Expanding the Mind

After the last post, I had a good think about what to do with The Wandering Mind. I don't really want to pack it all in and just move elsewhere. This blog has been part of my life for about 8 years now, so there was no way I'd just leave it to die off.

I was chatting to a friend last night who does online promotion and he suggested running the Blog alongside a Facebook page and Twitter account, with link-backs and clickthroughs and a load of technical sounding jargon which I didn't entirely take in. I think the word 'diversify' came up several times as well.

Anyway, the upshot of the conversation is that I've decided to launch a Facebook page for the Wandering Mind to run alongside the Blog, allowing me to reach out to more of the hobby community, whilst still maintaining the core blog. I'm also planning to shake up the content I'm producing a little bit, with conversion articles, battle reports and news items being weaved inbetween my usual posts about my lack of painting progress, which on reflection my posts have become a little to focussed on recently.

Those of you who are long-time readers of the Mind may remember this will take the blog back to being closer to what it used to be when I first started running it back in the heady days of 5th edition 40k. This should hopefully help keep me a little more motivated hobby-wise, as well as producing content that's a little more interesting for you guys to read too.

The Facebook page is at: https://www.facebook.com/The-Wandering-Mind-147458422442817/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel , so check it out, let me know what you think of my plans and (hopefully) invite your friends to read and like it. I'm really looking forward to this new direction the Mind is about to take.

Musings on the Mind

Looking back on my recent posts, I've realised that I haven't had a comment on any of my posts for the last six months and before that comments were really few and far between. This is a little depressing and pretty disheartening. Whilst I didn't start this blog expecting to gain a massive following, it's nice to know someone is listening and get a little feedback on what I'm doing.

This might be part of the reason why it's been so hard for me to stay focussed and see projects through to completion these days. Feedback on what I do has always been a huge motivator for me and without it, it's hard to stay 'in the zone' for hobby productivity.

I still post my stuff on Facebook groups and forums and get decent responses on there, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with my blog. I think I might need to have a good think on how and where I post up my hobby projects. I'm thinking of moving everything over to social media groups.

Of course, I might still have a regular readership, they're just not commenting for some reason. If you're there, leave a comment and let  me know!

Either way, there might be big changes ahead for the Wandering Mind. Watch this space.

Progress, Progress, Progress and a possible setback...

My painting progress is continuing at an excellent pace. As February turns into March, I've already painted more than I did in the entirety of last year, so obviously I'm very happy with how my painting points system is working out.

There is a threat to my progress on the horizon though. A friend of mine is selling some of his Elysians. They've been my dream army for a long time, but way out of my price range. This friend is selling them for a ridiculously good price though, so I can't really say no. Of course, 1500 points of Elysians will put a massive dent in my painting points total in the wrong direction. I have a plan though.

I'm going to cheat.

Well, not exactly cheat, but just start being extremely strategic in what I paint in order to offset the points which I'm about to lose. You see I have a lot of stuff which is either half finished or can be finished very quickly and easily to net me some easy points, so I'm going to focus on getting those finished up over the next couple of weeks.

These include:

•  The two White Scars Bikers I started a few weeks back -  4 pts
• My half-finished Corsairs unit - 20 pts
• The Sons of Horus Whirlwind Scorpius I've had stripped for repainting for ages - 10 pts
• 2 Dreadclaws for my Sons of Horus which have been half finished for a few years now -20pts
• A few single characters I've been meaning to finish up, which should net me a quick 5 points each
• My two Thousand Sons Contemptors -20pts

As you can see this will give me 80-90 points without too much effort, which should nicely offset what I'm buying. Hopefully I'll get round to painting the Elysians so quickly that it won't matter too much, but at the same time I'm aware of how easily I get distracted. I know some of you will argue that I shouldn't worry so much, but I'm taking my hobby pledges very seriously this year. Just looking at what I've managed to get done this year so far, this extra nudge of motivation is clearly doing it's job! 

So with this in mind, I started working on these guys last night:

 This guy's an idea for a Sons of Horus Lodge Master/ Chaplain/ Lupercii Chieftan I've been thinking abut for a while. The moost common comment I seem to get on him is that he looks a little too chaotic to be a Heresy-era model, but my force is set in the Siege of Terra/ Scouring era, so I think he works nicely, considering that's the point when the traitors really started to go off the rails.

He's nowhere near done yet unfortunately, but really it's just detailing and working on the base which needs to be done, so he shouldn't take too long. He's also serving as a tester for my new method of painting the green for my SoH armour. I'm rather liking the effect, especially as it's much quicker than my old method, so I'm really happy with how this chap's coming along.

On the other hand, this guy is done to the stage where I'm feeling comfortable enough to claim the points for him, once I've pianted the edge of the base. He started just as a one-off piece to make use of the Greigor Fell-Hand (or Not-Bjorn as I like to call him!) model I got in the Prospero box, but he might end up turning into a small contingent of traitor Space Wolves, as I love the concept and enjoyed painting this guy so much. That's for a point in the future when Idon't have so many unfinished models knocking about though.

I also started this guy:

I wasn't intending on making any progress on my Harlequins at all for a while, but I found the Death Jester I got in Death Masque at the bottom of my sprues box whilst I was digging around for Greigor, so I figured I might as well start on him too. Considering it only took me about half an hour to get to this stage, I'm really glad I made that choice. It's such a nice model, both in terms of looks and ease of painting. It's so nice in fact, that that my desire to get a display shelf to show off off these one-off pieces is really intensifying. I'll have to see what money I have spare after buying the Elysians I think.

I'll post more soon!