My first painted 6mm ECW figures figures for a very long time

I have been trying to meet one of 2020's New Year's resolutions for the last few weeks; having less unpainted figures by midnight on December 31st then I had at January 1st!  So a personal challenge to reduce the lead pile by painting more than I bought over 2020.  It should have been easy, mainly because Baccus 6mm's shopping cart has had to close for a large part of the year to manage demand and I prefer to buy from Peter's range where he has the figures available, or something close enough to be a viable proxy.  As a result chances to splurge have been restricted.  On the other hand lockdown and the need to be strict in observing the social distancing that came with it dealt my painting mojo a blow and there were three months without any figures getting finished!

Additional Late Imperial Romans.  Legionaries, Auxilia and Equites Sagittarii

All of which meant that I entered November needing to pull my finger out.  At this point please imagine the sound of a finger making that popping noise as it flicks out of the side of your mouth.  You know the one, the cork out of a bottle sound, better yet...do it, go on... you know you want to!  Well I have extracted said digit (more popping sounds here) to the extent that I have run out of unpainted Late Imperial Roman infantry and proxy Byzantine infantry figures!  

Baccus Sassanid Infantry as Byzantine Skoutatoi.  Those shields need some work.

In desperation I turned to the deeper reaches of the lead pile and found unpainted Irregular Miniatures 6mm ECW figures lurking in the shadows.  ECW in 6mm was my earliest foray into sub 25mm gaming.  The bulk of the figures were purchased in the late 1980's from a wargaming store a few hundred yards from Kings Cross station at the end of Pentonville Road if memory serves.  Looking over the tray of unpainted lead made me realise how far 6mm sculpting has come in the intervening years.  The majority of the infantry look like clothes peg dollies scaled down to 6mm!  But in the middle of those were a handful of better sculpted casts.  These were the newer irregular miniature casts.  I have no idea when they were introduced or where I got them from.  I suspect some now long forgotten benefactor gifted them to me.  So onto the painting table they went.  Partly I wanted to reduce the numbers in the 'to paint' pile but also I wanted to see how my painting style had changed in the intervening thirty some years.  So here they are.

Older casts with older paint jobs in the centre.  At this range they all look reasonable

As you can tell the older casts are prone to snapping at the ankles.  A trip to the surgeon and a dose of superglue should fix that.  The new casts need separating so as to have a firing and a ported rank so they are more work than the old ones, but the animation of the figures is far better.  My painting was simpler back then but my eyes were better so I picked out more detail, or at least what detail there was to be picked out.  I'm more ambitious but probably less able now, well my eyes are 35 years older then when I painted the first figures

At the time of writing this I am 53 figures short of target with half of December still to go and with 98 figures on the painting table at various stages of completion.  Fingers crossed I may actually achieve a New Year's resolution for the first time ever this year!