A blog has to start somewhere so mine starts here. After many years of attempts and failures and fiddling I started to feel like I don't have to be totally ashamed of the minis I produce so I'd like to start posting some of my work here as well as trying to share the tricks and experiences I've learned during my 25 years of slacking with minis so, take a coffee get your patience strong and here we go ...
I remember when I've first time seen Citadel/Games Workshop minis quite precisely, I was about 13-14 years old and I was on a way to visit my friend in a part of Prague called Dejvice and while walking through a rather old street full of uninteresting houses I've spotted a small shop with a sign that immediately caught my attention - WARLORD. The pavement before the shop and the stairs were full of guys from my age all the way up to adults browsing through some amazing fantasy themed cards which I later on recognized as Magic the Gathering (oh those were the times of the first edition just coming to our country) and behind them was a shop window with tons of boxes with names like Warhammer, Necromunda, Gorkamorka and others.
I couldn't help myself and overcoming my inherent shyness I went inside a little shop which had one full wall covered by hundred's of blisters full of small tin miniatures of dwarves, elves, orcs, and other creatures I had very little idea what they were. And I felt like this is a heaven, shop was run by bunch of young guys and all the customers were knowingly chatting with them and I was just looking around and listening in amazement. In the second room of the shop was a small table coated with green cloth and on it were 10s of the small soldiers and some dragons and siege machines.
I remember I went to my friends place and I probably wasn't too funny companion on that afternoon as the only thing I could think about was that store and all the amazing things hanging from it's walls. Given the fact I am almost 40 this was about 25 years ago there were no information sources available for me except asking the guys around and getting first few answers like how do you play this and how much does it cost etc ... I remember this was my first time I was sparing my pocket money and after some short time I got a first rather random blister with a Mounted Jade Wizard as I couldn't wait to get at least one of the little guys for myself so I could try to put it together and paint it.
At that time I already built a few plastic aircraft models so I started by putting it together and found out the plastic glue is no use on a tin figure but a bit of tacky and glue on the plastic horse and I had my guy ready for painting. Then I found out that my Revell paints really weren't up for the job to paint it and the outcome was terrible, but there he was sitting on the horse painted mainly dark green and silver as I just guessed those might be the colors for a wizard with some oak leaves and he stood there alone for several years.
That's how the hobby started for me and since then I went from Warhammer Fantasy to Warhammer 40.000 and a lot of other games that came my way, started a white dwarf subscription, then quit and started again and ... well a ton of things, today I am almost 40 year old man child (as my mother and girlfriend tends to emphasize) and I am still in love with it.
I hope you find this rather honest and disorganized confession of a long time miniatures modeller and painter entertaining and feel free to share how your beginnings looked like. Talk to you later, over and out :)!