Never Give Up

With the lockdown, like many of you, I resolved to make good use of the extra time. No places to go, no baseball games to run, no scout activities to go to, no school events to attend, no RPGs to attend. We all had more time at home. Perfect opportunity to, finally, get to painting all those minis we have sitting around.

Of course, also like most of you, I didn’t touch them. I meant to. The paint was right there near the table. I even cleaned off the countertop so it wasn’t buried anymore. We’ve introduced the Harry Potter series to my son and have been listening to the audiobooks. Those aren’t short. Perfect time to paint while listening to an audiobook.

Eventually, near June my son decided he wanted to run an Imperial Assault campaign. He really wanted to be the Imperials. As this is a great gateway to RPG’s I jumped on that and we started a campaign. After running the first mission, I looked at my poor lifeless heroes and resolved make good on painting them.

So the next time we turned Harry Potter on (on Goblet of Fire already, which is when things really get long) I dragged out the paints and got started. I was playing Biv, Loku, Saska and MHD. A nice variety of characters and a blessed change from the plethora of stormtroopers I had painted before.  I brought up Sorastro’s guide, saw I didn’t have all the correct colors but, feeling adventurous, went on my own with plans for substitutions and alterations.

Spend a day or two painting them up and they all were starting to look quite cool. The Mon Cal Loku in particular was fun because he didn’t have a human face. It was easier to paint his eyes. I didn’t even bother with Biv and Saska’s faces. The mixing of some paints turned out well for MHD’s chassis and Saska’s pants. All positives. Still no where near what some people can do with painting but more than satisfactory for my skill level I was feeling pretty good. After they had dried, I got ready to put the clear coat on for protection. That’s when tragedy struck.

Instead of grabbing the sealer, I accidentally grabbed the primer. Got them lined up and outside, shook up the can and started spraying.

Though, they all did get a dusting of white on them, fortunately, I only got Biv got the full brunt of that first spray. Had this happened to the whole group, there would have been a table flip. And the closest table was our glass patio table. You could say he tanked the damage for the team.

After some time to absorb my boneheadedness, I considered just leaving it and pretending he’d just been hit by a snow bank. But that was silly, so I resolved to not be defeated. It was double fortunate that Biv was the one to take the brunt. He also hadn’t been painted with any color mixes so everything was straight out of the jar. I just had to start over and redo half of him, rather than trying to recreate the same color mix I’d used before.

Not perfect after the redo but considering it all, it turned out well. So there’s a lesson in there for you. Never give up. Never surrender.