll be earning about 25% more than I ever have before.  This should allow me to get back into a small 40K army.  I was uncertain of what faction to pick up - I considered Tau because I like the look of all the robotic suits... but I know little about them.  The new Space Wolves models look amazing but I'm honestly sick of painting that blue-grey and I don't want to have to buy all the books.  Likewise with the Dark Angels - great options and the Deathwing are still among my favorites, but it's time for something different!

After some consideration, I've decided to go with Crimson Fists.  A Codex Space Marine Chapter will let me use all the nifty models that the SW or DA might not have access to.  I love the Imperial Fists Chapter Tactics, but I've never been good at painting yellow!  But I did paint up a Pedro Kantor last summer and I love that Prussian Blue, and the contrast with the Crimson gloves and trim.

My Plan is to pick up a Demi-Company box to begin, adding only a Sternguard Squad and a box of Sniper Scouts to begin with.  In fact, the latter two squads may be my first purchases, as I can use them in the Kill Team games we have been playing recently.

Also, last summer I picked up a Nikon CoolPix S7000 digital camera.  It's got all the features that I wanted for miniature photography.  It's more stable, has a better macro mode, better white balance and contrast, and in short is far and above the crummy camera on my HTC One M7.  As I didn't sell any of the models I'd already painted, perhaps I'll spend some time taking better pictures with it and the Foldio - and perhaps I'll buy one of the larger new Foldio 2's with the brighter strips, dimmers and diffusers this year!

So, to sum it all up - things happened, but I'm back and looking forward to resuming my painting and blogging to share my experiences with you!  Thanks for being a loyal reader!