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I was wondering how common a phenomenon this is. The person with whom I play miniatures the most despises painting. He's really into the gaming side of the hobby, loves writing lists and talking strategy and all that other jazz. To his credit, he really admires fully painted armies but simply can't bring himself to paint anything. As someone who loves painting and still has a bit of free time on my hands, I paint his stuff for him free of charge. Does anyone else do this?

Yeah, I'll do this if asked. It's always fun to paint something different, even if it does mean some of my best work ends up in other people's armies!

Yup. I painted most of my friends SoB army. While it was nice to break up the normal stuff on my paint bench, his paint scheme started to grate on me after a while. Not one I would have chosen.

I have friends I do this for. They're friends, so I help them out. They may not be into the whole painting side of the hobby, feel that they're not "talented enough to try", or too old to see that well anymore (yeah, I'm friends with a few old farts too). The gaming experience is just better with painted models anyway. Also, if your in a position to be trying to grow a gaming group, painted models are better eye candy to attract new players.

Aside from all these reasons, its fun to do something different once in a while - that doesn't have greenskin and isn't something I paid for.

I've painted for friends a bit, but I have to "be in the mood" to paint a particular piece-I need my muse. Otherwise it sits there until I find said muse. So painting for others has often been a hassle. For them, that is.

I pay friends to paint them for me

I've done it on occasion,

but I'm not a rapid painter so it has to be the odd special character or figure for RPGing (and it also has to be something I'm in the mood to do)

 Mr Morden wrote:
I pay friends to paint them for me

Me too, my painting is akin to that of a toddler.

Nope, my friends paint for me. I make terrain for them. It's something we do quite often. Usually with line troops, but often also with characters that I just don't have time to paint. Painting minis isn't my favorite part of the hobby do I'll often build and paint terrain or other models for them and they'll paint for me.

The rest of the club often also exchanges projects with each other. It can be a great way to play to your strengths or to try projects you might not have otherwise done. Right now I'm building a post apoc vehicle from some sort of star wars droid uni-tread thing my buddy brought me. In exchange he's painting up 5 Alpha Forge salvage crew figs for me.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I was wondering how common a phenomenon this is. The person with whom I play miniatures the most despises painting. He's really into the gaming side of the hobby, loves writing lists and talking strategy and all that other jazz. To his credit, he really admires fully painted armies but simply can't bring himself to paint anything. As someone who loves painting and still has a bit of free time on my hands, I paint his stuff for him free of charge. Does anyone else do this?

Trading hobby services is one of the great things about a vibrant TTG community. I paint sloooooowly, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that painting doesn't really thrill me. I don't mind assembly, and I enjoy converting. I also enjoy building and painting terrain and running games. Sometimes I'll build a unit or two in exchange for getting a unit or two painted. If I am running a game, sometimes I'll send people home with models for the next game to paint up.

This is the type of thing that I always encourage folks who are persnickety about only seeing painted miniatures to engage in. If you really want to see people using painted miniatures, help people paint! If someone has an airbrush, it can be a great deal of help just to give someone a hand with base coating or a zenith highlight.

I like painting minis, like a lot of people and if my friends asked me to paint theirs i would, gladly. However they have seen my minis, so i don't think they'll ever ask, sigh:(

I also pay a friend to piant my stuff

Yup. I don't expect payment though, work is work, stuff for friends or myself is not. I do get friendly with clients (not meaning to imply I don't like 'em personally or whatever) but a personal, 'favour' job is that- no deadline, no expectations, and no demands.

Every time I've seen work done for trade or to any form of up front swap for friends it's gone tits up. So I don't do it that way, saves a lot of falling out, over what's basically toy solidiers. I think it's too often seen as an exchange of gifts.

I have done work as work for a mate on a couple of occasions, and it's doable as long as your treat them exactly as you would a client, including payment structure etc. don't ever treat it as a favour. Keep the two concepts well apart.

I did quite a few for my gaming group and a handful for the manager of an LGS, the latter in exchange for store credit. I have an ad for my painting service on the message board in another LGS. If I can get off my butt and take proper pictures of my work, I might get more commissions and the material to start my own P&M blog.

