bracken | 14 Jan 2016 3:32 a.m. PST |
I have being painting almost all my life, it started with Airfix kits! "Who didn't start with Airfix" I enjoy painting and its my escape from the real world, work, my medical condition and generally all the crappy stuff in life. I know I will never be a great painter, I know I will never be a great sculptor! but I know I am average and I can get by. Yes once in a while I surprise myself and even I see that I painted something special. Now the point of it all, I have had on and off over the years tried desperately to improve my painting, to the point of almost giving up painting completely. Plastics caused me lots of headaches, I couldn't get the same results with plastics that I achieved with metal figures. Now I love plastics, I have altered my style slightly to suite and I am happy with the results. I have improved over the years in all aspects but never to the standard I once dreamed of! The point is I'm happy with my results, I'm happy with my style and I enjoy my time spent at the paint table! Not having the time to chill and paint is better than not having painting because I couldn't reach the standard I once dreamed off! PAINT! ENJOY! Be HAPPY! Be YOU! |
warwell | 14 Jan 2016 3:38 a.m. PST |
Being me means not painting (I hate it) ;) Anyway, I agree. It's a hobby; it's supposed to be fun. Do what you enjoy! |
GamesPoet | 14 Jan 2016 5:07 a.m. PST |
Great post. Painting is a journey for me. A little bit at a time, experimenting along the way. I started out with 54mm plastics in my youth, proceeded to 25mm metal, didn't then hobby for many years after a theft and not handling loss well, then came back and started teaching myself and finding new things to try via reading on the internet. I've skipped around from 28mm GW to 40mm MSC, plastics and metals, and my next step will be to give BF&S 15mm a try. I typcially have between 4 and 6 different projects going on my hobby desk, and a bunch of others floudering around waiting for me to paint them. When I get tired of one project I hop over to another and come back again to the previous later. I couldn't be happier with the hobby, except to have not missed out on doing it for so many years, yet that really is water under the bridge, and no going back now. Full speed ahead! |
Rrobbyrobot | 14 Jan 2016 6:24 a.m. PST |
Absolute stuff and nonsense! You are a great miniature painter. Just ask me, I'll tell you, again… |
Frederick | 14 Jan 2016 8:14 a.m. PST |
I love to paint – and I am not even a mediocre sculpter Talking about Airfix – the Little Prince and I were assembling an Airfix JS-3 yesterday – nice kit but much more fiddly when you compare to, say, Armourfast (probably intended for different markets) The Poet is exactly right- have a couple projects on the go is the cure for boredom |
Coyotepunc and Hatshepsuut | 14 Jan 2016 8:23 a.m. PST |
I was once a great painter. I worked hard, read everything I could, made first cut in Golden Daemon… things changed. I spent the better part of a decade trying to re-capture that level of precision, but for the last couple of years I have accepted my setbacks and went back to painting just for the hobby of it. I like to paint miniatures. I like to play games with them. My paint jobs won't win any contests these days, and my tactics don't win many games. But I have more fun this way. When it starts feeling like work, it is time to walk away for a bit :-) |
Winston Smith | 14 Jan 2016 10:20 a.m. PST |
The figures I had the most fun painting recently were the "Spirit of 76" trio from Fife and Drum. They are an almost exact copy of the iconic painting. I took pains, much more than I do with actual uniforms, to get the "exact" shades correct, and lovingly dipped and based them at the proper angles. Useless on the battlefield, but there they are, in almost every AWI game involving militia that I put on. As befits militia, they are very drab. I THINK the fifer is wearing some kind of iniform but can't be sure. They were a heck of a lot of fun to paint and I think I did a good job on them. Might I add that is possible to teach an old dog new tricks. I've been doing this since 1974 and …. The less said about their quality the better. When Uncle Duke brought out Heritage paints, and put on his patented carny huckster demo of them at a convention ("But wait! There's more!) My skills improved 100%. Jay Hadley showed me how to make good basing and flocking. I do it slightly differently now. The Dip came along. I have tried the blasphemous black prime. I occasionally paint with Testor's enamels when I think the job needs them. The key to becoming a competent painter is to not be afraid to try new techniques. And to abandon those you try but don't like. No point in being pointlessly stubborn. I can't make black priming work on ordinary human figures, but I can on tanks and Knights. Lessons learned. I found out I can do Abyssinians using brown camo spray as a base coat and drybrushing. But I'm not all that happy with them. One more try to decide if I like it, then back to white. Such experiments keep painting from getting boring. |
Tacitus | 14 Jan 2016 10:59 a.m. PST |
I used to be happy trying to get to a great standard of work, emulating the styles and techniques of the professionals, even though I knew I would NEVER be that good. That was okay; I had fun trying. The frustration hit hard when I painted one GW Space Marine chaplain and it came out absolutely wonderfully. It was fantastic. I couldn't do better. You get the idea. That was 6 years ago and nothing, I mean NOTHING, I have painted since has come even close. It was one thing to never be able to reach the level of great painters, but another thing entirely to spend 6 years and not be able to match my own work. Some of the figures I've painted since look like they were painted by a gorilla with Turrets. Beyond frustrating… |
WarWizard | 14 Jan 2016 12:29 p.m. PST |
At first I was trying to paint all figures to a Gold standard. Then gradually over time, I realized, standing above the gamming table I cannot discern a figure that took me 5 hours to paint vs 5 minutes. So I have adapted a more forgiving standard and have even started using the "dip". Something I would not have considered only a few short years ago. |
John Leahy | 14 Jan 2016 12:57 p.m. PST |
I was there in our local store when Duke showed customers how to Stain Paint. I did it for years until I started using first minwax then Future. If I find a good technique I try it out. I may never be a really good painter. But my stuff is a solid wargames quality. That's better than it was when I first painted my Custom Cast LOTR figs (my first) with Pactra paints in the 70's. Thanks, John |
jwebster | 14 Jan 2016 2:19 p.m. PST |
I paint for myself. There will always be someone better than me, so I have fun with where I am. My kids think I am nuts, some of their friends are polite. It's fun to hang out with gamers because they know what went into the painting. I have respect for anyone who gets a painted army on the table, whatever the quality of painting For me, improving has been more about learning new tricks than improving my artistic skills. Internet is a fantastic resource. In the old days, the only source of new painting skills was at shows John |
KSmyth | 14 Jan 2016 3:05 p.m. PST |
I love painting figures. I'm a teacher with a position that is pretty demanding of my time, and I paint whenever I possibly can. I'm also sixty--I've painted lots of figures using lots of different techniques. No question in my mind I was at my best about 25 years ago. But it doesn't change a thing. I have far less time to game than I used to but don't take my paints and brushes away. Bracken, my motto is: Any painted figure is a well-painted figure. |
PistolPete | 15 Feb 2016 9:01 a.m. PST |
i agree with all the others whho view it as a hobby. my (patient) art teacher wife says it best – "it's about process not product" and i take that to heart. i look back at some of my eariler work and know i'm better now and with some work/practice/trials, i 'll become better. until then, i enjoy painting and learning/trying new techniques. in fact just yesterady, i finally got a decent skin tone after stripping the same figure 4 times. and i never feel completely outdone at my FLGS so i'm pretty happy. my goal is to have a figure in the store display case and i think i'm closer now. |