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I'm personally the slowest painter, and I feel like I have so little time... I get home from work at 5pm, then it's family time. The kid goes to bed at about 7pm, is asleep by 0730-0800pm, after that my wife and I often have dinner (the kid eats dinner a bit early for us usually), watch a TV show and talk about or day for about an hour. Suddenly it's 9-930pm and I go to bed at 11pm at the latest, so AT BEST I have 1,5-2 hrs per day to paint, that is if I literally spend all my personal free time painting, which I don't obviously. On top of that there's exercise, reading books etc... how do you guys manage?

I do pretty much all my assembly and painting in front of the tv now, not as convenient as a dedicated desk but it means more building and painting gets done

If you can do half an hour each day, projects will get done. It might take a while, but you will see progress quickly. I aim for this, some weeks I can spend longer, other weeks I can't do any at all.

That is one of the big ball aches of aging, your painting finally gets to a decent standard, but you no longer have enough time to do it.

 JamesY wrote:
If you can do half an hour each day, projects will get done. It might take a while, but you will see progress quickly. I aim for this, some weeks I can spend longer, other weeks I can't do any at all.

That is one of the big ball aches of aging, your painting finally gets to a decent standard, but you no longer have enough time to do it.

Can't agree more with this. Even 15-20 minutes a day can manage things, especially if you're on a project that involves lots of repetitive tasks.

Yeah, I'm in the same position. Doesn't help either that pretty much everything I have is at the same point of needing brass edging painted - which I'm finding to be a massive pain.

Crispy78 wrote:
Yeah, I'm in the same position. Doesn't help either that pretty much everything I have is at the same point of needing brass edging painted - which I'm finding to be a massive pain.

I feel your pain whole heartedly my friend...I have about 3 units of berzerkers that I've been looking at that need their brass edging but I cant seem to find the motivation to do them

I don't. I haven't painted a significant number of models in the past 5 or 6 years. It took me 3 years to paint my Tyranid army, and that was back in high school/early college days when I was far less busy than I am now.

I haven't been able to pound out an army in a couple of months since I was a teenager.

I don't find the 20-30 minutes a day thing works for me. I just don't see much progress, I get bored of it and if I'm only painting for that long the busy work tends to chew up all the time.

I prefer to dedicate a whole day/morning/afternoon to it every now and then, which obviously means I have to plan for it somewhat. But in a morning/afternoon I might get 1 or 2 models done, and I can only do that maybe once or twice a month, so yeah, I don't see me painting a sizeable army ever again in my lifetime

That's partly why I've gone back to painting display models rather than whole armies, it might take longer to do each model but at least I have something to show for it after a while, where as trying to paint a regiment is just painful when they don't look all that great and you know you don't have the time to finish it before GW changes the rules and makes them worthless

The Wife often needs her alone time. After The Boy goes to bed, she’ll often do a little yoga, wash/dye her hair, or catch up on facebook, etc. Then we’ll watch something on TV or read on the sofa together, or something. That’s a nice little window of time I can get some work done.

Just because you are married does not mean you need to spend 100% of your free time together. It’s good to have separate space/time apart. Just like you want a little time to paint, She probably wants to do somethings herself.

YMMV

If its a free day off uni I'll be in store for some small projects
and chit chat, but I mainly paint in the evenings around 10pm-2am.

At work of course!

I usually do my painting at nine or half nine as well for an hour or so. If that. Plus a bit on the weekend when my better half has a sleep in.

You'd be surprised how much you get through even if all you do is a half an hour, or an hour at a time, so long as you do it consistently, and aim to do it two or three times a week. I'm aiming to paint all of my stuff and have gotten to 88% painted (140 models to go, with twenty of those half done!), almost entirely down to a bit of dedication and focus and a bit of time management.

It also helps to break down your painting mountain into small self contained manageable 'projects' and complete one project at a time. If you look at the whole heap, it's all to easy to just panic and feel overwhelmed and respond my dejectedly walking away. Stop that. Focus. Dedicate. Do one piece at a time. Complete it. Move on. Learning to 'production line' your painting helps to maximise your time spent versus models painted as well, even with simple techniques. Keep a project log of everything that you are doing (whether it's an excel sheet, or an Internet blog) and everything that is in the pipeline and use that to motivate you. When you see the '%complete' number rising constantly, it's a nice empowering feeling, and it will encourage you to keep going.

Try to figure out how to spend an hour a day, and the progress is steady, even if a little slow. Mixing hobbying and TV time works out pretty well.

Hmmm....
Home about 6:00.
Eat.
Clean up.
Tell kids 3-5 times to get "ready" for bed.
Somehow up to 8:00 is lost and kids read till 8:30 while I "fix stuff" that wife or mother-in-law destroyed or could not figure out how to work and is now a smoking ruin.
Saying goodnight somehow can go up till 9:00pm.
9:00 to 9:30 visit and run for the man-cave.
If I am very lucky after the 3rd or 4rth interruption I may get an hour in.
I find painting is least productive due to all the preparation and cleaning but is the most gratifying since the model is either done or close.
I find for some reason, zero time is spent on weekends unless I line-up a game but no "crafting" time.

I find PC games are evil, they tend to make me ignore the hobby for days at a time.

I find also "effective" time becomes worse since various friends and groups get attracted to the newest hottest game and some army I was working on gets dropped like a hot rock.
Oh well, soon this kickstarter frenzy will slow down and everyone will run out of games I do not have.
Spent a bunch of time fixing our fences to keep the darn kids off my lawn!!!!

 Talizvar wrote:

I find PC games are evil, they tend to make me ignore the hobby for days at a time.

