"How Efficient of a Painter Are You?" Topic

Efficiency being defined as throughput; your ability to churn out quantity of painted figures. On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high).

I think I am a 6 or 7, but then again, my quality is not the best!

How come there isn't a 0 because I am definitely a 0.

I'm with Disco Joe. Maybe in an emergency situation (delving into a new period and the first game is next week) I might eek out a 1.

Maybe 2.

Maybe a 3 or 4. Hard to say since it is so subjective. I might not paint for months, then knock out several hundred 10mm or 15mm troops over a long weekend, then not touch a brush for a few more months. I painted 600 of Warlord's Epic ACW one weekend.

I used to be an 8. Now I am a 6 or 7. My buddy Rob is a 10. He is a painting machine!

Thanks.

John

8. Covid was very good for my production.

10, for those batches that I finish. ;-)
However, a 2 for some Zombicide zombies I started painting about 5 years ago (I still haven't decided what color(s) to paint their shoes…)

Probably a 6, most of the time. I watch The Pledge postings and also pay some attention to what other people post on their websites. My production isn't especially impressive, and I can be erratic, but it could be worst.

Grelber

Prolly a 5 or 6 ? The painting muse occasionally abandons me :/

I've been doing this a long time and I'm very task orientated. I buy what I need and then paint it. 9.

Say six or seven. I spent yesterday fixing 24 figures painted by a ten.

1-2 I go in spurts, often no painting for a month or two.

It depends.

I'd like to say throughput is a function of quality, but I think it's a function of "fear"

F'r'ex, I have a set of Firefly character figures that have been sitting on my table for two weeks (excluting one week away on travel) Because they are specific character figures, I am "afriad" to goon them up, so they've been languishing at two colours for a while.

The ten generic figures for the set were done it a couple of hours. They aren't done to a lesser quality; they just have a different expectation. And I've churned out a couple sets of a dozen or so other figures in the meanwhile, too.

I guess 3 for some things and 7 for others.

I must be a 1 or a 2 as well. Things can stay on the desk for a long time. I am currently in a "finishing" mode and have completed and based three Indian and one Successor chariots, which means that the Norman infantry have been untouched for at least six weeks – and I am only two units away from a complete Norman army, so they are high priority.

Varies. At the moment, 2.

Speed? Definitely a 9 or 10. Quality, 6.

once I get started, 7. large lulls between projects

My painting hasn't recovered from the pandemic. I don't have the motivation anymore. A shame really because I did enjoy it.

I don't try for quantity or even other than basic quality now. I paint 6 or 8 figures in a batch and I do it when I am in the mood and if they look good enough at 3 feet, they are complete.

Note that if speed of output is the sole determinant of efficiency, the most efficient painter in wargaming is some Games Workshop player armed only with a can of spray paint.

Second place is working on an assembly line in China.

I have seen the work of "efficient" analysts. It's the stuff of nightmares.

Well, you know what they say. Time, Cost, Quality. Pick two.

I treat painting (and making) as art. It's not efficient.

I also treat it as play. That's not efficient, either.

I'm efficient at work. I like my job and I like being good at it, but it's not art and it's not play.

So I'm with Disco Joe.

Too true, Martin, too true. Actually, two of the three is better than we often get. ONE of the three is better than we sometimes get.

I have a goal of 50-70 figures per month according to my own system of measure. I almost always make my goal and occasionally exceed it. This month I finished with 61 figures painted. Mostly I paint historical 28's, but usually have a ship or two and a few planes in there too just to keep things interesting. I would say that my efficiency is an 8 or 9, with quality a 6 or 7.

I get stuff done, but there is always more to do.

3

Depends on what I am panting. But overall a 3.

Figures – 0. Middling + quality. Damned slow.
Armor – 4. Middling quality. Middling speed.
Steam Ships – 8. Good quality. Good speed.
Sailing ships – 4. Good quality. Speed awful. Construction
is so damned fiddly.

I average 7-10 minutes total brush time, per figure. I use assembly line techniques (figures grouped by pose, repeat same brush stroke on each figure within each group), so I rate myself a 9, for efficiency. I'd rate myself a 10, if I employed SpeedPaints 2.0, because that would reduce my brush time to 5 minutes per figure, or less. Too few figures left to paint to justify the cost of SpeedPaints 2.0, however. Cheers!

Painting dead men's armies, mostly. Any given box could be "grass and matte" "raw lead" or anything in between. Ask me about figures per month about 2,000 Napoleonics from now, given no one dies in the next few years.

I'm about a 0.5, until I get a project really cranked up and I shoot way up to about a 3.

Most days I would say a 7 or 8 for churning them out – not going to be any masterclass figs but they will have a coat of paint on them!

Forgot to fully explain my approach to being "efficient", in churning out painted figures…

Assembly line painting as mentioned, using simple block painting techniques (craft paints, full strength); brushing on The Dip Technique (faster, better control, less pooling, compared to dunking them in the urethane stain mixture -- Minwax, as it is much less expensive than hobby products), or Magic Wash Technique; spray on matte clear coat, and done. Texturing their bases is also simple: brush on PVA Glue, swirl in a mixture of colored sands and Model RR Ballast (small rocks). Minor clean-up required, then they are ready for the tabletop.

As bad as you imagine my results might be, here are some examples of what such "efficient" painting techniques can accomplish: Human Ultra-Heavy Cavalry; 28mm Gnomes, 1/72 scale Dwarves, 1/72 Scale Cyclops block painted and freshly Dip'ed, comparison, and matted/finished. They won't win any contests, but they look pretty good on the tabletop. "Efficiency" is a very broad term, but it does not automatically mean : terrible, poor quality, or ugly -- it can, but it does not have to mean that. LOL!

To be truly efficient, but still achieve very good results, I would recommend SpeedPaints 2.0 (SP's). Here is a YouTube video from Wyloch, which demonstrates how effective SP's can be.

I reached out to Wyloch, to ask if he knew how SP's compared to The Dip Technique: Wyloch was a Dip'er like me, and SP's blew The Dip Technique away… His video also demonstrates why I won't buy into it: having 1,000+ Dip'ed figures already tabletop ready -- I would need to re-paint 1,000+ figures with SP's! That will never happen… ;-) Cheers!

Quantity is 5 but quality is 2. Never happy with 28s. For decades I painted 15s.

Hm. I'm less efficient now than five years ago in that the number of figures I finish in a year is quite significantly down. But I'm more efficient in the sense that the number of figures finished per hour actually spent painting is up.

Hmmm this is a really subjective issue don't you think? I'd rate my quality quite highly as they meet my requirements, others may think the quality much lower. My downfall is speed as I just don't have the time to paint that I would like. I guess I must be in a bit of a flat spot as I could make more painting time if I tried.

My target every year is to paint 365 figures (or figure equivalents). I usually fail…but it remains as a target.
Quality -wise I paint to please me. I understand the 3' rule…but I paint to suit what they look like as I'm holding them to paint.
Only one person has ever complimented my painting…So it seems my "style" isn't generally thought of highly!