I thought I would start out with a few photos of my setup (well, future set up).  First is my desk and where I plan to set up my painting area.

If you can see where the dice are, that's where I plan on setting up my paint station.   I'm still waiting on a few items I've ordered.

First is something to hold my paints.  After much research and thought, I ended up ordering a section of "The Rack" system.  It looks to be a pretty nice setup, and while I only have ordered one section currently, it's expandable so if decide to add to my paint collection as time goes on, it's easy to do.  Here is a photo of it:

If interested, you can find the system here: The Rack.

After much deliberation, I also ordered a Paint Booth.  I had mixed feelings on this and wasn't totally sure if it was something I needed, but two things made me decide to purchase it.  First, there has been some debate on boards discussing the reaper mini's as to if you should prime therm or not and I decided to prime them for my initial painting and see how that goes.  I purchased a can of the Armory Gray Primer which means I need to either spray outside or use a paint both.  And second, I live in Minnesota and with our cold winters, it will allow me to do my spray painting year around.  Here is a photo of the setup I purchased:

I picked this up on Amazon and it was fairly reasonable in price. You can find it here: Master Airbrush Paint Booth.

I also purchased some Testors Dullcote spray lacquer for sealing the mini's when I'm done.  I've heard conflicting stories about how well the paint stays on the mini's, so I thought I would give sealing them a try as well.  

Last but not least are the paint brushes.  I supported the Games & Gears Pro Studio Brushes Kickstarter and received my brushes a month or so ago, and will use them for all my painting.  

Well I think that's it for what my needed supplies are.  If you can think of something I'm missing, let me know.  My next step will be to decide if I want to try my hand at repairing some of the bent miniatures or if I should pick my first my first mini and start painting.

Reaper Mini's

Well I got my box of Reaper Mini's in the mail a little over a week ago and after spending quite a few hours over two days, I have them all opened and somewhat sorted.  All in all, I like most of them, but I ended up with quite a few bent up minis in need of some TLC.  I would guess out of the box and 4 add-on's I got, there is somewhere in the range of 30-40 minis that are going to need repairs.  I've never done it before, but I've read a bit on using the heat/cold method to straighten them, so I guess I'll have plenty of experience with the method before I'm through.

For paints, I also purchased all the reaper add-on sets, so I'll be using them for all my painting.  Back in the day (1980's) I did paint a fair amount of mini's, but I never considered them to have been done very well.  I've learned a few techniques the past few years both from reading and watching YouTube videos as well as from painting some Hirst Arts bricks, so hopefully what I produce this time will be a bit higher quality than what I produced in my youth.

As some others have posted, My goal is to have the whole vampire order painted within a year (wishfully less).  My dream is to try and get a mini a day painted with perhaps time off on the weekends.  if successful, I will be looking at 45 weeks or so before I finish.

Only time will tell if I can stick to this schedule, so wish me luck!