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So one of the things i was looking forward to summer for was the free time to paint. I even got about 45 models to paint.
I painted about half of that. But now i lok at them i just cant help but feel dread when i think about painting them.
Any advice?

Find something to break up the monotony of the painting, when I look at my traitor guard I have about 60 models left to paint and to be honest it was becoming a soul crushing experience. However I then decided one night to convert up some gorkamorka orks, every once in a while fitting in another guardsman while using the comparative fun of converting orks to break up the hell.

However this then becomes a slippery slope, I'm now making some marines to break up the monotony too.

MAybe i will buy some video games,i haven't played those in awhile

Set manageable goals. I'm painting a SoB army for a friend. As a New Year's resolution, I vowed to paint 4 models a week. I didn't make every week's goal. Sometimes I changed things up and did one of his tanks in lieu of the 4 sisters. Did a mix of DCA, command, special, heavy, basic sisters; kept swapping things around to keep it fresh. I'm almost done. 5 seraphim and a heavy flamer are all that's left. My goal now is to finish them up before 6th edition releases. After I've painted the Sisters for the week I work on expanding my own army. Some biker scouts I'm excited about, my second drop pod (how I hate assembling/panting those), some Battle of Maccrag tac marines to replace a squad of 2nd ed tacticals. Painting my own stuff was my "reward" for doing the painting I "needed" to do. You could do this with your own army; if you finish all the boring basic troops, reward yourself with a fun model you are looking forward to painting.

So I guess this rambling boils down to

1- Mix things up so you aren't doing the same thing endlessly
and
2- Set small, manageable goals rather then looking at the huge wad of unpainted plastic/metal on your worktable.

I have a WIP Blood Angels army that has been WIP for 14 years, a WIP Eldar army that has been WIP for 7, and a WIP CF army that has been WIP for 3 years...see a pattern. Painting can be monotonous at times, mostly for me I have to take breaks form painting or the game; and then inevitably buy more models when I decide to get back into it.

hotsauceman1 wrote:MAybe i will buy some video games,i haven't played those in awhile

This helps me when I get bored of painting. For about the past year all I really paint is Assault Marines and its really boring. I dread painting them, but I break it up by playing video games for a week or so before going back to it. Also reading my codex or any of the fluff for 40k gets me excited to paint again. Its really easy to fall into this rut and sometimes its a little difficult to get out, but just change up what you do for about a week and in no time you'll be back to painting them!

I just find it soulcrushing when I am in a bad mood. I can't paint like that.


Honestly dude, just get stuck in. I am like you. I look back at my painting experiances and games and am like "Oh, boring, dull." Played a game and was almost running around like a child on Christmas.

Deadshot wrote:I just find it soulcrushing when I am in a bad mood. I can't paint like that.

Sometimes painting can help with a bad mood. Focus on the model, not on your problems. Relax, you need to keep your hand steady. Ohmmmmm.

Go onto Unearthleychildes thread on here and join our painting comp

We both needed motivation so decided to start painting a unit / character / large model each week.
We are now up to about 10 or so people joining in with this.

While its not super fast painting, it does give some motivation, and thats much needed since im staring at around 7k of unpainted daemons.

i find that playing a warhammer game (on pc/console) like space marene or something or dawn of war, then i get hyped up about the tabel top nd i wanna paint again lol, but i do it slow, just paint 1 model to completion, then some more gaming so i do it in little bursts og burnout then game then burn out....then a long rest for about a week then i'm totally back into it

I'd recommend painting models in batches. Paint 10 guys at a time, assembly line style. By the time you finish a layer on the last model the first one will be dry. Paint when you're feeling chill.

For many gamers, building and painting miniatures and all that this entails are the bane of their existence.

I'm lucky, I love trimming, building and painting miniatures and fortunately I have a job that allows me to work and do just that... for hours... (no, i'm not a security guard...lol, umm, not that there is anything wrong with that.)

Having ADD, I thrive on multi-tasking (monotony, not fear is the 'mind-killer') and I paint most of the miniatures in our 22 person gaming group.

Seeing the faces on those I paint for is the big reward and keeps me going.

When I'm painting/modeling, I like to put on a movie or tv show, almost always something I've seen before so I only have to pay about a quarter-attention. Obviously this isn't for everyone but I find it works for me.

I find that with painting, and really nearly any endeavour, the motivation will happen after you start. If you're waiting for some spark of inspiration to get you going it'll never happen, but if you just get some paint on the brush and get going you'll get more motivated as you go along and see the progress you're making.

So just get over that initial hump and you'll gain a lot of momentum as you paint.

The only time I have this problem is with the "troops" choice, so our group has a mandatory bi-weekly "paint your troops" night. Not a brilliant plan, but it worked this far.

I do troops and other models that I have lot of in an assembly line sort of way. Instead of doing one guy to completion then moving on I do all the pauldrons, then all the helmets, then all the guns, etc. I usually do that in batches of 5 guys at a time, and its worked well so far. Also if you're painting a lot of troops you need to rotate more unique guys into your painting schedule for variety's sake.

I remedied this for myself by being creative in the modeling stage and trying to add as much variety to my guardsmen as possible. Works pretty well. I usually paint them in batches of 5 assembly line style and that helps as well.

However, I have roughly a 100 cadians I bought off a guy who just put them together all the same. They are mindnumbing to paint. I'm actually debating disassembling them and rebuilding them from the ground up to make them more interesting, I just need to find a good way to dissolve the superglue...

So yeah, try and be creative with your guys before you even think of painting them, and it can help a lot!

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I've been painting my Marine's in 500 pt groups, currently on 1500...and I can't get it done! I've been struggling to paint my bikes for over a week now, let alone the other models needed to finish that block.

I've been playing Dark Souls and watching South Park on Netflix until my family gets home, and then I go to my room, blast music and paint. It's still tough, part of the reason I joined Dakka is to hopefully help with this...if I ever get around to taking pictures and sharing them.

I just got my WHFB High elf army assembled.

Then I had to paint 140 infantry models. 60 Archers, 80 spearmen

Halleluja! and Blessed Be! to Army painter.
Ork green and crystal blue spray primers (bases and basecoat).
Then all I have to do is paint helmets, heads, shields and weapons (skull white).

They won't be well painted.
They won't win any awards for it.
They WILL however, BE painted, which is all that I need them to be - because it is not a tourney army and will never be one.