5 keystones to navigating your painting journey
Issue 015
Welcome back, readers and new subscribers! I can’t tell you how busy I’ve been on the brush painting commission pieces, writing lesson plans for students, and coming up with a whole curriculum that will be accessible on my new website coming soon! It’s still amazing in my eyes that transforming once just a hobby, into a full-time career! If you ever feel in your life that you have a vocation, you should do everything in your power to walk that path! I don’t know where this will lead me, but I can say the journey is exciting, and I’ve met so many wonderful people along the way.
In this issue of the Miniature Palette, I’m going to give you readers some tips that I’ve learned along the way. Think of it as a field guide in the world of miniature painting. Chances are you will encounter these things, and if my miniature work and journey are of any interest (you did subscribe to it), Then these things can help you navigate it much more smoothly than I did. Navigating new paths of your own with a bit more confidence. So get ready to take some notes and enjoy the next few minutes with a good coffee or beverage of choice!
1. Figure out what kind of game you are playing.
What I mean by “game” is what kind of painting you are setting yourself out to do. There is a lot of differences between painting a single model, a squad of 10+, and an army. Not just the fact that you have 1 or more to do; but rather techniques both used in its execution and the journey in its progression. Hashing these details at the start of a project will keep your expectations in check, and put you in the right mindset to complete it successfully. All too often I get students and enthusiastic hobbyists who come with the problem of trying to push their skills further, and at the same time batch painting a squad or a whole army using the previous techniques and expect a big leap of improvement. The general idea is that repeating the same thing and expecting different results is a fool's errand lol.
With batch painting (assembly line), our majority of improvement will be on its time efficiency, consistency or some other factory-related task. The opposite is true for introducing new techniques that improve the overall visual representation (display quality). If you decide to up your game on a single miniature, these don’t always translate well to batch painting. They often have more refined techniques that require constant adjustment and don’t work on the simplified path of a straight recipe. Moving across a whole army can start with a unit looking one way, and the final unit of the army will look much better and more refined. This is due to our focus on techniques improving our quality with each new model. Doing both can lead us to spread ourselves too thin and gaining neither skills in return. I go back and forth between these games. One project to push my display quality, and the following I'll work to implement those towards a batch assembly line project.
Don’t take this in its pure form of black and white. There are going to be techniques in which both improve your max skill, time, and recipe consistency. But there will be times where your progression will demand more training and focused learning. Just be on the lookout and ask yourself every so often.
2. Bitch less!
This goes without saying that the more you complain about a certain aspect of the hobby (painting yellow, trim on titans, skin, cleaning mould lines etc etc.) The more energy you pour into things you don’t enjoy. It’s true, I Do NOT like masking things off. The process is boring, it’s finicky and time-consuming. But I don’t give it any more attention than it deserves. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all fun when we are chatting with our friends on discord and someone brings up “fuck I’m now painting the trim on this warlord!” Everyone chimes in, and it can feed the rant and turn it into a bitch fest. It can be quite demotivating especially when you are painting the same or similar model with those features. Adding just that extra bit of weight and resistance to the project making the task that much more sufferable. Instead, I say I love it! Don’t show that weakness and own that part of the process. It’s a necessary step towards completing that titan and has to be done. And if you slack off or do poorly, it will show on the model at the end reflecting your skills. Keep your back straight, walk tall, and focus on the execution! Your peers will respect it and it's these little victories that build confidence in yourself as a person and an artist.
3. Make failure your best friend.
Or the friend you see, chat with, visit every day. I say this because when you want to improve, you need to push yourself. Taking your skills to the very ceiling and meeting with your friend, "failure". It’s the only way to raise your skill ceiling, you gotta touch it and then punch through it! Then during your recovery of analysis, running your mind through your session, and looking at pictures of your work or in hand. You’re repairing that ceiling, shifting it slightly higher each time. It’s the same process I go through with Bouldering, distance running, and learning a new skill in painting miniatures. You need to ask more from yourself with each project or session. Push as hard as you can until you on the failure line. Rest and recover; then come back with a little more understanding, fresh perspective, and the gains from the last session. It’s all about those small incremental gains that build up like compound interest. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable and having failure be your best friend. I can almost guarantee you will find yourself improving at the fastest rate you’ve ever felt.
4. Avoid cheap shortcuts that prey on quick emotional responses.
Promises of fast, no effort big gains! Sorry, but I always laugh at adverts in the miniature painting world and hell any other skill-based learning activity that promises effortless steps, no practice, and done in minutes. Or the increasingly growing catalogue of hobby accessories that add to the clutter, and put you in the mindset of "you need this to improve." Just cracks me up because it’s not true. These kinds of things prey on your desire to improve, and a path that shows little resistance. Much like how you want a shortcut, they are looking to make a quick buck to a shortcut that doesn’t lead you anywhere great. No extraordinary painter that’s won crystal brush awards or golden daemons ever had a 1 stop shop. It takes countless hours of dedication, love of the craft, and constantly searching for challenges that lead them to where they are.
5. Be mindful of yourself when it comes to social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being on Instagram and all those channels to have my eye on the constant landscape of miniature painting. It’s changed the game so much with its accessibility to the art form, and how it’s ever-evolving. And not to mention how much accessible it is to learn too. The only learning I had before was White Dwarf magazines and looking out for the best issues with Eavy Metal tutorials! With all the magic the internet holds, there’s a whole new set of problems that it introduces to us. Constant comparison to others works that can eat at your self-esteem if you're not careful. It can be brutal to feel this, and I’ve had to navigate this river on more than one occasion. To cross this river safely, I find it helps to turn it into a positive perspective. This is something I should aspire to be, and remind yourself of all the hard work, time and study it took that particular piece to the artist to get there. Cause whatever you think you’ve done to get to this point, there is a whole endless road ahead. And besides, the work that you’re comparing yourself to is from an artist who is travelling a different and unique path of his own. Enjoy his perspective and get your focus back on your journey.
The second part of this a concerned with how many followers you have and how many likes, hearts, thumbs up you receive. There is a positive side to this metric, it can be a really good feeling and almost euphoric to see your latest work blow up. I gotta be honest when I got a post that reached 1k likes in IG, it felt really good to get that kind of recognition. But it can be very damaging and cancerous to everything you’ve worked for. Anxiety towards your paintings, applying energy on figuring out algorithms, hashtags, and everything you can try to get more followers. You can run into the trap of losing your love of painting miniatures in the first place. Worried about metrics, getting like/followers, and not more into becoming a better painter. Good, honest, and creative content comes out as no.1 when all the chips are down. We all like to cruise our favourite subreddit or IG hashtag, but keep it to motivating, entertaining, and inspiring outcomes. Leave the metrics out of it and focus on your work. My only exception is that if you are making a business that’s using those various platforms for marketing and such, then yes it should be considered in your promotion to include and understand this! But for all you hobbyists regardless, be friendly online, share your work, and enjoy what your community is creating. Just remember the golden rule: Content is King.
I hope you found something in this issue that resonates with you. The journey has plenty of obstacles and terrain that need to be navigated, and I hope these points I brought up have helped in one way or another. In the next issue, I’ll be jumping back into some painting theory and it’s on possibly my favourite subject COLOUR! Thanks for making it this far, and I look forward to sharing more in the coming months! A contest, subscriber discounts, and more!
All the best & happy painting!