I've painted almost every army I've ever played against Depending on how much I was being asked to paint, and how much I really felt like painting it, sometimes I'd paint units for free, other times for a small fee (usually like $1-2 per model for line units, maybe $5-10 for higher standard characters, $10-20+ for vehicles). Not pro-level, but better than average tabletop standard. Over the course of a few decades, my group of friends amassed at least a few thousand points from every 40k codex, almost all painted by yours truly. Although I think it very nearly drove me insane at some points ("you bought HOW MANY space marines? And you expect me to paint those!?)

Pretty much all of my "commissioned" stuff has been from friends who want to game and are lazy. Plus, tourney points for painted.

I had to learn how to paint splinter camouflage on 15mm figures to paint my friend's Fallschirmjagers for Flames of War. It never would have been done otherwise.

I've painted a few gifts for friends of single figs. They generally like to paint their own stuff or have too much pride to let someone else paint their figs, even if it's better than they can do themselves. Other than that, I'm far too slow to paint things for other people if money's involved

Not so much with painting, but I have done a fair bit of modelling for friends, even scratch-building a huge demon prince.

When I say not so much with painting, I mean not just by myself. As part of a group is a different story. Every so often a night's worth of gaming with my group will be a competition to decide whose stuff we'll paint the next week, winner's choice. A night of sitting around, production-line painting someone's stuff with a group of friends, not only gives a nice break from just gaming all the time, it also helps to put an end to great grey hordes.

Oh I definitely do once in a while.

My buddy bought a huge Ogre army NIB from GW a few months ago. We assembled it all in one day, and I asked if I can customize/paint one ogre for myself. No problemo, it was awesome.

I used to do RPG characters for people all the time, when I didn't have other things I wanted to paint.

Eventually, I got enough of my own projects that I didn't have time to do everyones. I started turning down my friends, saying that it'd just be too low a priority for me to get to them.

Then one of them handed me a bill and said, "Would this make it a priority?"

And now I'm full time. I still paint RPG characters for people in our group who aren't painters (the painters just want to do their own).

I would paint a lot of minis for my wife, except that she loves painting. So, when we both like a game, we have to do a lot of negotiating (ie, I'll let you have Kisaro To if I can have Harbonath).

I paint stuff for my friends all the time. Mostly I do minis for their RPG characters, but I did more than one whole 40K army before, and I've done a few BloodBowl temas and Malifaux gangs, as well. If I'm doing a one-off mini, I generally do it gratis. If I'm doing a gang, army, or team, I tend to charge for my services... not strictly money, though. I've painted in exchange for models, painting supplies, and lunch.

Funded a fair bit of my FoW army by painting stuff for others, hardly a 'pro' but reasonable enough that people were happy (and came back with more). Mind you it was Yorkshire and I was cheap (£2 a vehicle, £1 a stand of infantry). but it adds up reasonably well and bought me a good bit of my Grenadiers.

Was going to do some warhammer stuff but a house move put paid to that idea and now don't have the time. Wasn't good enough to do characters to a high standard but was happy enough to do rank and file to whatever colours someone wanted so they fitted with other stuff.

If I was doing it again would have to be models I was interested in painting but probably not interested in actually owning, also only took on unassembled stuff - mould lines irritate the hell out of me and some stuff is just easier to paint first.

I have painted countless SOB and BA tanks and models for a good friend. It was tourniment time and he needed help getting stuff table top ready. It was quite fun to do.

I've painted a miniature or two for friends, most of mine liked painting and building, in fact we'd get together over beers and paint. Great fun, maybe you all ought to get together and do that. Now that I've moved away from my pals it kinda does blow sitting by myself painting and building. So maybe making it a social event would help him out.

Occasionally. It adds variety to my workbench.

I have done that for my friends

Nope. Did it once, got an apathetic "oh...that's nice" even though I bought the model in question – in addition to painting it. Instead of a thanks, I get a shopping list of other models he wants me to paint up...not even mentioning if he even plans on paying for them. He just figured my love of painting would be enough.

Uhm, El No, feth that.... And I kept the model.

 Kaiserbudheim wrote:
Nope. Did it once, got an apathetic "oh...that's nice" even though I bought the model in question – in addition to painting it. Instead of a thanks, I get a shopping list of other models he wants me to paint up...not even mentioning if he even plans on paying for them. He just figured my love of painting would be enough.

Uhm, El No, feth that.... And I kept the model.

"Friend" might be an incorrect descriptor for this individual. Though, Southern California is sorta (in)famous for its large amount of people who act like "friends"

I've done this for gifts before. Last year we had a "Warhammer Xmas" with our group. I assembled and painted all the models I got for everyone.