If at first...

The dreaded 'painters block' has been worse than I thought. I thought I had overcome it and settled back down to my Sherrifmuir project, wrong! No sooner had I made a start, than I found myself aimlessly staring into space. Motivation was proving impossible, at times I was forcing myself to my painting area.

However, I'm hoping that I'm finally through it (fingers crossed). In my attempts to motivate myself, I've started painting, amongst other things, some Front Rank WSS, when finished they will probably be Marlborough's.

Not sure about Front Rank, detail is excellent and they paint beautifully, but the poses are a little bit too wooden having a lack of movement. Still the range is immense, providing some command alternatives and diorama basing ideas.

The Reiver Figures range has all the movement needed, yet the range is limited with a small number of poses. This, of course, makes creating units simpler, negating the usual 'now should this unit be, marching, firing, loading' etc?

At the end of the day I think I prefer the Reiver figures, they just seem to scream 'paint me', and with them now doing a dedicated WSS range, the only problem is the dreaded postal strike.

I've recently become a convert to the 'dip' finish, although it's more of a 'wash'. I use a wash followed by a Highlight method as used by some notable figure painters such as David Imrie (examples can be seen on his 'Saxon Dog' blog). It seems to be working a treat so far, but a good matt varnish is essential at the moment I'm using Winsor &Newton 'Galleria' matt varnish, I like it but I'm wondering if it's matt enough.