Wot no painting?

I've just not been in the mood...

I go through these phases every so often, where I really can't find the motivation to paint. The reasons are many and varied, but often have something to do with fading fads. At the moment, I'm nearing the end of the lead pile for several projects, and with nothing new to start I'm struggling to finish things off.

As it stands I've got the following to do:

Bretonnians - 4 Knights Errant, 5 Questing Knights, Lord on Hippogriff

FoW Germans - Mortar Platoon, 4 extra bases of Panzergrenadiers

VBCW - 8 Gentlemen with Shotguns

However, I've no great reason to get motivated with any of them.

Nevertheless...I have a plan.

When I get into these ruts, I start to organise thing to give me a reason to get motivated. Hence the fact that this week I'll be playing Trev at Flames of War. This will be my first game with the new rules (not that I'll notice the difference) and I'm hoping that either I'll enjoy the game so much that I'll suddenly get the urge to paint the mortars or the lack of any artillery will hurt enough that I'll feel that I have to get them done before I play another game.

What's more, I've also been planning a Flames of War campaign for the club for after the summer. To enable everybody to use the armies that they have I've plumped for a 'what if' invasion of Scandinavia campaign in 1943, with the Russians attacking Finland and the Allies landing in Norway.

Here's the map I've been working on:

There will be some special rules to account for Scandinavian winters and Sweden's neutrality and I'm hoping that for campaign flavour somebody has a Finnish army tucked away somewhere and I might see if we can organise some kind of D-Day beach assault to kick things off.

The WFB stuff will get a boost as I begin to organise a tournament for the summer; expect some angst on the blog as I've never done something like that before. As for the VBCW stuff, I suspect that I need to arrange another game.

I've also been searching for inspiration by burying my nose in different periods such as the French-Indian War and the War of 1812. However, I've no burning desire to begin another large project yet, but my birthday (and another opportunity to spend money on my hobby) is round the corner, so there may be a sudden change of direction.

As it stands, there is every likelihood that March will see very little progress on the painting front unless I gat get myself moving. How do you motivate yourself to get painting?