Lack of Willpower

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swordtrainer

New member
I keep getting ideas of great figures that i can make but when it comes to painting I just lose my confidence and do a bad job because im afraid of making it look differently then what i expected. Im a sophomore in highschool so im extremely stressed with honors classes. Anyone have any ideas on what i can do?
 
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MathewBaich

New member
painting miniatures is like any other art, paint what you feel. I don\'t think I\'ve ever stuck to a specific \"plan\" on painting a miniature, I just paint what I think will look good there. If it doesn\'t look so good, I try again.
 
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hakoMike

Active member
Yeah, here\'s what I want you to do.... right now... speak fluent Swahili.

Didn\'t sound so good? That\'s sort of the approach you are taking to mini painting. Slow down. Paint figures. Do not repaint. Instead, date each one and move on to the next.... post here if possible as well. The only thing that will make you more comfortable is time behind a brush. We all get mental images of what we want the minis to look like, and mine seldom looks like I expected or desired.

The great part: slowly but surely, execution will approach vision. (emphasis on slowly.)
 
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Onis Lair

New member
Hako has the right idea. Just paint, doesn\'t matter how it comes out just paint. Get some skills to work with first. learn brush control, get an idea of how to lay some good solid color down before worrying about painting perfectly. Just paint the figure, date it, set it aside and go to the next figure. Once you feel comfortable with your brush control then experiment with other techniques of painting. After a few months or a year look back at those first figures and i promise you will see improvment. Besides, you can alway strip a bad paint job down and try the mini again alter. in fact if you can pick up some cheap minis on ebay just for practice.
 
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Trevor

Brushlicker and Freak!
If it helps, I have 3 golden demon statues and not one of my minis has turned out the way I wanted them to, I\'m happy with maybe 25% of what I\'ve painted.

Just paint, and mix it up, do something big, then something small, something intricate, something simple. Helps maintain interest.
 
Shawn R. L.

Shawn R. L.

New member
I\'ve been seriously pursuing art for over 25 years now and often what I had in my mind and what turn out are different.........that\'s now always a bad thing. It seems to be a seperation/conflict between the rational mind and the intuitive, creative process. As you go further you will learn to relax with this. It\'s not always a loss but an adventure. Sometimes what comes intuitively will far exceed what you originally had in mind. Remember this too, there are alot of mini\'s out there. Try one with just what you had in mind and try one just seeing where inspiration leads you....Enjoy the ride!!:cool:
 
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Wolf Fang

Member
Originally posted by MathewBaich
painting miniatures is like any other art, paint what you feel. I don\'t think I\'ve ever stuck to a specific \"plan\" on painting a miniature, I just paint what I think will look good there. If it doesn\'t look so good, I try again.
Click to expand...

what he said... il\'l usualy grab a mini throw a colour i think would look good on it and work from there. have come up with some unique paint schemes that way too hahha lol
 
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J2FcM

New member
my advice would be to go with the flow. Stick with the mini till you get it right, and don\'t follow one set path... the mini doesn\'t HAVE to be dark red, just cuz you envisioned it.

plus, its just highschool man
 
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jester of death

New member
everyone else seems to have hit the nail on the head with this.

the only other thing i can suggest is to relax, chill out and paint at your own pace and dont worry about what it looks like till your done. ive painted so many mini\'s that i thought looked crap but i kept going and they looked fantastic. a single colour on a mini is no way to judge how its going to look.

ive found one of the most useful critics will be your mum and dad, no matter what it looks like they will say it looks great, and that always made me paint more of the mini no matter how much i hated it.

thats about all i can ramble on with atm...:D


JoD
 
freakinacage

freakinacage

Well-known member
dont forget that this is a hobby! whatever happens, enjoy yourself. you\'ll paint better when relaxed anyway. and learn from each mistake
 
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vincegamer

Active member
One more tip:

There are always more minis.
They keep getting better too.
Best to attempt your idea and then move on to the next mini and the next great idea.
 
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matty1001

New member
Whats a sophomore? EDIT, just looked it up, of course we have them lol, just don\'t call them sophomore\'s.

Painting should be what you do to relax if school is that stressfull, so just chill out and paint when and what you want.
Everyone goes through a period like this, i did, i even started a topic on here, and people just said chill out, and painting techniques will come to you over time.
 
Mason

Mason

Member
Originally posted by matty1001
Painting should be what you do to relax if school is that stressfull, so just chill out and paint when and what you want.
Everyone goes through a period like this, i did, i even started a topic on here, and people just said chill out, and painting techniques will come to you over time.
Click to expand...
I second that.
I painted in high school because I could just fall into it and forget all the deadlines and other drama of real life. I guess it\'s kind of like meditation. Just focus harder on the mini itself, and let that drown out the outside stresses. Give yourself an hour a day to paint, that way you\'ve still got plenty of time for school, and you\'ll see noticeable improvement from mini to mini.
I remember stripping a couple of my early chaos terminators down, in order to redo the paint jobs that I\'d done when I\'d started painting.
That\'s the beauty of acryllic paints too, you can always just splash a little white or black over the area you botched, and clean it up. Steady hands help, but a lot of the time it\'s just hiding mistakes, and using \"happy\" mistakes (like when a wash gets out of control, but glazes the green of your ork into a very realistic green brown skin tone). :)
 
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matty1001

New member
Originally posted by vincegamer
you don\'t call them sophomores?
You call them 14s or something very methodical don\'t you?
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No, just second years, or High School students. Nothing to special.

Is sophomore a Greek word? Because isn\'t your education system based on grrek words and such?
 
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Bill

New member
Originally posted by matty1001
Originally posted by vincegamer
you don\'t call them sophomores?
You call them 14s or something very methodical don\'t you?
Click to expand...

No, just second years, or High School students. Nothing to special.

Is sophomore a Greek word? Because isn\'t your education system based on grrek words and such?
Click to expand...
Freshman semester fraternity lol

In the U.S., a sophomore is a second-year student. Folk etymology has it that the word means \"wise fool\"; consequently \"sophomoric\" means \"pretentious, bombastic, inflated in style or manner; immature, crude, superficial\" (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). While it appears to be formed from Greek \"sophos\", meaning \"wise\", and \"moros\" meaning \"foolish\", it is in fact from the word \"sophumer\", an obsolete variant of \"sophism\". In Britain, the term \"sophomore\" is unknown and second year students are simply called \"second years\".

Not copied from wikipedia :D
 
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uberdark

New member
you know i can be like you sometimes where you just get sooo pissed when something doesnt work out and the idea in your head doesnt work... being 30 i look back and notice that i myself used to be in your same position... classes, parents, girl, and a myriad other things are in your life. all i can tell you is enjoy it. paint one mini at a time if one ticks you off put it down. work on anothe one. i still have some orcs that ticked me off last year just sitting there staring at me. its when you start collecting guys that you know you won\'t paint that you becomem addicted to this hobby. us older hobbyists can probably attest to the closet full of old crap that wont be painted .... but by god we wont sell no matter how logical it sounds coming from our wives. kudos to ya

and break a leg.:D
 
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Rodnik

New member
I\'m of the same mind as everyone else....my figures usually go like this:

I have a plan, and I work to the plan.

If something changes along the way, I just appreciate what I found and follow that path for a bit.

To this day, I\'ve never had a miniature that turned out \"exactly\" like I first pictured it.

Don\'t stress---just paint.

Cheers!
Kev
 
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