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 Da Boss wrote:
Personally, I found that looking at painting videos and the like made me less motivated. Loosening up, finding a standard I was happy with with techniques I didn't find onerous was how I liked to paint and I get a lot more done that way.

Perfect is the enemy of progress. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Done is better than perfect. Etc, etc.

Social media uses a lot of camera tricks and framing to provide an enhanced reality that most of reality fails to accomplish. Even before the age of digital touch ups, a lot of what you see would only be half a model and very rarely a whole army.

I have a standard I'm happy with and while I could definitely benefit from some new techniques, I'm also just more interested in playing with painted armies than winning painting competitions. To that end, I tend to favor learning things that get me to that standard quicker.

Guess it depends what you’re looking for.

I find some tutorials/demos really useful. Like the aforementioned quick grimy metal thing I use for terrain.

I’ve no interest in especially fancy painting, I like my quick and effective stuff. Takes a bit of trial and error to find the sort of tutorial/demo I want, but it has encouraged me.

Yeah that's fair - especially more general hobby channels can be good for that sort of thing more so than painting channels specifically.

I realised after a while that lots of these painting guys don't really really have complete armies and it's because painting for that sort of extreme close up photography is really time consuming and draining.

I use painting guides for very specific things, like Duncan Rhodes' guides for plasma and volkite glow (though I didn't follow it 100% as I don't have his skill and precision).

Otherwise I prefer to make it up as I go along. It feels more personal that way. Many Alpha Legion players use Akhelian Green, but no one uses quite the mixes I do, and most don't go so hard into edge highlights and chipping.

 catbarf wrote:

Between hobby products like Contrast and the ubiquity of online tutorials, it has never been easier to paint to a decent standard if that is something you genuinely want to pursue.

I've been a good+ painter for decades. Neither Contrast paints nor those ubiquitous tutorials have changed my motivation to paint nor the speed I do it....

 catbarf wrote:
And lastly, to circle back to paint-vs-gameplay a bit, I would argue there are tangible gameplay differences between a highlander-style army whose owner has been slowly painting it for the last three years, versus a grey tide army that the owner bought according to the latest meta developments and won't paint because it'll be sold or relegated to a box in another three months once it's no longer top-tier. Paint is, to some degree, emblematic of a fundamental difference in perspective between viewing models as hobby projects versus viewing models as playing pieces, and the players who embody either extreme of that spectrum are unlikely to have a great time together for reasons that go far beyond how their respective armies look.

Obviously there's gameplay differences. I'd argue unit selection is the cause, not how much paint is involved.

 catbarf wrote:
As always, the hobby is what you make of it and as long as you and your opponents are on the same page, knock yourselves out.

(Quote snipped for brevity)

Fantastic post, exalted. Agreed with pretty much everything, especially since I recognise myself as that highlander-style painter you mentioned.

What do you do if nothing works for you?

I have an airbrush waiting to be used as soon as life allows me to spend more than 2 hours per Month on hobby time. That's my last option - if an airbrush doesn't make painting bearable for me, there are no options left. I literally tried everything, watched every video about motivating yourself.

There is zero fun in painting for me. It's a chore, I need to highly focus over a long time period to paint models, so it's both tiring and can't be done when I'm tired for other reasons. The only reasons to do it is because I enjoy having my models painted in the way I want and not getting bullied/punished by game rules. And since those two motivations are in conflict, they cancel each other out.

Play with likeminded people who don't want to paint either and just want to game, I suppose?

It's what I do. Well, the other end of the spectrum, but the principle is the same. Doesn't seem so complicated to me. Both people are likely to have more fun if they want the same sort of experience from the game.

ccs wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
And lastly, to circle back to paint-vs-gameplay a bit, I would argue there are tangible gameplay differences between a highlander-style army whose owner has been slowly painting it for the last three years, versus a grey tide army that the owner bought according to the latest meta developments and won't paint because it'll be sold or relegated to a box in another three months once it's no longer top-tier. Paint is, to some degree, emblematic of a fundamental difference in perspective between viewing models as hobby projects versus viewing models as playing pieces, and the players who embody either extreme of that spectrum are unlikely to have a great time together for reasons that go far beyond how their respective armies look.

Obviously there's gameplay differences. I'd argue unit selection is the cause, not how much paint is involved.

