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I've painted more than two hundred models thus far and I've noticed that as time has gone by, I've gotten better at painting, and I don't want to paint as much. So I have a few questions to those who will answer.

1. How do you keep motivated to paint anything?

2. How do you not speed through and just get it done, but take your time and do a good job?

3. What do you do with older models, do you strip and repaint, do you just repaint, or do your leave them?

1. side projects and making youtube video's
2. batchpainting
3. i strip them, but some that are high quality will remain as portfolio

1. How does havin side projects help?
2. Like an assembly line?
3. The ones I'm talkin bout are so not high quality lol

Side projects gives you something to do that's not painting, like gaming or going out.
Yep, paint everything that needs to be a colour, that colour, then do it for every model. Then do other colours, details etc. By the time you get back to model 1, it will've dried.
As a gamer more than a painter, I leave them unless they're hideous, then strip and repaint.

I get models I want to paint.
If you have several hundred models that are a pain to paint, you'll never get them done.

Hence why I gave up on my IG horde army. I just couldn't face painting that many meatshields. After painting an equal number of SM INFANTRY models, I just couldn't do it.

My Eldar and GK were joys to paint, so got finished. My SM were eventually done.

Ah I see, I'll see what I can come up with.
That'll save plenty of time.
Then by those terms these marines definatly need to be stripped.

Like it's been said before, paint what you like.
Space Marines were actually the 2nd thing I tried to get into. The first (Fantasy Dwarves) just didn't do it for me. Looking back I think it's because I was painting 12 of the same thing...

Personally, I don't like painting armies as much as I like painting "Big Damn Heroes", so I've restricted myself to painting a 5/10-man squad at a time, making each one unique with a backstory so I can get into them... instead "This is squad 2. They have a flamer."

TO me, that's also how I handle #2. I don't get sick of painting them because I spend time making a story for them before I even put together a model. There's a reason my Sarge has Mk5 legs and arms with a Mk8 chest. There's a reason why There's a single Mk6 suit in my squad. When I'm painting heroes and not a generic squad of plastic figures... That's when I get into it.

Stripping is definitely the way to go, as multiple coats can clog all the little details in a model. Get yourself some simple green.

And sorry if I was rambling there.

Spartan-Kun wrote:1. How does havin side projects help?
2. Like an assembly line?
3. The ones I'm talkin bout are so not high quality lol

1. like if you allways painting, lets say orks, and its getting a drag and you really dont want to paint orks anymore, order a completely random model and paint it up to the best of your abilities... once you start to notice your nidpicking on little details and cant put the model away without smashing it to the wall or something, pick up some orks again and you will be completely motivated and its just fun to paint something completely new and exciting for a while
2. yep... build everything, check! prime everything, check! basecoat primary color, check! etc...
3. well in that case strip them and repaint... dont paint over an old, low quality paintjob!!

This is something which I can imagine effects most if not all of us at some point.
It can be soul crushing when theres a huge backlog of painting to get done and it just never seems to get smaller!
First and foremost is to buy models that you actually want to paint, theres nothing worse than sitting there looking at a bunch of figures that you dislike for one reason or another because the painting will go from being a big part of the fun to a huge chore.

If you have lots to do production line work can be the way to go, but when doing this I find you get a lot less individual character on each model. This is how I normally would do rank and file troops, or anything I will be doing a lot of,
my Skaven for example; I do one unit at a time (20+ minimum usually) and go through every model with one paint and then the next untill theyre done. This can be nice if you need to mix shades up as they will be uniform across entire squads atleast from mixing it in larger batches.

Old mini's that I want to repaint get stripped and redone from bare plastic/metal whatever, I'd hate to actually redo it extremely well, only to find that the thickness of the layers of paint is the detracting feature now.
I'l leave things painted, no matter how badly untill i actually want to repaint them though. Its nice to be able to see a record of improvement in your abilities when you can line them up in chronological order of being painted, can be a big boost to morale to see real improvements in your work so do keep track of them even if theyre awful now. When you get to look back and see how much you got better itle feel great!
Take a photo if you want to strip them down so you can still look back.
Also when painting have the last thing you did out and in sight, keep referring back to it as you paint the current one and force yourself to pick out just 1 thing each time that you feel you can do better this time round. Ensuring steady progress, It gets difficult to try too many new things out all in one go, it can be demotivational when you dont see results quickly on the 20 new techniques you tryed this time around, keeping it simple helps the progress your making to be more noticable.

1. Display cabinet. Single best motivator I've found, thus far. I'm about as slow as they come, but finally having sufficient painted models in the sea of gray plastic to be noticeable (and placed in a high traffic area) has made me want to expand its share enough that I'm now working more consistently.

2. That one's about personality, for me. I'm not a complete perfectionist, in that I'll never finish for want of perpetual improvement, but I always strive for the best I can manage. I'm slow, because of it, and very deliberate, but that also means that I have yet to turn out a model that I wasn't proud of, even if that meant taking a long time.

3. Old models are left as-is. Again, the way I operate meant that I researched heavily beforehand and took my time when painting my first models. While I've certainly improved, since then, my early work is nothing to scoff at. Besides, if you're not scraping to round out a new list that you want looking consistent, it's nice to keep around a "painting timeline" collection of models to track how you've changed/improved over the years. If I change something visually in my army, I'm not opposed to updating the older models, but I've got too many still unpainted to worry about perfecting each and every one - I'll just hope to do better on the next.

Spartan-Kun wrote:1. How do you keep motivated to paint anything?

When I stop painting it's usually due to some IRL issues that knock the wind out of my sails. I have 3 main projects that have my attention (Plague Marines, Cultists, and Terrain). When it's just a 'blah' moment (meaning no external stressors) I switch gears to another project. If I'm completely sick of painting and building, I organize my hobby area / bitz boxes / and do touchup work on projects that I 'completed' but wasn't completely satisfied with. If that doesn't work I simply get up and walk away from the table. I've gone weeks / months without doing anything hobby related. The breaks are always positive though, and when I come back I do so with vision, motivation, and vigor. I step back into the process and the time 'lost' becomes less noticeable as I start cranking things out again.

Spartan-Kun wrote:2. How do you not speed through and just get it done, but take your time and do a good job?

Sometimes I'll hammer out just enough to make it look reasonably acceptable on the tabletop (such as a new unit that I want to put on the table for my next game in a couple days) and in many cases I will go back and do more work. Other times I'll push everything off to the side and heavily focus on only 1 item. Right now I'm working on a piece of terrain for the 1st LoER terrain contest and it is *all* that I am doing right now. Being between Codexes for CSM helps a bit as well. I'm not doing anything for my CSM or Cultists until I see the new rules. My goal is to always do my best work all the time no exceptions, but the reality of that is I'm going to do the best I can when I can and go back to fix things I'm not happy with later.

Spartan-Kun wrote:3. What do you do with older models, do you strip and repaint, do you just repaint, or do your leave them?

Unless it's an absolute horror of a paint job that deserves nothing but scorn from my peers, I leave it 'as is'. For the most part my miniatures aren't painted badly, they just lack that last bit of detail that would make them better. When I 'rescue' something from eBay I'll usually strip it down, but that's mostly due to it not matching my current paint schemes.

Hope this helps.

Looking a Dakka's top rate models gallery and going... I want one of mine being up there.


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Oh one more thing thumbs up for being a Halo fan, are you getting Halo 4?

Thanks everyone, I've finally gotten back to painting up my orks, guard and space marines. I appreciate all the feedback.

@Nightfall - Yes, I have to, there's nothing in this world that could deter me. I'm a die hard halo fan.