Project 64: paint like it's ya day job

I was thinking about this as I was walking along the beach at Dongara last weekend.

'See, I have made a start already'*.

Now with red bits done, plus a bit more white on about half of them.

(*Julian and I were joking the other day about comparing ourselves to David Essex's artilleryman character in Jeff Wayne's version of "War of the Worlds").

Like most people, I assume, I have generally fitted in hobby activities when time and motivation allowed. Painting being a sub-set of this. Now that I have the opportunity to commit more time to it I want to have a bit of structure so that I don't waste the opportunity. Setting up 'painting time' seems a logical way to do this.

How much time could I reasonably commit? How can I set boundaries to 'control myself' with the hobby obsession and ensure that I get on with other things that I want and need to do? Or, the corollary, make sure that I make some hobby time and don't have weeks of 'drought' on the hobby front? I settled on trying to 'schedule' a couple of hours in the late afternoon.

I then did some calculations.

I should be able to do this for a minimum of three days a week. Of course, this will not happen for 52 weeks of a year. We regularly get heat waves in summer when the paint dries before you can get it on the figure. On the other side, while our winters are mild compared with what northern hemisphere bloggers experience, there are days, especially cold mornings or evenings/nights when I don't feel like going to my shed. Let's take off four weeks each for these. Leaves 44. I want this to be a minimum calculation, so round down to 40.

That's 6 x 40 = 240 hours. Bringing it back to the working analogy, it equates to six weeks of five days of eight hours each. Six solid working weeks of painting. Not something that I'd like to do, but sounds like a significant block of time, especially as a minimum estimate.

This is specifically for painting. I am not considering reading, planning, compiling orders of battle, games, figure prep., ...looking at other's blogs!

Of course, plans, like budgets, are always wrong, but the thinking involved in developing them is important to focus attention and realise limitations. This is no exception.

Last week was a case in point. We were still away in Dongara on Monday, so I was able to have some longer painting sessions than I would generally allow myself at home (aside from when I have and will do 'binge painting' to complete something). Still, forgetting Monday, it went reasonably to plan/budget. I managed about 3–4 hours over Wednesday and Thursday, none on Friday and Saturday, but 'treated myself' to a couple of two-hour sessions yesterday. So, a bit more than the minimum target of six hours per week.

Ah, but I like to consider that the week begins on Sunday, so last week was either under target, if I exclude the 'bonus' time while in Dongara, or heaps over target if I do. Nothing like confusing one's self with one's own propaganda!

We'll see what (the rest of) this week brings...

These figs are the most advanced, with red, white and blue done. I aim to get the others to this stage (at least) this week, which will leave the significant additions of brown, black (silver and bronze/gold), followed by details (buttons and so on) and touch-ups.