Seal me up in my room and throw away the key

Hey folks of the Mortal Realms. Its time for another write up on my journey across our hobby. Today I'll be doing a quick recap of last time and the aftermath of the Beasts of Chaos Army. Along with a look into Hobby rooms. "What do you want?, What do you need?"

So. Last time around I was frantically rushing around like a fool trying to last minute an army for the RRRR tournament in Bendigo. Well. It was finished on the Thursday night before the event. Not to the standard I would like, but I'll just have to suck it up and not rush next time. Awesomely fun list to play though that hopefully can be tweaked to fit the new edition.

So onto the main event of the day. Whether we are a keen hobbyist or not, building and painting our minis is a huge part of the journey and I personally believe that a persons work space is an under valued aspect of the hobby. Everyone's needs are going to be slightly different and I hope we can cover a bunch of them here and give people some tips that may help them out.

Before we get too carried away I'll just say I'm very lucky to have a dedicated room for hobby as well as a garage with its own nook as a secondary "outdoor" hobby room. Not everyone will have this luxury and often will need to plan their space to suit.

For those working on a budget space, I find I get a huge amount of mileage off my old Citadel Tray and a spare Chopping board to put models on. This allows a mobile work space that will allow you to take your painting to the Kitchen Table, outside, the lounge room, where ever. For reference this is how most of my non airbrush work gets done.

For those with the luxury of having a dedicated table or room, things get much more fun. Again everyone's needs are different, I personally don't display models in my room and have more of a focus on production and knowing where things are kept. There are plenty of examples of peoples spaces online, and below is my setup.

When your setting your space up the first thing to think about is "What are you using this space for and how can you make it work for you?

1. Lighting. One of the most important parts of any painting area (and displays as well) is good lighting. Generally speaking there are plenty of good lamps on the market, preferably with a "daylight" bulb/setting so you can see colors correctly without tones being messed up by overly cold or white lights. I use an LED lamp which can be switched between Daylight and Cooler tones, along with having adjustable brightness settings. Even though its typically, "Daylight, Bright as possible"

2. Storage. If there's one thing I can say about a lot of us in the hobby. We are generally Hoarders. We buy lots of kits, lots of paints, and they need to go somewhere. I'm also a big fan of the "Back 2 Base-iX" Paint racks. There is plenty of other brands of plastic and mdf options out there, but these have served me well and are available to suit various brands of paint pots If your working on a limited space such as the mobile tray above, paint storage will obviously be limited and you can just keep what your using at that time out.

3. Bench Space. Not much to be said here. You need some type of flat surface to work on.

4. Cleanliness. Yeah. This old chestnut. Part of having a large hobby space is the fact your going to need to keep it tidy. Nothing breaks the motivation to hobby more then knowing your going into a giant pile of mess and need to cleanup prior to being able to start your project. (Actually the reason for todays topic)

I was very tempted not to show this one. But with great hobby room comes great responsibility. Nothing kills the desire to hobby more then walking into this. Its all clean again now and ready to start the next project which we'll be looking to spend multiple posts on in the future.

So having had my hobby space setup now for a few years. What have I learnt along the way? What would I change?

First things first coming up with the Tub storage system with my most common armies being kept in the Bookshelf with less common armies tubbed up in the cupboard makes finding things easy. Along with keeping ALL my battletomes/rule books together on a shelf.

Part of the storage includes a tub containing leftover parts from kits that look like they may be useful for conversions in the future. That way I can actually dispose of most sprues, boxes and not worry about needing them again in the future.

First thing Id love to change is the light. It works very well. But I would love to go right out there and get a much larger system to help remove some of the shadows that are cast when painting at night.

That probably wraps me up on this one. Hopefully that gives you some ideas if your looking at setting up your own space. Love to see some comments with your own setup at home if you have one.

Next time I'll look to share the beginnings of a new display board I'll be producing with the goal of being far beyond any I've done previously whilst also trying to stick to being universal so it could fit any number of armies. Thanks for reading and hope to you see back next time.

Spooky Luke.....