After the last post where I laid Kanban method, I wanted to try prove to myself it actually works when the pressures and chaos of real life are applied. The ‘simple’ goal: finish a small batch of part completed minis in one 30-minute block. The privileged few, 10 based, primed and part-painted Desert Rats infantry. Key here was to get them out and ready as part of the general tidy of the day so I would have no excuses, no barriers and hopefully just progress.

Plan was simple batch painting of rank and file. based on my notes they should be built up using the following using the wet palette to keep paints alive between various child based interruptions:

• Uniform: Iraqi Sand washed with Sepia Shade
• Drybrush/re-highlight: Iraqi Sand plus an off-white mix
• Skin: Medium Fleshtone plus a Flesh Wash
• Boots/Webbing: Leather Brown / German Beige
• Metals: Gunmetal with a Nuln Oil over wash.
• Basing: Tan earth with an Iraqi Sand drybrush then some added tufts of grass.

Took 1:49 minutes total (including setup and pack down, the desk is also my work from home space) – way over the 30-min target, but still I think a win. It took a while to get back used to painting again after a few months off, but after a while got into a nice rhythm. The wash’s here are doing most of the heavy lifting for weathering; dry brushing lifting back up the flat areas to get some tonal variation.

So what comes of the backlog next, you may have caught it on the whiteboard, but another 10 block this time Tyranid Termagants – they’re already primed but no base colours unlike the Rats similar quick batch potential but probably even more time to do.

Painted this session: +10 (now 143 total painted). Still ~20 more Rats needing prime (waiting for a dry/warm day outside). Small win, big motivation. Kanban is holding up- even when sessions run long. Next minor update soon (hopefully) on the next batch. Then maybe magazine regrets or large terrain project I need to re-start once minis are unpacked after moving in the next few months.

Anyone else batching during life chaos? How long do your “quick” sessions actually take if you account for everything around the time paints on the brush?