Protectorate Character Jacks & Jack Painting Hate

A while ago I mentioned that I was working on a pair of Protectorate warjacks – the Fire of Salvation and the Blessings of Vengeance.  That was December 13th and I’m pretty sure that they’re in the same state now that they were then.  The Fire of Salvation sat assembled on my painting desk for a month or two until the Blessing came out – I just didn’t feel motivated to put him together right away.  After Blessing came out I figured it was time to get them both assembled and painted.  I heard a lot of complaint about assembly of the Blessing but I honestly didn’t have much problem – it just required some dry fitting and pinning and it went together smoothly.

I worked pretty hard on the models for about a month, making some pretty decent progress.  I decided to use the models to test two new things.  The first was trying a different base color for my off white areas.  I really like the Applebarrel Goosefeather color that I normally use on my Protectorate stuff but that paint’s coverage is horrible.  Normally I spend a lot of time putting down countless thinned layers of this color.  This is a very time consuming process on a small model, let alone something as large as a heavy warjack.

This time around I gave Reaper Master Series Yellowed Bone a try.  There’s a little more yellow in the color than normal but the coverage is superb.  After laying down a base coat I did a single thinned coat of Goosefeater which helped re-tint the areas more to my liking.  The end result was ever so slightly different from just using Goosefeather but was infinitely faster.  Basecoat completed, it was on to shading as normal.

And shading was my second experiment for these models.  Once again I varied my recipe, mixing in some P3 Greatcoat Grey into my usual brown shading mix to add a little more depth to the shadows.  The first results had a bad tint to them that wasn’t what I was looking for (nor did it match the rest of my army) but I glazed the shadows a couple times with my usual brown shading mix and that was all the fix that was necessary.

Once the experimentation was over it was on to the usual of jack painting – metallics, my royal purple, and other detailing.  And it was at that point where my motivation started dwindling again.  After trying to rekindle my efforts on these models, I realized my lack of motivation is due to the fact that I just don’t like painting warjacks.  The only thing I can think of that it’s the big open spaces and the chassis that at this point are just so repetitive that working on them more of a chore than a joy.  And painting shouldn’t be a chore.

Added to that the fact that I don’t even use too many jacks to often in Warmachine and I wind up preferring to work on something that will see more use like a solo, warcaster, even something from my Legion of Everblight army.

I really want to get these models finished but unless I decide to use them at Privateer Press weekend this year I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get back to them.  I still have the scroll-work on Fire to do as well as the weapons (and some edge-work) on both jacks and they should be done.

Now if I can just get motivated to get back to work on them…