How Penitent Engines Killed My Hobby

Many months ago I put up a post expressing my desire to try taking on a whole army painting commission. I was fresh out of work and waiting to get my job back. After putting my self out there (And deleting my first nasty comment.) one of the guys from the club came over with his old 1500 point Sister of Battle army. We decided on a stupid cheap price and I began to boast about how quickly I was going to knock this army out! The next month, when we got together to play, I had cleaned and prepped all of the infantry and gotten a few squads painted. (The army came to me with and old chipped white base coat and some nasty glue jobs.) Things were going smoothly. The motivation was there. Then all of the real life duties started to sneak in. I had recently had my teen brothers move in and had to take them all over for appointments and attend foster care classes. My wife was pregnant with baby three and constantly sick for six months. Meet up after meetup I made little to no progress on the army. I began wanting to paint different models but instead doing nothing. I felt that I couldn't paint anything else until the sisters were done.

I Want To Paint Your Forgotten Army!

So I found myself unemployed this week, and oddly enough I don't feel so bad about it. My job was a good one and the money was great, but it also had its downsides. I always hear how 12 hour shift rotations take years off your life and inhaling the stuff we made had to be bad for me. Half the time I would only feel half awake for the majority of the day, and switching form days to nights was really a pain. Aside form the whole, "What are we gonna do now?", panic from my wife, I found that going to bed at a normal time and waking up with my kids in the morning felt pretty good. With a mortgage and two kids to pay for I started thinking of some of my options, and I remembered that for a few months I have been considering doing some commission painting.

Looking through blog rolls and seeing all these awesomely converted minis with beautiful paint jobs made me think,"Yeah that's not me." What I'm good at is sitting down and cranking out models in mass quantity.
A little over a year back my local GW had a "New Army For The New Year" painting contest where you had three months to complete a new army from scratch. I believe the points were something like 2000 for fantasy, 1850 for 40k and 1000 for Lord Of The Rings. I had a friend's Dwarf army sitting around for years, and after checking out what was in the box, coupled with my Battle for Skull Pass starter set, I decided I'd go for it.
Now, like any good procrastinator, I entered, built most of the models, and then didn't touch them for ten weeks.
 When it finally came down to crunch time, I busted the whole army out in the last two weeks and won the contest!

With 8th Edition Fantasy on the horizon, I'm guessing that someone out there has rank upon rank of soldiers waiting to get some color, or a 40k army that has been gray for too long. So if your interested in getting your army done drop me an line at palinmoonstride@gmail.com and we can go over the project details. I am considering having a flat rate based on the points of the army instead of being based on individual models. If someone comes at me with 200 boyz I may cry, but I do like a challenge.
Since I have more free time now I'll be trying to post more frequently and catch up on some the latest projects I've been working on.