Regaining your painting mojo
Henry Hyde has just written a great blog post on regaining your painting mojo. It’s well worth a read.
Funnily enough, the same advice about painting little and often has been given to me by both Mike Hobbs and Dave Luff. It’s helped me get my terrain projects done – I’ve just got to convert it to figures.
I’ve made a start. Over last week I finished constructing the major part of my German WWII 15mm motor pool, and even got it base coated (a job I needed to do outside, before it got too damp). These are now done, and awaiting painting…
I’ve even based up my Infantry…
These too have now been basecoated, ready for me to get cracking with the paint jobs…
…but first, a small matter of making bases for all the vehicles that don’t have any, and basing all my artillery.
Thanks for the extra encouragement Henry – let’s see just how much I can get painted by Christmas in 30 minutes a day, shall we?
Tales of The Brummie Dwarf 
Thank you for sharing. I really need more painting tips. I own a dwarf fantasy army with the first white plastic dwarfs from like 96 or something. It´s still not painted. I also own a Brettonian army, a Chaos army, Orc army, Lizardmen army, High elf army, spacemarine army, 40k ork army, Imperial guard army, Flames of war army, Warmachine army and now I´m painting up an Undead army for KoW (and a Basilean). None of these armies are done, at most 30%. I´m 40 years old now, I’m gonna die before completting a single army! HELP!!! oh and those Perry Medieval knights look really tempting….
Forgot to mention all those Wargames foundry Vikings and Saxons that´s about half painted. And those 10mm Romans for DBA, oh god!
don’t worry Andreas, you are among friends and one day you will finish an army.
but oddly it might be one you haven’t brought yet 🙂
Hi Andreas. I’m a paintmonkey, here’s my card. I can make all your problems go away. 😉
On a more serous note: When I first saw the article when it was put up I thought it was a great idea. Well, I still think it is. One thing that struck me as really useful advice was ‘make it a habit’. Commission schedules aside I just start feeling rubbish after say two days of not painting. Even if it’s just painting something you don’t actually require at the moment, you get something done at least. If you don’t feel like painting your KoW Basileans paint a few Foundry Vikings. Of course it’s a good idea to stick to one project rather than hopping between them and not getting anything done in the face of overwhelming waves of plastic and metal.
The other things which I find help a lot are deadlines. ‘Let’s buy a DBA army each and play some day.’ Probably won’t work as well as a motivational tool to painting the little fellas (buying them surprisingly enough is way less of a problem in my experience) than ‘At the club meeting on November 19th we’ll start a DBA campaign.’.
In general I find playing and preparing for a game being a huge motivator. That’s why it can work really well if you play small games with what you have painted, even if they collections in question are too small for regular sized games of your chosen set of rules. It most likely will motivate you to add a unit or two to the force. If they won they get the new recruits as a treat, if they lost it OBVIOUSLY happened only because you lacked that unit of Ironbreakers on the left flank.
The “start small, only play with painted miniatures” convention is a really good tip. I ususally try to do this but it seems everyone around med (especially the young kids) just don´t wanna do that. They just charge out and buy EVERYTHING, play with everything at once and then end up just painting a fraction of the army. Ever.
Now the interesting part is that I think this has something to do with age as I, who own a lot of unpainted metal and plastic, used to do excactly the same thing. Today I have a strict “One new buy for every old painted one” policy. Wich is why I havent bought those Perry Medieval Knights yet. Since I haven´t painted. I think I just have to pick up the brush since once I´ve started it kinda feels good. It´s just like going to the gym I guess, once you started it isn´t that bad.
But I really, really wish all those youngsters could stop buying everything at once, it´s really hard for me to resist not running along 🙂
I’m of the same school of thought as Mr Hyde, in that I have to paint the miniatures that I have bought.
I also refuse to play with unpainted figures, so this is a potential recipe for not playing any games at all.
I have to say a huge THANK YOU to Mr Hobbs for lending me his WW2 Germans so that I could get some games of Chain of Command in.
However, I’m taking the step of returning this army to him this weekend, which will focus my efforts to paint my own figures a little bit more!
Whilst it is a standing joke about my painting output (or lack thereof) it can be difficult to paint, record and edit a podcast, and write a column and reviews for a magazine, so it tends to have been the painting that has suffered. I am hoping that the ’30 minutes a day’ solution will go some way to solving this.
At least with having played several games of Chain of Command, I know what support troops I need to paint first.
Playing Chain of Command with someone else’s army has been a source of frustration, as I have only been able to play with the troops that have been given to me.
My choice of support has been very limited, and not my first choice. (rather like a battlefield commander!)
So, putting my own force together has focused my efforts on what support options I would want to use – especially against paratroopers!
I think Dave will have to look out for lots of recon half-tracks, infantry guns and engineers 🙂
don’t tell him your plans, you know he’ll counter them