Words of Welcome

Welcome to Harm’s Workshop. In this opening Editorial, I would like to take some time to talk about why I started this website.

So what is this website for? A couple of things:

My own personal archive

First off, this is my third attempt at writing down and archiving my painting recipes in a single, organised place. As a slow painter with a severe lack of discipline and perseverance, I often find myself leaving half-finished projects lying around for months. When inspiration returns, I am then faced with the task of figuring out which colours I was using on my half-finished models. Having learnt from my mistakes, I started to write down colour schemes for almost everything – everything except for one-off painting competition entries, such as my Halfling entry for Olden Demon 2023 (see image).

While this has been a very useful practice, I never really found a good way of archiving those notes. Usually when painting, I find the best way to make notes is to just use a small notebook, or a piece of paper, and write down the colour choices I make along the way. But pieces of paper, or paper notebooks tend to become a disorganised mess after a few entries. So I’ve tried organising them, first using Notion, then using the Apple Notes app, and now using this website.

Thank you, Community!

Surely though it’s a little overkill to build a complete website just to organise some notes. Indeed, which brings us to the second reason for this site’s existence: you! Ever since I picked up the paint brush again a little over three years ago, I started posting the results of my paint jobs on my instagram page. I always thought that Instagram was just for posting pictures of your food and your holiday trips (#nofilter), but it turns out the place is home to a community of incredibly supportive fellow Warhammer fans!

And Instagram is not the only place to be if you share a love for old, colourfully painted miniatures. There are so many great people around that make wonderful content surrounding old school Warhammer. There is the Crown of Command Podcast – which is much more than just a podcast and has been around for ages. Anvil of Doom Miniatures makes excellently colourful painting videos, which are equally entertaining as educational. The previously mentioned Olden Demon, who have been hosting an old school painting competition for the past four years. Or what about Hammer the Backlog – an inspiring blog about painting productivity methods. These and many others like them make immense contributions to a lively, inspiring and supportive community of hobbyists. This website is my tiny drop into that ocean.

Check out and follow these instagram accounts linked above for guaranteed goodness.

What sets this site apart?

There’s a lot of content out there that can keep us informed or entertained while hunched over our painting desks, slavering away at our Warhammer (or other) armies. Besides the ones mentioned above, there are podcasts about the Warhammer Lore (Laying Down the Lore), Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay actual plays (A Grim Podcast of Perilous Adventure), or informative shows about Warhammer: The Old World (Square Based Podcast). On YouTube, there are many content creators that produce excellent painting tutorials (Vince Venturella, Squidmar, or Trovarion, just to name a few), and there are also awesome channels focused on Battle Reports (like Rogue Element Gaming).

With such a wealth of hobby content out there, you may consider it foolish to launch another initiative. Well, first of all, if you are considering launching a podcast, a YouTube channel or a website yourself – I say go for it! When it comes to hobby content, there’s always room for more!

But I do want to make sure I’m creating something just a little different than what is already out there. And here’s how:

1. No video, no audio, just written content that you can enjoy at your own pace. Before the internet, myself (and many others like me) enjoyed hobby content through the monthly White Dwarf magazine. Just text and lots of images of awesome miniatures. I wouldn’t dare suggest I can produce anything close to how awesome those magazines were back in the day, but I do think there is a place for some more old school content (especially among fans of old school miniature games).
2. No ads. There are (at least) two reasons why advertisements are a terrible addition to any website. First, if you don’t run an adblocker, they are extremely distracting, vying for your attention with colourful animations and imagery. We don’t want that – we want to give a calm and relaxing space for you to enjoy some hobby content. The second reason, and this holds true even if you are blocking the actual ads, is that it incentivizes writing obnoxiously long and spun out articles, instead of just providing the information you came looking for – just to make you scroll through a few more ads before finding what you need. We don’t want to do that either. All tutorials should provide their information straight and to the point. If you came here to see how to paint a Dwarf’s beard, I will tell you how to paint a Dwarf’s beard, and not bother you with stories about how my grandmother used to have a beard, the importance of beard grooming, and a list of ten other facial hair features you could also be painting right now. Obnoxiously long content will be reserved exclusively for these Editorials (as you can see).
3. What were we talking about? Oh yes, how this website will be somewhat different. Well, there is no third thing. In all other regards, this will just be another hobby website. I hope you will find it useful or enjoyable, or maybe even both.

In closing…

In this article I mentioned some of the hobby content creators I enjoy a lot. There are many more out there, and I’m working on creating a little overview of websites, podcasts, and video channels that will get you through long painting sessions (or long pooping sessions in the case of written content). If you have any suggestions, leave a comment below or send me a message on Instagram (@hopdenakker).