The Princess and the Frog

Last week's theme for the bonus round of the Analogue Hobby Challenge was "l'Amour". Probably not the most natural subject for us Wargamers! But I was in luck. Last year while ordering my Frog Jester from Dark Sword I stumbled unto a few figures which I got as a future gift to Laurie. And of course this bonus theme landed on St-Valentine's day. The miniature painting Gods were smiling upon me! 

So I painted a romantic scene of a frog prince courting a frog princess. Your classic love story, really. A frog cupid, sending his love arrows into the prince's heart, was added to the scene, to tie the whole thing with Valentine's day. 

The figures are from Dark Sword's Anthropomorphic Animals range, and painting a frog during the challenge has become an annual tradition for yours truly! You may remember two years ago I painted a frog knight "Sir Kermit", and last year I went with a frog jester. This year I went big with three frogs! 

Painting this range is always a lot of fun, as I can let my imagination run wild and just go with lots of colours. I'm also getting good at painting the critters and really happy with this lot. I'm especially proud as they were painted using a GW brush! In a moment of sheer clumsiness I ruined my precious Rosemary and Co. brushes by spilling army painter varnish on them, and so had to buy the only available brushes in Montreal. They are worse than I remember! 

So obviously this entry is also my Valentine's day gift to Laurie, my girlfriend and mon amour. The Dark Sword's frogs have always been a favourite of Laurie (yes for some weird reason she prefers them to Chaos Champions and Napoleonic soldiers) so I spent two weeks working on them in secret, when I was alone or when she was sleeping! 

Not only did she loved it, but this piece won 1st place in the Challenge bonus round. I'm quite happy as my best score before that was a 3rd place for my Jabberwock. And the competition was fierce with some awesome entries. 

And for those wondering, so far my entries in the Analogie Hobby Challenge have been Oldhammer and Sci-Fi, which you can see in my other blog. But I am working on two historical pieces...

Joyeux Noël!!

I wish you all health, lots of gaming and tons of new figures in the new year. 

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, Part VI

A few weeks back Curt sent me the now customary email "Hey, want to join the next Challenge?". Now, that's a ridiculous idea to even contemplate. Half my stuff is in boxes, including some paints and a lot of miniatures, I spend my evening dealing with notary and bank stuff, my week-ends will be spent working on my new house. I have absolutely no time to give to that crazy Challenge.

So I said yes.

When Curt sends me an invitation to the challenge...

I just can't...say no. The Challenge has become such a winter tradition, it would be like skipping on Christmas or something. I even went for the 500 pts target. Honestly, there's no way I'm reaching that, and there's a good chance I'll not even get close to that, but damn it, I'll give it my best shot! After all, this year's Challenge is about risk takers, right?

And this year, I'm going rogue! No planning, no list of what I want to do, no specific projet to start or finish. I'll just pick stuff that is available (i.e. not in boxes) and stuff I can paint with the material available to me (i.e. not in boxes). So expect the unexpected! Expect a weird bunch of unrelated stuff. I embrace...Chaos!!

Just paint baby! 

What happened to Iannick?!

Yes, indeed, why have I gone AWOL for so many months?

Well, mostly because of this...

This is a picture of my garage, and the water you see is dripping from my main floor. Yes, I've had a massive flooding due to a ruptured toilet pipe (speedway) which ruined pretty much my entire first floor (because obviously it had to break while I was away). Rotten bad luck, apparently. Wooden floors, ceramic floors, kitchen modules, bathroom, bottom of walls, everything was ruined!

And the worst part?

Our house was put up for sale a week before that! How unlucky is that?

So Laurie and I spent more than 2 months living in a hotel, with 2 cats, while our first floor was being redone pretty much completely (thank God for insurances). We came home a few weeks ago.

In those months, we managed to find a beautiful house (with a basement!! all mine. GAMING ROOM!) and we made an offer on it, which was accepted. Between last year's health problems and this year two water problems we figured Karma owed us.

Now we just have to sell our current home. Anyone looking for a lovely (and completely renovated) townhouse in Montreal?

So as you can guess the hobby took a back seat to real life crap. In fact, I even avoided most of the blogs and forums I follow, because it was too difficult to not being able to participate in all of it (so if you noticed my absence it wasn't personal). I also cut all hobby spending (this whole process is kind of freakin' expensive!). Basically, I completely moved away from my hobby out of necessity.

Now I'm back home, half my stuff is in boxes, my main painting area is no more (replaced by a nice living room table...you know home staging) but I feel like painting again. And out of sheer foolhardiness I joined the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge for this year...so I guess this blog should be slightly more active, well that is until I move. Yeah, probably a few more hectic months in front of me. 

So really, this post is just my polite way to tell you all that I'm still alive!