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How do you do it? I'm unable to concentrate and keep focus on painting my models, I get distracted and end up doing nigh on nothing.
Are there any remedies? Music and films don't work and when I talk and paint I end up focusing on the talking.
I play orks and painting the massive horde to a decent standard takes so much time, I'm stumped and I need help.

Suggestions?

take a break, pick up a new hobby for a while, drop WH40 for a month and do something else. Climbing, some sort of physical activity, or pick up a new game. RP in wow or some sort of RP game then when you come back to WH you will be like OMG i remember how fun this was must paint ALL the models. another thing i like to do is get my army all together and say..."damn, i need more fire power" then i start back up, OR be more creative with your models, modify them to make they unique or paint decals on their armor.

Make sure that you're painting/modelling something that you enjoy working on. When I'm working on painting, assembling or enjoying the models that I enjoy, the work is nearly effortless (or if there is effort involved, it is paid off in full by my satisfaction with the work that I have done). If you don't like what you're working on, you'll get very burnt out on the hobby in general.

Otherwise, Backspacehacker makes a pretty good point. Sometimes, the best way to approach the hobby is to step away from it for a while.

I'm not a RP fan...
I was thinking more along the lines of how can I keep my brain in permenant painting mode?

Bold determination. And if that doesn't work, take a swig of your favorite drink.

dont always stay in painting mode that how and why you are getting burnt out, it happened to me with wow. I LOVE wow and all aspects of it, the story, the lore, the races, the RP, everything. but the problem was i played it so much surrounded my self so much with it, it got to the point when ever i opened wow i closed it because i was so sick of it. I then went of a 3 month break came back and was like ZOMG this is so much fun again. Same thing with modeling, set the brush down do something else then when you come back you will be amazing at it.

Enter a tournament and say you are going to ensure that you have painted up a certain number of units/ a certain % of your foce for it.

I hate painting, but I hate playing with unpainted stuff even more, so it forces me to paint

build it to a goal. know the list you want, say at 2k level. test the army, win some games as motivation.

then build every bit of the army to wysiwyg.

spray prime the army.

spary base colour the whole army. (I was building blood angel so everything was red).

then the next thing is to complete and finish each model. I found that weekend evening are nice to do it for about 3 model a evening; any more probably get too tired.

In the old days I would just crank out an army in a week or so and play games for a few months. That kind of kept me on track after about three months or so of playing the same army I would work on another. Now days I don't get to play as much as I used to, but I get a good bit of painting done. To keep going these days I find it best to paint a unit or two for one army then paint a few for a different army for a while. I just keep working around the cycle of the armies I have. So if you collect a lot of armies just try switching it up for a while until you interests float back to your orks. Orks are tough for me too, I play mostly a green tide list so units are usually around 15-30 so I only get about one unit done a year for them. Anther way to keep on track with an army like that is paint them in groups of 10 at a time.

Mr. S Baldrick wrote:. Another way to keep on track with an army like that is paint them in groups of 10 at a time.

That is very similiar to what I do. With both my Nids and Imperial Fists, just make a unit at a time, a small unit for the 'Nids and if you want to keep working in an army switch from infantry to a vehicle, or from gribbles to monsterous creatures, or whatever it may be. Maybe stop and do an HQ piece and put soem time and effort into it to remind you why you need all the gribbles and followers in the first place.

But I do like the turtle approach, slow and steady and this has worked out well for me to this point.

the only time I actually get painting done is when I need to bring those units to a tournament.

I have strong willpower when it comes to making myself do stuff. I just till myself "Today I will paint this squad/tank" and I do it. Just force yourself, don't come up with dumb excuses, because there are none. Models must have paint on them.

Smitty0305 wrote:the only time I actually get painting done is when I need to bring those units to a tournament.

Yeah, if it wasn't for tournaments I'd never get anything finished.

Give yourself deadlines. Post up a painting and modeling blog here and garner some interest, then hopefully people will follow along and encourage you to do more. Say "I'll paint X Ork boyz this month!" and mark it on your calendar, then paint then whenever. Even if it's just painting one dude green before you go to bed, you're making progress.

lots of good things here.

Another thing I would add is to do other stuff while you're doing your hobby stuff. Have music or a movie going on on the background. A few March's ago, I put together like 20 models assembly to flocking in a two week period by listening to the entire Illiad on book-on-tape from my local library. I've also found having war movies on in the background helps. For my guard, nothing beats watching Zulu to get me back in the mood for painting another 20 dudes.

Also, doing other things related to 40k that keep your interest up like, for example, being part of an online community...

Netflix and podcasts are the best things to happen to my hobby time. Watching all the militainment stuff on there from Military Channel (Greatest Tank Battles and the like) really gets me jazzed for my IG, and The Independent Characters podcast gets me so amped to do 40k stuff it's insane. Check em out:
http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/

Mix up your projects. Even among one army, you'll have a few different projects you can be working on. I burned out on Tyranids by giving myself deadlines and batch painting entire squads at a time. I sqapped to not caring about deadlines, and just painting or working on what I wanted depending on my mood. Maybe today I'll magnetise that Carnifex? Or maybe I'll paint a few gaunts? Or maybe I'll finish up another Hive Guard? Maybe I'll do a bit more construction on my Heirophant?

I find lack of variety in projects kills my interest in the hobby.

I watch TV and/or mine in EvE. i actually havent done much hobbying fo rpast few months but just picked up a skaven army and am working on that. I tend to get bored with one hobby and switch so now that I have several armies/hobbies hopefully ill get more done switching between them.

Thanks, will try Podcasts that might 'Inspire' me.