Trying to stay motivated!

[Dont-Be-Haten]

So I've been painting off and on for about two weeks now, and I'm finding that motivation is fleeting quickly. I'm taking breaks, not painting every day, and trying to keep on top of my first army as best as I can. I'm trying my hardest to make every model look as good as possible but after painting the first unit of 36 spearmen; I'm about ready to pull my hair out! xD

I think its the mundane painting of the same figures over and over, I know its about time to move onto the archers, swordmasters, mages, my griffon prince and Caledor Prince riding a Star Dragon, and the bolt thrower and chariots but woosh this is getting rough.

What are some of everyone's painting habits? How do you stave off the attrition? I know somedays when I get home from work I'm totaly psyched about painting, but after about an hour or two I'm spent and just can't keep it going. The paint needs to dry and I don't want to use a hair dryer and I don't have a radiator 0_o

Would you suggest after basing or layering of a certain group to just move onto another group while I wait on the others to dry?

Lazily,
DBH

[fuzzbuket]

make something a bit diffrent about each model, i love freehand so once say the armour is done i get to paint some freehand! it gives me a goal to work towards!

having the radio is also quite good, as well as a ipod/smartphone/gameboy to play whilst the paint is drying :P

or the plain and simple if i paint x i anc spend x hours on the ps3/xbox/ trololololing the forums




-fuzz

(who did a 10 hour painting session yesterday for GD -_- and is shattere)


p.s. why not for every 5 spearmen, do a chariot/half a dragon/hero/ect

[Deadlift]

I paint at work on my lunch break, One hour a day and thats it. Not too much its over kill and if I find I want to do more I just find a little extra time during the evening.

I started a WOC army at the end of July and so far I have painted

24 warriors

6 trolls

10 warhounds

1 sorcerer

which is about 1000 - 1250 in pts depending on equipment and spells etc.

Depending on what results your looking for I find The Army Painter primers and quick shade good for speeding up rank and file soldiers. I used them on the hounds.

[Wildeybeast]

My friends and I set up a painting club. We'd all get together one evening a week round someone's house, get some take away to eat and a few beers and make a real social event of it.

Edit: When I'm painting on my own , I really find the radio useful, as fuzzbucket suggests. I have a few podcasts I like to catch up and I sometimes stick on some of the audio books that Black Library produces, I find they are quite good at 'setting the mood' and inspiring me to paint

[AbusePuppy]

Fantasy is especially bad for this sort of thing because of the models in ranks- it's why I'm switching over to Ogres, because it's easier to have each model be unique with them.

However, there are some things you can do. Working in small batches will help, as you get to see more progression of the figures; simply shrink your batch size as much as you find necessary. Three should probably be the minimum with more like 5-10 (depending on your army) being a better goal to aim for.

Breaking up the monotony is also a good plan; if you paint ten rank-and-file models, switch over to a solo project for your next piece before going back.

Having something on in the background to distract you can be a huge boon; obviously music works here, but I have been slowly plowing through the whole of Mystery Science Theater 3000 over the past six months, and I find it's just about perfect for that level of "needs some attention but not too much."

The real solution is to paint/assemble models as you buy them, rather than buying a large number of things and dreading the prospect of having to paint 2000+ pts in sequence, but being that doesn't allow you to play with the army and clashes rather violently with the way most of our compulsive habits as wargamers, it's not likely. :P

On that front, though, playing with the army regularly can be a good motivator. Knowing there is a tournament or game night coming up can go a long ways towards giving you the drive to try and have something finished in time to show it off.

[Chronowraith]

As a Skaven player I know exactly what you are feeling when it comes to rank-and-file monotony.

To combat the evils of painting essentially the same figure 100 times and then moving onto figure two for another 100 times I try and switch things up. So try the following;

*Paint in mixed batches. Example - I paint in batches of 10, in those batches I have 4 slaves, 2 Clanrats, 2 Stormvermin, a weapon team, and then "something else". The something else is usually a giant rat but can also include gutter runners, nightrunners, rat ogres, etc.

* After every 2 batches of rank-and-file I paint a character model or a monster/war machine.

This way takes longer to complete whole units but really keeps me from wanting to stab my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon.