It's Prime Time Baby!!

It's that time of year again friends.  It's not what you're thinking though.  Despite the title of the post (which I said in a very horrible impression as I typed it) and the photo below, I'm not writing about March Madness.  Although I'm a huge fan of The Big Dance and will probably be watching the tournament more than painting over the next few weeks, I'm actually referring to the change in the weather here in the Florida Keys.

Here on this tiny string of tropical coral islands, the dry season is rapidly drawing to a close.  The daily rain is about to return and along with it, constant high humidity.  As one can imagine, such conditions provide a very unfavorable environment for spray priming miniatures outside.  Although when you're surrounded by water humidity is always present, for a few months each year the percentage comes down enough to allow me to use a spray primer.  I do have a method for hand priming miniatures during the rainy season but it's time consuming when prepping more than one or two models.  So every year about this time I seem to realize that my window for spray priming is coming to an end and then I go all out to prime just about everything I can get my hands on before the humidity returns.  Prime time indeed!

I took a quick photo with my phone to show an example of some of the work that has occupied my time during the last week as I scramble to beat the humidity.  In the upper portion of the pic you can see some of the recently primed miniatures.  There are some random Reaper miniatures and a few LotR models, but most of the batch is comprised of goblins from Otherworld Miniatures.  The goblins have a great "old school" look to them without the static poses and poor details characteristic of minis cast back in the day.  I can't wait to paint them.

The lower portion of the photo shows miniatures that have recently been cleaned, washed, and assembled.  They are awaiting the end of a rare rain event for this time of year so that they can be primed as well.  Many of the minis from this batch are from Dark Sword Miniatures.  Any regular reader of this blog probably knows how much I love the dynamic sculpts and incredible detail from DSM, but I very much dislike putting the models together.  To be able to produce those great poses, the miniatures usually arrive in quite a few pieces.  The parts themselves are rather small and flimsy and are difficult to glue into position. Ironically, I often find myself cursing DSM for the very reason that I love them.  All will be well once I start painting them however.

Besides the miniatures in the photo above, I have quite a few more to prep before they even get to the cleaning and assembly stage.  I'm a bit of an obsessive collector and tend to hoard way more miniatures than I'll ever be able to paint.  I have no doubt that one day I'll be featured on the television show Hoarders where I'll be seen surrounded and trapped by mounds of lead and plastic.  Before the humidity makes a return, I need to put a major dent in some of that hoard.

Amongst some of the items to tackle are several boxes of Rangers of Middle-earth, two boxes of dwarves, a box each of Easterlings and Haradrim, two each of Anglo-saxons and Vikings, and several resin pieces. That list does not even account for the huge box of miniatures that should arrive before long from the Reaper Bones kickstarter.  Plus I have about 15 metal minis on the way in from Ebay.  Busy will be the word of the day for the next few weeks.  "I love the smell of primer in the morning." What does not get primed before the end of April will just have to wait until late next November when the air dries out a bit and the dry season arrives again.  If I purchase something new in the meantime that I simply must paint before the fall, I'll just slap on a coat of Guesso and get right to it.

Thanks for reading my update folks.  Now it's off to work on more miniatures and finish up my NCAA basketball bracket!