Thursday, March 24, 2011

Painting Armies for Cash: The Beginning

As I mentioned a few posts back, I've decided to try my hand at painting some armies to sell. After getting some good advice on TMP, I've decided to stick with 15mm historical for now, with my primary energies going towards painting armies that I will enjoy and selling them when they are done. Here's what's taking shape in the preliminary phases.

Norse-Irish for DBA
Miniatures by: Feudal Castings and potentially Old Glory 15s.

Not to be confused with my own Norse-Irish project for Impetus, this DBA army is being painted for a chap who contacted me from TMP. I'm not particularly interested in commission work (I don't want someone telling me what to do and how to do it), but Kris seems pretty easy to get along with and he's aware that my pricing is still up in the air. With any luck he'll be happy with both the final product and the price.

Parthians for Impetus/Basic Impetus
Miniatures by: Peter Pig

If I'm going to spend my free time painting something that I won't even get to play, I have to make sure that I choose both a miniature line and a subject that will interest me. After some contemplation I decided to order the models from PP that I have pondered painting for my personal collection over the past year. The miniatures are well-detailed but the poses are simple (which I like) so I ordered enough to satisfy requirements for both the Basic Impetus army and a 300-point Impetus army. I'll be painting custom disorder markers to sell with this army. I'm expecting to receive these models in the mail in another couple of weeks.

Slavs for Impetus/Basic Impetus
Miniatures by: Old Glory 15's

Bob (from Bob's Miniature Wargaming Blog) has kindly sent me a collection of 15mm Slavic infantry and cavalry to help get the painting "business" off the ground. I'm not completely sure what models are en route yet but, if they are the ones I think they are, I'll be in a position to start a Dark Age army from some part of Eastern Europe. If there are lots of foot, I may do a pure Slavic army to sell, which is to say, hordes of infantry with a little cavalry back-up.


Anyway, that's where things stand right now. I've put very few hours into the Norse-Irish as of right now (the first army on the block), but with this week and it's craziness behind me, I should be able to make some real progress this weekend.

Thanks for reading,
JET



3 comments:

adeptgamer said...

Good luck with your endeavor. I paint for my friends but I paint for other minis, so I'll paint someone's chaos unit and get his extras in trade. Pretty handy and good trading fodder.

BaronVonJ said...

Good luck. I stopped painting for money because:
a) I took all the fun out it.
b) Didn't leave me any time for my own stuff.
Hope it works for you.
-J

JET (aka Jason) said...

Well, this is an experiment to be sure. I'm not so concerned about taking time from my own projects. I have so few of those now that I'll only be painting the odd unit of model every now and then. The bigger concern is (a) will I hate it and (b) will I earn enough to justify the time.

If it's not working out in a month or two I'll give it up and call it a lesson learned.