It's been a mighty long time since my last post! Lots of reasons for that- moving, house hunting, wedding planning, work suckitude, Fallout 4. But the biggest reason is that I just kind of lost my painting mojo for a little while. Happens to all of us sometimes. So what are the things we all do to keep motivated?
That above picture represents the extent of my painting for the last few months, which wouldn't be totally embarrassing except when you compare it to the previous WIP picture from weeks ago. Really, in the last two months I got one good day of painting in at Trip's house, and that was basically it. That poor 'Fiend has been languishing forever.
This isn't the first time I've gone dead on hobbying for a while. Here's my usual remedies. What do you all do to keep going?
Play games! I'm hugely motivated by breaking out the dice. We haven't done that much lately. Getting your carefully painted models out on the table, the camaraderie, the glee from an improbable victory, the frustration of a catastrophic failure, the endless thumbing through rule books for clarification- it's all good fun and keeps me wishing for new units to bring out.
Blog- This blog has been a huge part of my motivation. Having a commitment to yourself and others to post weekly progress helps you break out the brushes even when you're not feeling it...usually.
Switch it up! This is likely a key factor in my current slowdown and a big reason I've got several armies. Sometimes you get sick of a color, or a style of model, or whatever. It's good to be able to grab a different model from a completely different army and keep yourself fresh. Sometimes you're tired of painting, so you pull out a new kit and scrape mold lines for hours. Sick of modeling, break out the airbrush, etc. If you've got a lot of different things going at different stages of completion you can always find something different to do when you get tired of whatever you're working on.
Since I moved, all my kits are in storage indefinitely, as is my airbrush. That leaves me with an Alpha Fiend, ~25 Alpha soldiers to paint, and nothing else I can work on. It's a lot of blue green and steel. They're all at the "painting endless amounts of steel" phase which I really don't really enjoy. Metallics are kind of annoying. I'm REALLY close to finishing that stage on this 'Fiend though, and that means moving on to the more interesting and varied detailing.
With two weeks vacation ahead of me, I anticipate breaking back in to all of these old re-starters and getting my blog commitment going again. For Alpharius.
What do you all do to keep it fresh?
Happy Holidays!
~Deet
He lives!
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