Everyone goes through slumps in their hobby, life jumps out from behind a fence and surprises you. Or you just loose interest. There are steps that you can take to try and keep that hobby spark alive. I am by no means an expert in this, but I do find that I have time between games or painting. So here are my methods.
Plan
I have found that having a plan for your army (ie an army list) and buying, then painting what is in the list. I am currently doing this with my dwarf army and it is keeping me on track. The fact is you can't really play with an army if you don't have it, can you? It also keeps you focused as you tend to buy one unit at a time, then paint it unto completion before moving on to the next.
Alongside this idea to keep things refreshing is the idea of a work order. Doing all the big units together will make things boring, you'll burn out - especially if you are doing a horde style army. To keep motivated you really need to put more interesting and fun choices between them, to break up the monotony. This can be done by simply putting something different between unit or groups of a unit. These often are the more fun and eye catching options; for example with my Dwarfs I am putting characters and war machines between the combat blocks so I don't get bored. The same idea works with other armies. Put a character or a monster grouping between those blocks.
Change thing up...
Like most gamers it is unlikely that you will be painting only a single army in bulk (unless you need to get it done for some reason - such as a tournament). So use this to your advantage. Variety is the spice of gaming. If you have multiple projects on the go, and none are terribly important, then try mixing it up a bit. Paint a couple of things from one project, then move onto another and repeat. Before you know it your army has grown!
Randomise
Sometimes it is just nice to have a break from your army. A bit like above painting some other miniatures can often help keep you going. However it is sometimes quite fun to try something different, pick a random mini and paint it up. This allows you to try a different approach to minis and practice some new techniques. It is often fun to pick a model or even range that is completely different to anything in your army. An example might be, being a Dwarf player I would consider painting a mounted model.
These are just a few basic ideas on how you can make your painting sessions less boring and to keep you on track with your painting and your army.
3 comments:
Ooooo that poster makes me feel bloated just looking at it!! Nice article,it made me feel less like I suffer from ADHD, and instead that I am simply doing what any good hobbiest would do!
Cheers,
B
Painting the odd adventurer for roleplaying purposes is a marvellous break from painting all those zombies and druids for my main factions, so I think you're on the money there. I also tend to choose factions or armies that have a variety of different-looking things in them, and can accomodate variant or flat-out separate colourschemes. You'll never see me with Dwarfs or Lizardmen or anything else that's basically the same model painted a hundred times over.
Black Bard - You are not alone! -__^ I am the same, loads of projects planned. I tend to try and stick to a single one though and just switch my choices about.
Von - That is another great idea, diversity in the army/force of your choice.
I actually just remembered another thing to help. A Painting Log. This helps you to record your progress, especially if you can cross off a unit on a list of 'things to paint' like myself and Troll Tales does. But a painting blog has the added benefits of getting support and comments from other people and helping you to push through and continue.
Ooooh!! And group work! Damnit, I need to edit this post now....
But painting in groups is a great way of doing things. Something along the lines of 'A Tale of Gamers' works really well, building an army is small point increments (like 250 - 500pts a month) helps keep you going when there are others doing the same.
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