So, contrary to what I said to my spouse, I have decided to enter this years Analogue painting challenge. It was a last minute decision to enter but, thankfully, made the same day that entries were being accepted. So I got in with a commitment of 2000 points. The challenge was filled very very quickly, maybe 36 hours and done that was quick!
So why did I not want to participate and why am I? Well this will be my third go at it and quite frankly last years event just drained me. You see, I have a bit of a bad competitive streak in me, something that I try to keep suppressed, because, well, I am a bit of a bastard when I get in that mode. For the painting challenge it meant that I basically tortured myself in an attempt to max out my painting production and in so doing maxing out gained points. I leveraged the score sheet to drive me forward, not entirely to 'beat' other painters (after all this is not a competition) but striving to reach the top meant that I was painting a lot of stuff, reducing that mountain of primed stuff. This might make me sound like a dick, I hope not. My best analogy is that when I play squash I cannot just rally, we have to keep track of the score. Without that scoring I will not give it my all, I will not race across court to make crazy shots etc. But, once the game is over I do not remember the score and when we have finished playing for the day I have not knowledge of how many games I played or what the score was in any given game. It was only important at the time, in the game, as a motivator to make me try harder. Same thing goes for the challenge.
First year that I participated (challenge XII) my goal was 1500 points I achieved 6072 points. For challenge XIII my target was 3000 and I was able to reach 4778. I am actually hoping that this year I will stay closer to my target, it would be less stressful. My first two challenges meant many late nights/early mornings and long grueling painting sessions. They were killers.
However this year I have found some more people to game with, which should have an impact on my painting availability. Then again gaming also inspires me to paint more stuff. It may be an interesting three months.
This years theme is a library which should offer lots of squirrel opportunities although I have a couple of 'big' projects that I would like to focus on, namely Never mind the Billhooks (28mm) and a Halfling army for Fantastic Battles. Both will need lots of prepping so I better go off and start building those Perry and Max Mini figures.
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