Ashes to ashes, Zandri Dust to dust

Today I'm sharing the completed first half of the skeleton and zombie unit I built last month.

In the last two or three weeks I've dedicated almost all of my spare time to these guys, but somehow I've still only managed to finish nine models. 

There are probably a few different reasons for this, but I reckon the main one is a direct result of the incredible summer we've been having in the UK. And that's not because I've been sitting around in the garden, barbecuing sausages. No, it was an actual problem that occurred at the primer/undercoat stage, right back at the beginning of the painting process, when I was trying to lay down a decent base colour.

I bought a can of Zandri Dust spray, fully expecting it to contain paint. Who'da thunk that in the intense summer heat this stuff takes on a far more literal characteristic? It turns out that if you use a Citadel aerosol in really hot weather, it doesn't spray out paint, but a thick cloud of dust. And the dust only half adheres to the miniatures, meaning I covered all 18 of my freshly converted Undead models in a coat of tacky, but loose powder.

I ended up having to rinse most of them in an attempt to remove the excess gunk. But of course, this didn't work very well, and a lot of the powder remained stuck to the models, especially in the recesses, exactly where you want it least. 

So these poor old miniatures, that had already been badly glued together and drowned in paint by my 12 or 13 year old self, and then soaked in Dettol, pulled apart and glued back together again by my adult version, were now once again covered in unwanted gak.

It's safe to say these guys really went through the wringer.

So I did the best I could do, spent more time painting them than I had intended, and generally accepted that they might not look so great.

So that's all my excuses out of the way, now here are some close-ups.

On the other hand, they were never meant to look pristine. They are, after all, meant to be rotting and decayed corpses, who have probably spent some of their recent past buried in mud and dirt. Plus, I never really set out to make these the best painted miniatures in my collection. Right now my mantra is a finished model today is better than a perfect model tomorrow. 

And a quick look at my score shows it's just beginning to pay off.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 57