Painting progress and the fight between motivation and discipline.

Good tidings to you my fellow wargamers and miniature enthusiasts and welcome back for your bi-monthly reading here at my den of ramblings.  It’s been a couple of months since we spoke but a lot of things have been going on so we have a good amount to discuss.  I hope things have been well for you all in whatever you are doing in life, and so with that let’s get to chatting.  So get a drink, sit comfortably, and relax while these slow beats soothe your soul…or let these pictures do something for you.

So last time we talked about my painting progress, some goals set out because of NoVA/other events, and saw some work being done.  I’ve been putting in some work on the projects, but I have to say these past few months have been semi-slow in terms of progress.  I’ve had some stuff going on in the real world that it made painting take a back burner and in turn caused a slow down on my overall progress.  It’s not been necessarily a bad thing that real life has taken priority, but it is what it is and as a result I don’t feel like I’ve gotten as much done in terms of model count as I had the period before.  Add in the fact that I ended up spending a lot of time assembling models and having to wait for bits and bases to roll in, time just keep plodding along and I was not making a lot of progress.  Though I had a lot of things going on, and I felt like I had excuses, there was something else in the back of my mind and heart that was inhibitive of my overall progress.

Which in turn has made me introspective when it comes to my hobby time because I certainly felt a difference in mood and outlook this period than I did before.  Before I felt like a machine, churning out models (60 some odd iirc) at a pretty intense speed from what I’m used to doing.  During this period I felt more like a grazing cow, sometimes taking a bite but otherwise just moving slowly.  When we look at this period and see I have reached about half that number, which admittedly I probably painted about half of those days, I knew something else was at work.  While I can point to a few things going on that slowed my progress down (studying for a state credentialing board, visitations with family, a friend being deployed, and house maintenance) I also recognize that there were more than a few days that I didn’t pick up the brush because I just…didn’t want to.  Like my motivation was suddenly…dried up and withered away at times.

Motivation is a funny thing like that, especially for me in this hobby and I feel like painting is in a weird spot in the hierarchy of this.  Motivation in general can be a great start to a task and is a great opportunity for growth in a particular area.  A lot of things can motivate us to begin projects or to continue past ones.  For example I can read a novel about the Horus Heresy and then I’m motivated to start working on my Thousand Sons and bring their tragic story of hubris, honor, treachery, and sadness to the table!  I can watch an episode of Game of Thrones and then I’m motivated to clean and paint up some A Song of Ice and Fire models so that I too can bring the raw fighting prowess of The Mountain to my enemies’ lines!  Motivation! Yeah!

Within the past couple of weeks I saw a meme/quote about motivation compared with discipline and in this time in my hobbying life it truly resonated with me.  You know how sometimes you see a quote and it does nothing for you until you find yourself in a new spot in life and next thing you know it’s like “ohhhh…there it is?”  That was me in this instance and I realized that instead of relying on motivation to keep me going (because that’s obviously worked before right?), I would need to start cultivating discipline to paint on the regular.  Then if you think about it, painting regularly probably requires the most discipline out of the other aspects of the hobby (for me at least).  When you assemble models there’s an end result that happens relatively quickly and there’s several rewards attached to it.  You have the model assembled and you can start playing games with it.  If you choose not to do anything else then most of the community won’t say anything because they too have unpainted models.  Painting though…painting takes some effort.

With painting you don’t get immediate results like you do with assembling and unless you have some great skills then you sometimes risk your model looking vastly different than you intended it for it to be.  If you are a slow painter then that squad of 10 guys might take you weeks to finish and when you look at an entire army it starts to look like a yearlong project instead.  It’s very easy to get discouraged with painting, especially with the advent of social media the great miniature painters can show off their amazing work and make it seem like they woke up one morning and painted a masterpiece before their morning coffee is done.  So it takes discipline to not only keep painting despite not necessarily wanting to and to continue even though the results are not immediate and are risky.

Couple that mindset of discipline>motivation with that I am to enjoy my painting time versus making it a secondary job of churning out models, I think I was able to find my painting groove again.  Maybe not at the same speed as before, but I even felt like some of those models had lost quality due to time constraints.  So with my shift towards discipline I am also shifting towards making the models good quality instead of quick quality.  Will this mean I will hit some of my deadlines?  Probably not but I will plan accordingly so that the armies that NEED to be painted (i.e. my Zone Mortalis force) will be done by the event time, and then I’ll return back to the others as needed.

So a quick update on where the projects stand:

·         Zone Mortalis (Warhammer 30k): 

o   32 models

o   Progress/Pitfalls: Models have had their assembly finalized and their insignia from Pop Goes the Monkey came in.  Army specific paints have been acquired.

o   Current status: Ready for priming

·         Aristeia!

o   4 models

o   Fighters outside of the core box have been acquired and a team of 4 has been selected.  They have been cleaned of mold lines which that ranged from hardly present to “holy crap that’s a lot and annoying to clean.”

o   Current status: Ready for priming

·         Infinity After Dark

o   A 300 point Yu-Jing force

o   Progress/Pitfalls: I was short of some models but due to some generosity from WaaarghPug I now have enough for 300 points and then some.

o   Current status: Some models are ready for painting, the new models require assembling/cleaning/priming and so I am about 50% ready

·         Blood Bowl:

o   Dwarf Team of 18 models

o   Current status: Painting and basing are complete and pre-varnishing has been finished leaving the final matte varnish spray.

·         Warmachine:

o   Crucible Guard 75 points, 2 list format consisting of 67 models (!!!)

o   Progress/Pitfalls: Models were assembled but had to wait on MDF base inserts from Laser Craft Workshop LLC (great customer service btw) but they are ready for painting.

o   Current status: 20% of the army has been painted but basing is being reserved for a final “done with the army” phase since I plan on putting in some effort in making some dope bases.

I’m overall pleased with my progress and as much as I have been enjoying painting up the Crucible Guard I know I will have to pause the overall project to take care of the NoVA Open projects.  It’s a situation of “do I keep working on the Crucible Guard until the event,” or “do I get those NoVA units out of the way first and then go back to my other stuff afterwards?”  Not sure on the answer to that just yet but I’m sure I’ll figure it out in the near future.

As always I want to extend thanks and appreciation for my local fellow wargamers to including WaaarghPug, The Ordinary Wargamer, and Mininomicon for being sources of painting and hobbying encouragement.  Insignia for the Thousand Sons can be found here again and the bases I used for my Crucible Guard can be found here again.  I want to also thank you the reader for spending your time here on this blog and reading the article, if there are any questions or comments please leave them and I assure you I will get to them.  Thank you for stopping by and I hope your wargaming and hobbying adventures continue to prosper in whatever format you want them to be.  Until next time, happy gaming folks.