Miniature Painting (Specifically Warhammer) - Motivation?

Question

I'm having serious issues keeping myself motivated to paint my minis. I started the hobby about a year ago, but with all the gaps in between I've probably only been painting for 6 weeks. I'm definitely not a bad painter and I would really LOVE to improve my skills through experience. It's difficult for me to finish a whole model, let alone an army.

How do you folks find motivation, and how do you keep painting for long periods of time?

Answer 1

Well, like CraftyLady did, I mostly paint for money, so the motivation is fairly clear.  However, I do still have tro struggle through my bigger projects, like armies.

They key is to have external deadlines to which you must hold yourself.  Ways to do this might be to paint for a miniature competition, or to paint an army for a tournament.  Alternatively, there might be an online community you could join (Warseer, 40kTerra and Ammobunker are all good examples) who have forums to share project logs and where the feedback of other hobbyists can motivate you to continue.

I also find that looking at other people's work on thsoe forums and at the excellent, albeit intimidating, CoolMiniOrNot can be a tremendous spur to putting in that extra level of effort on a model.

Answer 2

There is a lot of good advice in these answers. Lot of it comes from people who are at a level where they are able to sell their paint work for money. In practice this means spending a lot of time on single miniatures. Curiously, I've found that this is largely the reason for my past lack of motivation.

I get a big, big satisfaction from seeing a complete miniature, or unit. The more time goes between these satisfactions, less motivated I become. As I have become a better painter, the bigger payoff in the quality of results tides me over longer painting times, but still, even now, I make it a point to paint something very fast every now and then. I use the tips below to get neat results quickly and leave the slow work for hero units. I have noticed that I like more and more just painting the rank and file ;)

Don't make it a big project to start painting. Try to have a painting area that you don't have to put away between paintings. Don't wait for a big batch of minis that you first have to clean up and glue before you will go through the trouble of priming them all at the same time. Clean and prime single minis stuck to spray caps. Prime single minis with brush and acrylic black gesso (it works surprisingly well), so you don't have to make it a project to go somewhere the fumes won't bother. Don't make a point of blending every miniature even when you can. Don't make the painting a 'big thing'. Try distractions. Have music playing, or a TV on in the background to listen to. It can make the time pass quite easily. Sometimes I want the distraction, sometimes I don't.

Try to complete the steps below for EVERY mini that you start to paint. The big idea here is that where you earlier felt discouraged by the mass of messy, or incomplete looking minis with small areas of extremely good painting, you now see neat, complete, if a bit plain looking minis to which you can always add detailing. For me this has made an extremely big difference.

#Use simple color schemes

Less is more. Painting every detail with its own color sounds like an excellent plan in theory, but leads easily to very garish and messy looking miniatures. Use three base colors, plus the flesh color at most. You can always increase the number of colors and details later. Also, fewer colors used equates to faster painting.

#Get over the messy mini stage

There very often comes a stage where the mini looks like complete garbage: You think you made the wrong choice in the individual colors, and the different colors look horrible together, and paint has run into wrong areas, and some of the primer shows here and there. The mini looks like a complete waste of effort; you just want to chuck the mini out the window so you never have to see it again. So you put it aside. And the half-painted minis increase in numbers and haunt you every time you look at your mini collection. Learn to recognize the phase. Persist in painting rest of the colors in, even if you think you made a wrong choice. Use drybrushing and washes only. You can add highlights, or blending later. Paint the faces. Do not paint eyes, unless you've mastered the technique of extremely fast eye painting. A miniature feels quite complete when the flesh has been painted. Even if the mini has just one washed base color, with no white primer showing and the skin painted, you could field it in a unit of more painted minis without too much clashing. Do not be afraid of having to come back later to repaint and add steps.

And then, blackline.

This is critical. So much so that in the unlikely case that you are unfamiliar with it, here's a recap: Blacklining is a mix of black and red ink, or very dark ink version of the underlying darker color painted into the border of the two colors to make the mini neat looking, even when the basecoats aren't. It can cover slight overpainting into adjacent areas. It makes the different colors really pop out. It has an effect lot similar to the black lines in comic books, where the colored pages would also look messy and cluttered without the black lines. You can skip a lot of work by using black primer, but use blacklining where necessary after painting in the brighter colored areas. You can skip it altogether when using 100+ hours to blend every color area, but that's a whole another beast, motivation-wise. Blacklining really is about the most critical step in getting neat results, fast.

#Building and basing

You can get very discouraged, if looking at your mini collection all you see is half-painted loose parts and units which look messy because of the splotchy, rainbow-like bases. Build and base the minis after this fast painting cycle at the latest, preferably before priming. Paint and flock the bases after the quick painting. You can always scrape the flocking away if you feel the need to change it. Develop a good looking mixture and stay with it. I used to use a light brown/green flock with patches of model railway ballast FOR ALL OF MY MINIS. It was fast. It didn't matter what kind of minis they were. A unit with uniformly made nice bases look neat, even if they only have the above mentioned one color+faces painted in.

Paint fast enough and you'll paint often enough.

Happy painting!

Answer 3

I try to reward myself for getting painting done, or restrict myself from buying any new models until I have a unit done.

Also, I tend to chain paint units and maybe do three models at a time. I am not much of a speed painter, so I like taking my time and doing a good job. This can be especially wearing when you have a lot of units to paint.

I also believe in taking breaks often. do one color, take a break, spam another color, break, metallics, break... you get the idea.

I usually reward myself with a new model (more assembly and painting) when I get something completed.

Answer 4

When I used to do, I painted for money... so money was my motivation. /shrug. I just loved my little guys. I would try to make every guy in the armies an individual. I would think of all the stories the characters could have told. I painted warhammer miniatures for a year, but soon moved on to other crafts.

Answer 5

I have the same problem as well.  What I do to keep painting them and staying focused is I setup a rule.  I will not play with unpainted minis and that is what keeps me painting and playing.  That may not be the answer you are looking for but it keeps me painting.