Turn based games help me clean mold lines. Fire up Civ V, and every time it’s the computer’s turn, I clean a bit. Sometimes a few each turn late-game.

Of course, I don’t get much painting done that week, but it helps with the tedious part of the hobby.

I've been trying to set a single night a week aside for painting - usually from 7 pm to 11-midnight. If I am lucky, I will get a second night in during the week.

I've been lucky that this year so far I've got in a considerable amount - my Tyranid army has been painted, I've kept up with new acquisitions for Tau & Necrons. I've been able to start on my Space Marine backlog and primed imperial guard horde, and am looking forward to being able to finally get my "loaner" Eldar army painted and looking decent. One day, might even get my younger son's orks at least primed, if not painted.

I try to aim for at least 4 hours when I'm not working.

I got loads of painting done over winter when my baby was newborn and slept all the time. Now that he's awake most of the day, I haven't opened a paint pot in maybe 4 months.

My aim is to have a mini paint station set up that I can pull out for 10 minutes here and there, but realistically, there's so many other things that demand my time.

Try to go with assembly, priming and other prep type stuff during the week on evening when the light is variable.

Used to get plenty of time for this as I used to get home about half four, now I work in London and lucky if I can pick up a brush before about eight so not as much.

Most painting is now Saturday when I've got the house to myself.

Normally in the kitchen where the light is decent

I feel the pain of many of you guys. Older, with more disposable income and much improved painting skills, but time poor.

Once you factor in work, children and spouse, there's not much time in the day.

The other issue is that often I could find 30 mins late in the evening, but I'm too shattered from a busy day to think about painting.

Still, progress is being made on my mountain of unpainted stuff, albeit slowly!

 Mymearan wrote:
I'm personally the slowest painter, and I feel like I have so little time... I get home from work at 5pm, then it's family time. The kid goes to bed at about 7pm, is asleep by 0730-0800pm, after that my wife and I often have dinner (the kid eats dinner a bit early for us usually), watch a TV show and talk about or day for about an hour. Suddenly it's 9-930pm and I go to bed at 11pm at the latest, so AT BEST I have 1,5-2 hrs per day to paint, that is if I literally spend all my personal free time painting, which I don't obviously. On top of that there's exercise, reading books etc... how do you guys manage?

I am in a very similar situations, sans the kids (yet), and I had planned on starting the assembly of a box of MT Scions last night, but suddenly it was 11:30 and I was going to bed. I think I just need to carve out the time, and do an hour a day without fail to get into the hobby rhythm again. Hobbying in front of the TV is a great idea, and I might do that as we are currently watching Gilmore Girls which are 45 minute shows.

I think the amount of hours spent sleeping affects the amoutn of hobby time a lot. In the past, my prime painting time was a couple of hours in the 11pm - 2am slot most days

However, being semi-retired, I have more flexibility now, and spend more time on hobby when there are projects I really want to do, and less when there's something new and shiny in a non-hobby hobby (new release of Visual Studio, some new server project, new video game, gardening season, new photography toys, baby raccoons in yard....)

I'm fortunate, in that I can close the door to my office at work and paint here and there during slow times when there's nothing pressing I need to get done (or when I'm on a conference call and the other parties can't see what I'm doing).

I get in about an hour a day, and it really adds up (mind you, I'm allowed a "lunch hour," so it's not like I'm slacking off or anything like that; eating my lunch takes all of 3 minutes, usually). I do all my assembly at home here and there when the kids are asleep/occupied (rare), and that adds maybe a couple hours a week.

Over the last 15ish years, I've amassed 7 quite sizeable armies between fantasy and 40k.

My friends hate me quite a bit.

I can scrape at least 30 minutes at a time a few times a week. I keep my projects on a lunch-tray in the kitchen closet so I can get it out and hobby whenever I have a bit of time.

If I'm disciplined about it and bring the tray out to the living room when the wife and I are relaxing after the kids go down, I can get alot more than 30 minutes.

Recently the wife and I have been playing more board games in the evening so I have a bit less time to hobby, but I'll take games with my wife over hobbying almost anytime.

Now if I could just get her interested in hobbying...

The hardest part for me is actually starting anything. I have the time to do it, but the motivation just isn't there sometimes >_>

I get up at the crack of dawn (i.e., 4AM)to walk the dogs while my wife and son are asleep. Afterwards, I get about 40 minutes of hobby time before it's time for everyone else to get up. I never, ever thought I'd be an early bird, but I have gotten a ton of models finished in the last couple of years.

I find myself on call overnight on weekends very often. Painting fills in the time nicely.

I mostly only get time on weekends these days. It's slowed my painting a lot, and I was already a slow painter.

Very little. But I've been working on becoming more efficient with the time I have, and come up with ways to stay motivated while making slow progress. Here are some tips that have helped me stay motivated and get more done in the little time I have to paint: http://adventuresinminiaturegaming.blogspot.com/2016/06/painting-tips-for-rest-of-us.html

I'm a pretty fast painter but work has slowed my progress quite a bit. I usually have a day or 2 of free time though to work on my stuff. I can usually get 2 marines done in a night. I've had lots of orks to practice on.

/rant mode

I've seen a few curmudgeons pop up on this forum that brag about having a 'job/life/gf/wife' so they can't paint, unlike us goddam NERDSSSSSSSS I guess. There was even a guy who claimed anyone with a fully painted army was TFG. I feel sorry that people are so insecure in their lives that they can't enjoy their own hobbies. If you really were a responsible adult you could manage your time better.

3-5 hours a week

or if I have a deadline or something coming up, I just bump it up to 10~ hours a week