Sure, but if your options are limited to whichever units you've gradually painted over the course of the last few months to years, your unit selection may look very different from someone whose only obstacles to army composition are monetary cost and assembly time.

Which is not to imply that anyone with a painted army is a casual hobbyist and anyone with grey tide is a powergamer, but it's difficult to powergame from an existing painted collection, and it's difficult to paint up a meta army before the next balance change invalidates it. The time and effort involved in painting stuff to a reasonable standard puts a personal cost on churn and a barrier to immediate deployment well beyond the time and money it takes to buy and assemble new models.

And again, if you and your buddies prefer the more competitive aspect and don't want trying new units and tactics to be hamstrung by a hobby task you dislike, more power to you. You don't owe anything to any uninvolved third party. It's just that if we show up for a pick-up game and I've got a fully painted army of models I thought looked cool two editions ago, and you've got a grey tide army based on points changes in a balance dataslate that just dropped six hours ago (don't touch the dreadnought's arms the glue hasn't dried yet), we are probably not on the same page about what we want to get out of the game. All things being equal I'd enjoy a game with painted armies more, but the paint or lack thereof isn't really the issue, it's more a reflection of where our priorities lie.

 Jidmah wrote:
and not getting bullied/punished by game rules.

Have you tried slap chop? I've been very impressed with what that can produce and you can do it even faster using an airbrush to zenithal models quickly.

That said, I was going to reply on the 10 point deal but saw this thread seems to have spun off of that discussion and thought best to comment here. I think the 10 point rule is weird in that it really only matters if winning has some sort of benefit like a league or tournament and those environments tend to have painting rules already in place.

I think part of the reason I find the 10 points ignorable is just because they don't change how I feel about how the game actually resolved. If I score 48 points and my opponent scored 56 but isn't painted, those 10 points don't give me the sensation that I scored more points, even if I "win". By the same token, in the reverse situation, I feel successful from the results of the game even if I guess I lost due to being unpainted. How I feel about the game is not changed by who is declared winner and in either case it was probably a good, hard fought battle.

I think that's why so many people ignore the rule. It's not that they don't value painting, but that it doesn't impact how the results of a game feel. I can't imagine what it would take to make me feel victorious because of the rule.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Play with likeminded people who don't want to paint either and just want to game, I suppose?

It's what I do. Well, the other end of the spectrum, but the principle is the same. Doesn't seem so complicated to me. Both people are likely to have more fun if they want the same sort of experience from the game.

You do realize that this is just a nice framing for "go find a corner where you don't bother me", right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
and not getting bullied/punished by game rules.

Have you tried slap chop? I've been very impressed with what that can produce and you can do it even faster using an airbrush to zenithal models quickly.

Yes, thanks for suggesting it. It's actually slightly slower than my current way of painting models as I already work a lot with ink and colored base coats.

 Jidmah wrote:

You do realize that this is just a nice framing for "go find a corner where you don't bother me", right?

No one has an obligation to play a game with anyone else, and people generally are happier playing with people who approach the game similarly.

 Jidmah wrote:
You do realize that this is just a nice framing for "go find a corner where you don't bother me", right?

Huh? No, this is just me applying the same standard to you as I do to myself. If we have differing priorities and interests we're not likely to enjoy a game as much as if we shared them. Isn't that just pretty sensible? There are two sides to this thing.

 Jidmah wrote:

You do realize that this is just a nice framing for "go find a corner where you don't bother me", right?

No, it isn't. It's how social activities work. People are within their rights to refuse games for many different reasons. The important thing is how they do that. You can be a donkey cave about it, or politely decline a game. Kind of weird to jump straight to that conclusion from what was a pretty reasonable explanation.

 Jidmah wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
and not getting bullied/punished by game rules.

Have you tried slap chop? I've been very impressed with what that can produce and you can do it even faster using an airbrush to zenithal models quickly.

Yes, thanks for suggesting it. It's actually slightly slower than my current way of painting models as I already work a lot with ink and colored base coats.

Makes sense. Orks are definitely not easy to paint. Everyone has lots of details and faces and the like. I have failed to paint an army of them myself and finally found a reasonably speedy process that made it possible. Might not work with your style, but on the odd chance, check the spoiler for the process: