Weekly Waffle # 383 – Out of context
21st June 2025
For this week’s Weekly Waffle I have stuck with the principle I established a couple of weeks ago of giving you part of a larger project. Work is still keeping me really busy with lots of travel so hobby time has become an even more precious commodity. It’s something I’ve talked about quite a lot lately but it’s taught me a few lessons that I think are worth sharing.
We all have times in our hobby journey where hobby time is limited for a whole host of reasons. Mine at the moment is work but it could just as easily be child care or even ill health. Whatever it is though it doesn’t mean you have to give on your hobby time completely.
For me the little time I get at the moment is still an escape where I can forget about other things. And I think this is invaluable when it comes to mental health. Now I’m not saying this is the solution to all ills but every little helps in this busy world. So it’s worth making that bit of effort to do what you can.
Some tricks that help me make the most of my time are planning and not setting goals. That sounds a bit counter productive on the goals front but let me explain. At the moment I’m painting a few Orcs. So I’m going to be using the same colours for a while. Instead of putting them back with all my other paints after each session I keep them together. I have a little plastic tub that I put everything in so I always have it to hand. Which save a little bit of time setting up and packing away. No looking for things because it’s all there in one place.
It’s a really small change to my normal process but it really does make life so much easier. Setting up is a simple as cleaning some space on my desk and lifting out the tub. Less than a minute from sitting down to being ready to paint. It’s the same when I’m packing away so even if I only have fifteen minutes of free time I can easily get in a good ten minutes of painting. If you can manage to get a few of these sessions in each week you really can keep your projects ticking over.
When it comes to goals, with limited time I think it can be good to just put them to one side. Don’t think you have to get x or y finished this week. Just be happy if you get some hobby time. One or two short sessions become your goal. You are keeping things ticking along. Not beating yourself up because you haven’t got that unit finished yet. You have to be realistic when time is short.
Now being realistic isn’t something I’m good at. Or to be more precise my estimate of how long something will take often differs drastically from reality. Things like “I can get them primed this session”. Two sessions later and I’m still in the clean up. So I would always try to plan that things will take twice as long as you originally plan. Then if you get them done quicker you can chalk that down to a quick win.
To me this just makes sense but it’s only over the last month or so that I’ve started to put it into practice. Now it’s not going to work for you if you have a horde army that needs painting for an upcoming tournament. But if it’s just keeping the hobby ticking over until you have some more time then I can highly recommend it as an approach. Don’t stress out and just enjoy what you can.
So with this new enlightened approach what do I have for by way of a hobby update. Well it’s another small part of a larger project. One that will in a few weeks make use of one of those bases I painted last week.
This is guy is going by the moniker of roof rider, although I’m sure that is not the name of the character it’s based on. The only thing, apart from cleaning up, that I have done with this guy has been to add some magnets. Really just make storage and transportation easier. A couple of tweaks like this will make the whole thing take up much less space when not in use. Which is always a bonus.
Painting wise I’ve used the same approach for the skin and clothing as I did last time. Nothing special I just took my time with the highlights for the black. Once again I think it looks quite good. It really reads as being black, despite there being no black in the actual mix.
The only real difference has been swapping out the blue highlights for red. A colour I’m very familiar with when it comes to my orcs. So this guy is going to be faster than everyone else. Apart from that little change it has really only been an exercise of rinse and repeat. Which is probably what I’m going to be doing for the next couple of weeks so I will apologise for that up front.
But enough of that what do you think of this guy.
You can see more Ork miniatures at my gallery here.
I’m a little bit short on my target word count for this week but I’m going to heed my own advice and not worry about an arbitrary goal. The key take away for this week is that I’ve managed to get some hobby time in and I’ve managed to share it with you. So that is a win win for me. I hope you all manage to have your own successes. Stay positive, enjoy whatever you have planned for the week and I hope to see you back here next Saturday for another hobby update.
