So, as a few of you might know, I recently started a new job and that has come along with its share of stressors, and has chewed through a lot of the free time that I wish I could put towards painting. A little while ago I was talking to somebody close to me about the army project I painted this year, and how I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to hit an artistic peak like this again, and they joked that I was making it out like I was walking off into the sunset or dying. At the time I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond, and was more than a little butthurt in large part because I was feeling burnt-out from a gauntlet of hurdles that I felt like I’d been jumping over. It’s something I’ve tucked away and thought about though and something I thought was appropriate to talk about with the Psychophage I just painted.

In my defense, I had a lot of things going for me this year, art-wise – it was one of those rare years where the stars aligned in just the right way to make some magic happen. With a local FLGS closing before I was laid off and my jumping on a lot of the product they were selling on clearance, and a couple of steeply discounted second hand squads, I was able to get a hold of a lot of models while I still had the disposable income. Losing out on my job in public service of almost four years back in March also meant that I suddenly had a whole lot of free time on my hands, and being the workaholic that I’ve turned into in my thirties I needed something to fill that space.

I jumped on this as a project for a couple of different reasons – first, because I have never been able to paint a convincing Avatar of Khaine paint scheme or “molten” effect to my liking, and I wanted to turn that around, but secondly because there was an International Plastic Modellers Society show in St. John’s that I wanted to try and enter it into as an exhibition piece. The iron was hot: my painting demos in-person with Sandbox Gaming (more on that to follow) and my tutorial panels at local cons had been doing great, social media felt like it was on fire and I felt like I had a sort of magic momentum happening and just wanted to keep pushing that forward. But much like a Psychophage that has stuck its tendrils too far into a Craftworld’s cookie jar, I was starting to bite off a little more than I could chew. I also wasn’t doing a great job of staying connected in a real, present emotional way to friends or family, and still need to work on that – no Tyranid is an island, after all.

So I painted this fun little guy up in part following tutorials and general information available on painting lava or molten glows, but also flying a little bit on my own on this. The relics are a mix of basing and Shrine token bits from other Aeldari/Eldar kits, a nice rock that I picked up at XenonMage’s cabin over the summer, and a metal findings piece that I’ve been holding onto from Michaels for just such an occasion. I also chose to give it a round base to make it look more like a traditional Avatar of Khaine in practice than the oval bases that come with the Psychophage, though I couldn’t get it to fit on one that was quite Avatar-sized. Painting took more than one attempt – the first involved experimenting with crackle paint and was a version I just wasn’t happy with. I’m much happier with the result here, to the point where I’m considering making even more “Khaine” Tyranids to go along with toasty fellow. That is going to be a future “maybe” project though, since I’ve got enough on my plate in real-life and enough on my hobby bench to keep me busy for a while.

I’ve turned a lot in the last year to self-cultivation as an alternative for consumption or evading my problems, but I think even self-cultivation at a certain point, especially if spread out into too many areas or pursued to exclusion, can reach an unhealthy fever pitch. I think in some ways I was grieving the end of an era, in a sense, and not coping well with a manufactured, recent chunk of my identity as the “public servant.” I think I’m going to try and move into what I always say that I’m going to do, but rarely succeed in: Doing less things, but doing them better, and letting myself enjoy them more. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something, and I’ve still got a lot of somethings to share and a lot of time to share them. And with respect to painting, I also want to try and share things that I’ve learned with people around me and get more involved with local community projects. There’s a non-profit I’ve been helping with over the last several months and it’s been a great experience, and we’re going to be doing a charity marathon from December 4th to December 7th, as pictured below. If you’re lucky, you might even get to see me on camera! (But probably not because I’m going to be a background tech!)

Some doors in my life have closed, sure, but there’s a lot of fun new steps ahead, and like any good space elf, I walk the path. See you all along the road!