Video Games are bad...

For me anyway,

Here is why, they sometimes inspire me to paint things I haven't painted in years! So a little back story may be needed, so as some know, I have for the past 9 years I have run Saguaro Painting Service. Well after painting countless miniatures for others, I decided to retire my brush and get back to painting for myself.

But now with nothing pressing on my bench for the first time in 9 years, what would I paint? So I did what I think most painters do, I flopped down in front of my TV and started playing some good old fashion video games on my PS3 (Don't judge, I love my PS3!) One game that I got a few Christmas's ago was Shadow of Mordor.

Now when you run a successful painting business, you do not have time for such luxuries as playing video games, there is always a commission that has to be painted (or something for the house, or wife or...). So while looking through my games, I decided to drop in Shadow of Mordor and spend some quality time hunting Orcs!

Well first off I have to say this is an awesome game and I am enjoying it very much. (Makes me want to go buy a PS4 for the new game in the series). But something foul started to take seed, I didn't realize it at first and I should have seen it sooner. But after the first night, of playing, I went and dugout and old Reaper Dragon that I have had lying around waiting to be assembled and painted.

Big ass Dragon from Reaper, that's a 6"x 6" tile he is sitting on!

So out came this dragon and after hunting orcs, I spent about an hour cleaning it up and assembling it. It felt very good to go and dig this model out and start working on it, I had no plan, but it just felt right. This should have been the first clue to me that evil was taking root inside of me, but I thought nothing of it.

Well a few more nights of hunting orcs with Shadow of Mordor and I had this idea of painting up some orcs. Why? I can not tell you, but that is how evil works my friends, there is no rhyme or reason to it, it just happens! So yesterday I went into to my game closet and grabbed a box of miscellaneous Lord of the Rings models that were waiting to be assembled and painted. This should have been my second clue that something evil was afoot, but alas I did not see it.

It smells like orcs around here!

So I happily dug threw the large collection to find bags of plastic orcs that I had assembled and a few were primed awaiting paint. So I dumped out a few models and started to paint while listening to some Rush! Well after a few hours of painting, I found that I had a small army sitting on my table. It seems that I was really excited to paint up orcs, it is that evil seed I am telling you!

We are ready for war now boss!

So after the painting, what started out as a few turned into 38 orcs painted! As I sat thee looking at what I painted, the real world realization hit me like a ton of bricks, what would I use these for??? Well the oblivious answer was Lord of the Rings, I sent my buddy Drunkensamurai a FB message, but he cleverly saw thru the evilness and didn't respond about playing. The evil magic did not effect him it seems. So with that, I came to realization that I painted these just for the heck of it and I am okay with that. It feels great to be able to paint what I want, when I want. It has been a long time since I have been able to do that.

Now lets see, now I need to figure out how to get these onto the table...

TK