Getting inspired

[Drunken Elf]

Morning all. A lovely deceiving sunny day outside,

This is not really a question of painting & conversions but more a question of how can I get motivated and inspired to paint again.

Im browsing he galleries and WIPs (Milosh's work, kapow!) but I just cant find the motivation and sit and paint for myself again. Ive tried looking through books, reading new things, watching movies. All these things usually inspire me to pick up the brush again but im at a loss.

How do you find inspiration to lick the brush once more?

 

[VeristicalBlaze]

I like to enter competitions or paint something for someone else. Also keeping a WIP log can help a great deal to get some feedback and motivation to do better(or keep up the good work )

 

[TrystanGST]

Each person has their own ways, to be sure. I don't think you can force it. Some days I just don't feel like doing it. Then I see a mini or contest that excites me and it's off to the races. Like Vertical said, WIPs and contest can provide a push, but don't let them become a stressor. That's a big reason I avoid a lot of competitions - they are great for getting me to start something, but the pressure of a deadline can suck the fun right out of the process if you end up spending 6 hours painting the night before the end.

 

[Drunken Elf]

Yeah competitions aren't good for me. I entered one, ran out of time due to work and ended up rushing towards the end and all my hard work came undone slowly in front of the judges and my world crashed and burnt. I vowed to avoid comps until I had a good solid few weeks to myself. Lesson learnt.

I had started a WIP about 2 years ago and never finished him. dropped the model in some boltgun metal and got stuck figuring out how to go about the base... then moved house the following week. so my setup was gone

 

[VeristicalBlaze]

Yeah, you're right Tryst, I also most of time just start on a figure for the competition but end up having not enough time and then I just skip it and finish the mini at my own pace.

Another thing I like is to watch works from others or painting dvds like JBT's

 

[Dragonsreach]

This is not really a question of painting & conversions but more a question of how can I get motivated and inspired to paint again.

A very hard question, when I do lose the focus on motivation I choose a miniature I think I can get completed in a single sitting. Often this is something from Reaper with a simple stance and not needing a lot of preparation. I find using this One model/One sitting approach gets me back into the mindset of concentrated effort on a mini or set of minis.

I've been stuck for the last few weeks/months being unable to sit for protracted periods to paint due to illness/side effects. Now I'm currently unable to paint due to a massive mancave refurbishment, held up awaiting delivery of new shiny painting/storage console. I have a lot of stuff I want to do but despite the fact I want to get in and paint a quick figure for my own enjoyment I have a competition looming, so I'm instead planning the base layout and colour scheme. I find a cheap sketch book and waste paper with my planning.

But as someone[SUP]*[/SUP] once said:- "Motivation is for amateurs, a true professional does the job regardless of how he feels."

([SUP]*[/SUP] I think it might have been Earnest Hemingway)

 

[Drunken Elf]

This is an incredible saying and makes so much sense. I always feel this way about tattoo artists who do this everyday. Very good. I'll have a look at some reaper models.

"Motivation is for amateurs, a true professional does the job regardless of how he feels."

 

[Zab]

I just barely avoided power armour burn out by trying something from Freebooter. Sometimes it as simple as a different scale or genre. Maybe some terrain or try a different medium all together. Water colour, oils, sculpting, making and staining wood display bases etc. Reaper is so good. I picked up a crap load from the pathfinder series to do up as avatars for the folks in my office. We have a pirate ship in our pod of cubicles and we wanted something to represent us as the crew. People know I paint minis and asked if I would do it. "Gee boss you want me to paint minis at my desk?!" Like I would say no to that

 

[ced1106]

I have my paint area RIGHT next to my slow craptastic computer. So while my computer is being slow, I have some time to do something with the mini's. I'm usually painting a few at once, and will do one step or layer on them. It still takes days or weeks to finish a miniature, but there's really no deadline.

 

[TrystanGST]

This is an incredible saying and makes so much sense. I always feel this way about tattoo artists who do this everyday. Very good. I'll have a look at some reaper models.

"Motivation is for amateurs, a true professional does the job regardless of how he feels."

This is true if you look at painting as a job. As a hobby, I think this is exactly the WRONG way to look at it. Nothing can turn you off faster than forcing yourself to work on something you're not feeling.

 

[ced1106]

Well, I've heard the motivation advice of "paint every day" on other miniature painting forums. Not exactly a job, but definitely forcing yourself.

Of the various "male nerd" hobbies (computer games, boardgames, anime, television, comic books, etc), I think, for me, miniature painting is closest to a "forcing yourself". Of course, many other hobbies, such as art (painting, sculpting, digital art, writing), "female hobbies" (cosplay costumes, scrapbooking, cooking, knitting), home improvement projects (eg. building shelves) also involve long-term projects with initial monetary costs (buying the supplies) followed by time and skill (the hobby itself). They easy part, assuming you have money, is the supplies. Then it sinks in that you actually have to take time and effort to improve your skills. Much worse, after all that work into it, there's no guarantee that the results will at all be satisfactory. (At least I don't have to *eat* my disasters!) I know some painters honest-to-gosh enjoy painting. But others are here for different reasons (eg. unpainted miniatures for their boardgames and RPG games). Myself, I blame the Reaper KS

I'll paint "every 24 hours" and it's great to have permanent, tangible evidence that I did something creative. It's much different than the sense of "so what did I waste my time doing" after a spending time on the computer or television set. And, frankly, it's "cool" to play games with painted miniatures. But the actual painting isn't terribly enjoyable, unless it's more productive than waiting for my stupid slow computer to respond.

Sure, I'd like to hear why others who aren't and are motivated are in the hobby.

 

[Zab]

One weird thing my friend Stubby does when he gets burn out: He picks a miniature he HATES, be it the sculpt, the subject, whatever - and he paints it to a display level to try and make it look better with paint. It usually breaks him out of his funk and he has some pretty nicely painted minis he wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I guess rage works as a motivator for him, but he's really weird - talented, but weird.