Mayday, m’aider#

Another May day, another May dollar? Anyway, another month in the painting books. This time I did specifically clock my painting time from the beginning of the month, as mentioned here but more on that later.

Pick it up x3#

I finally managed to finish the starting lineup for the Skaville Skablins, completing the Bomma, Doom Diver, and Pogo back to back to back. I say starting lineup, because there’s room on the roster for a second Troll, but a second troll was never part of the initial team build.

Skablins Bomma, Jeff Rosenstock

Skablins Doom Diver, Catch “22” Passes

Skablins Pogo, Kay “Moonstompa” Leb

Like I said, that’s the starting lineup all done. I even grassed and lined the whole crew. Don’t they look great? This is the most painted a Blood Bowl I’ve ever had (which is a low bar).

A second troll has hit the tower is being worked on but is not in a show-off state yet. The sizzle reel will wait until it’s finished. Once that’s done and the Skablins are good and truly finished, I’ll probably go back around to finishing my Lizards, then move on to my other teams (Wood Elves for season 3??).

Mark it zero#

Oh and I painted one of the team tracker markers for the Goblins. It aint’ much but it’s honest work. I did put it on a 32mm stand so it wouldn’t fall off the score tracker like these always seem to do, but that also makes it take up more room in my case. Not sure if I’d recommend.

τ#

Moving on from Blood Bowl (you never truly can) I also finished two Tau Breachers. These things have been on my desk since like Q3 2025 and I’m still working on the 10 model squad. They’re not bad to paint, they just keep being pushed down the priority list.

I’d show you a picture of the second one but it’s the same as the first.

As I work on these I’m still trying to perfect the pin washing line filler process. I’ve moved on from Tamiya Panel Liner for a couple of reasons, chief being I didn’t care for the enamel base ruining my brushes and possibly my acrylic paintjob. Right now it’s an ongoing experiment with contrast paint and water/contrast medium. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

30 minutes or less#

(And immediately we return to Blood Bowl.) Finally, the last thing painted was a real wildcard. Initially a test of some new FDM printer settings for miniatures, this little character soon became a “Biff the Understudy” type of fill-in as I tried to figure out how to make use of it in a game. To be fair, it was listed as a Blood Bowl proxy online, but it never stated what for. Anyway, I present to you, Mr. Pizzarino.

As I don’t yet have any proper Star Player models, Mr. Pizzarino will be filling in on the off-chance I’ll be using one. He’ll play any and all parts. And as it currently stands where I’ll have 180,000 gp petty cash for my next game in the Blood Bowl league, he may be seeing some use, as a night goblin or a very aggressive squirrel.

Numbers numbers numbers#

And now the charts. Here’s the list for May:

Obviously the GP value of Mr Pizzarino changes depending on who it is subbing in for, and I had already done the math to accomidate the 10 linesplayers from the standard Goblin box, so I marked the marker as a zero value (as I likely will for the balls and coins when I get to painting those) so overall it’s a low-value month.

Blood Bowl still has a solid lead. The few models on the board that 40k put up this month didn’t do much for how far behind that category is. The three BB models only put up a combined $45 though so nothing major in the retail column either.

As you can see in the per-month chart, this month is down pretty significantly in retail value, but a slight increase over the last couple months. Not enough to be a major outlier thought, so the “5 models a month” still seems pretty accurate.

In these two charts really the only movement is in the Blood Bowl category - 5 models and fourty-five dollars. The retail chart is really making things cramped down on the lower end of the scale. Pretty soon anything not BB and not fantasy won’t be readable. It’s also interesting that while the model-count chart jumps somewhat sporadically for each category, under retail the BB category is pretty much a straight line (to the moon).

In fact, looking at this brand new chart I made just for this occassion, other than the first month to the second, all the monthly additions to the BB category have been very consistent. That’s Blood Bowl for you - nothing unexpected happens ever, at all, no siree.

You run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking#

So as mentioned wayyy at the top, this month I took stock of how much time I spent painting and hobbying. Because stats are fun, or something. Since the app I use (Brushrage) is meant for commision projects (I believe), I categorized everything under a super-project for the month of May, and broke it out into further categories in order to keep painting separate from building, etc.

So ultimately, during the month of May I painted for just about twenty-one and a half hours. Slightly over half a standard work week. The majority of that time was painting (17hr59m or about 83% of total) as I really only built one model this month, the second BB Troll (which was largely a kitbash project). The “Other hobbying” in this case was mostly base rimming, grassing, and line painting on the BB model bases. I counted priming as painting for the sake of argument.

However, you might be asking yourself, “Why Coding, what is that Contest - Devilfish category? We haven’t seen you talk about a Devilfish yet.” Well, just like I talked about last month or technically even before that, I tried taking part in a local monthly painting contest. And like I mentioned even further back I wanted to try logging my time on the contest model specifically. Beacuse again, stats are fun or something.

The long and the short of it (the average of it?) is I probably bit off more than I could chew with this contest selection. Not only did I select a Tau Devilfish, which, for the uninitiated, is a whole ass vehicle (and I’ve never painted a vehicle before), but this was also probably a bad month to attempt to do this. Our school system got out for the summer the third week of May, before Memorial Day, which means my painting time is/was significantly hampered and I pretty much lost a week of painting oppertunities.

So I have to mark that one down as a DNF as far as the contest goes. I do still plan on finishing the model, probably within the next month, because I feel like I’m in the back half of it, progress-wise, and I know if I don’t finish it now it will languish on my painting table forever and never get done.

The final piece of data is the stat breakdown for my time-keeping. Some of it isn’t super helpful, such as Total This Week, as I don’t really care on a week by week basis. But the number of days and monthly average are fun. The paint sessions recorded reinforces something I already knew - I tend to sit down and paint multiple times in a day instead of a single long session. In fact, on the 27 days I did paint, I averaged between 4 and 5 sitdowns. Sometimes more!

The Average This Month bit doesn’t quite reflect that, as that’s the total time (on average) for a day instead of a sit down - my sit down sessions are probably 5-15 minutes at a time, but I do it enough times a day to average about 45 minutes of painting a day.

Okay I lied, this is the last last bit. The unfinished business I’m carrying over into the next month, like how Casper stuck around just to slowdance with a girl he knew for like a week or something. I keep saying I’ll finish the Tau Commander, but I totally, really will finish the Devilfish. Then you’ll see those 40k points jump all over the charts. Then you’ll see.

If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.